About

Ariana is a classically trained lyric soprano & pianist, composer, writer, music teacher, organizer, comedy improviser and free-lance editor currently living in Portland, Oregon.

Ariana was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1986, moved to Chicago in 1987, and landed in Los Angeles in 1990. She and her two younger brothers were raised throughout Southern California by her New York born mother and father, and Polish-born stepmother.

As a teen, she was a member of the award-winning show choir at John Burroughs High School (the inspiration for the TV Show GLEE) under Mary Rago, competing successfully countless times throughout the United States. As an actress under the direction of Scott Bailey, she won 1st place at the Drama Teachers Association of Southern California (DTASC) “Anything Goes” Shakespeare Festival, an honor she shares with past winners Kevin Spacey, Mare Winningham, Cuba Gooding Jr., Sally Fields, and Nicholas Cage. Her other awards include both the JBHS drama and music scholarships, given to an outstanding senior in the field upon graduation.

Ariana studied music from 2004-2006 at Bard College in upstate NY and received a B.A. in vocal performance from Lewis & Clark College in 2009, following training under soprano Sue McBerry, a protege of Pierre Bernac. As an undergraduate at Lewis and Clark, Ariana founded and ran the Student Music Committee, a group of students dedicated to provide professional resources to undergraduate musicians and maintain connections with LC music alumni.  She also created and maintained the Sexy Student Music Collective, a database of all LC undergraduate musicians that was distributed throughout campus to connect fellow musicians and encourage musical collaborations.

Her credits as a musician include Elvis Perkins’ critically acclaimed debut album Ash Wednesday,  released on XL Recordings and credited by the New York Times as “a remarkably beautiful elegy”. With Elvis in Dearland, she opened for bands such as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah in venues such as The Roseland Theater in Portland, Largo in Los Angeles, and The Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan. As a solo performer Ariana has toured California and PDX as well as headlining in Chicago venues and the Sidewalk Cafe in Manhattan. She has been mentioned in Radio From Heaven as one of “the best under-rated/unknown artists out there.” Recent dramatic/operatic roles include Dido in Henry Purcell’s opera Dido & Aeneas and numerous solos under the choral direction of James Bagwell and Katherine FitzGibbon, as well as full-length classical recitals as a lyric soprano. Recent musical projects include the band Panda and the Fox, a fusion of neo-jazz, 18th century french art song, Taiko drumming, trip-hop, funk pop, and tribal electronica with fellow LC graduate Toyomi Yoshida.

Ariana is currently a contributing reader for Tin House, Portland’s highly acclaimed quarterly which publishes fiction, poetry and essays by new and established writers such as David Foster Wallace, Amy Hempel, Stephen King, Sherman Alexie, and Anne Carson.

As an improviser, she is a member of the comedy improv group SCRIPT and is currently studying improv at the Brody Theater under Brad Fortier.

Ariana lives in the Sellwood neighborhood with a church organist, a Lady Gaga impersonator, her brother Alex, and her snake, a Kenyan sand boa named Trouble. She is currently trying to be better at the trumpet & drum set, speaking Japanese, and remembering her dreams. She often fantasizes about sneaking into Powell’s books after hours and living there like those kids that lived in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.