Sixteen-year-old Bella Porter was named a Grand Prize finalist in the 2014 Music Center Spotlight Awards for Non-Classical Voice. Dana Greene at Pacific Palisades’ To Dream Music Studios has been coaching Porter for seven years. The Spotlights, which sees more than 2,000 hopefuls a year, is a nationally-acclaimed scholarship and arts training program for high school students in the performing and visual arts. Porter will perform at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on April 26 in a televised event.
Photo courtesy of Dana Greene
“I’ve been working with Bella since she was nine,” Greene said. “Watching her grow into a young woman and artist has been a gorgeous evolution. She sings with such a passion and soul from the deepest place in her heart. It’s glorious to witness a student’s opening, and see them reach for it and then take it. It’s been an amazing journey with her.”
Porter is one of a number of Greene’s students to achieve success and recognition in competitions across the country, including Teira Church, a past first-place Grand Prize winner of the Music Center Spotlight Awards, and a finalist in the 2013 Sarah Vaughn International Jazz Vocal Competition. Julian Hicks also took first place in the Southern California Vocal Association Competition for Classical Voice.
Greene and her husband Jim Avakian have been teaching students of all ages in Pacific Palisades at their private studio for 14 years.
Greene heads the Vocal Technique and Coaching and Avakian leads Music Education and Piano Instruction. Visit todreaminc.com.
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