Jolie A. Rocke
Lecturer II of Music (Voice)
Phone: (936) 261-3329
Email: jarocke@pvamu.edu
Jolie Rocke, native New Yorker, and internationally renowned professional soprano is sharing the gift of song across the world. She has performed as a featured soloist in opera and concert tours of the USA, Europe, and Far North Queensland Australia. Hartford Courant writer and critic Owen McNally once marveled, “…a gifted, versatile vocalist who’s as much at home soaring on opera arias and celestial hymns as she is getting down with funky blues and earthy jazz, just might, at long last, have the whole world in her hands thanks to her soulful album, Rock of Ages: Hymns for the Soul.” Her other recording projects Jolie Rocke Brown in Concert and E’en So Lord Jesus Quickly Come, are available through iTunes.com, Bandcamp.com, Amazon.com, and other media outlets.
Dr. Rocke began her career in opera as a chorus member and honed her fine instrument as a young artist with Intermezzo Opera (CT), Houston Ebony Opera Guild (TX), and internationally with Studio Lirico in Anghiari, Italy. She landed contracts for leading roles with Connecticut Opera, Connecticut Lyric Opera, Houston Ebony Opera Guild, Trilogy Opera, Théâtre national de l’opéra-comique (Paris), and New York Harlem Productions Company. Opera Online reported, “…as both the Sandman and Dew Fairy, along with the dancing of fourteen young angels stole the end of the first act…” in Connecticut Opera’s November 2004 production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. Her other roles include Zerbinetta, in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, Queen of the Night in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Despina in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Musetta in Puccini’s La bohème, Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni Lisa in Bellini’s La Sonnambula, Lucy in Menotti’s Telephone, and Clara in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Concerts and appearances with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, New Britain Symphony, West Hartford Symphony, Connecticut Concert Opera, Hartford Chorale, CONCORA, and International Voices Houston. Dr. Rocke has been featured on the stages of New York’s Carnegie (Weill) Recital Hall, Houston’s Wortham Theater Center, Hartford’s Bushnell Center for Performing Arts, Bridgeport’s Klein Memorial Auditorium.
Acclaimed as a singer and music educator, Dr. Rocke has served as a Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Roster Artist since 2020. She was awarded a 2020 Support for Artists and Creative Individuals Grant from the Houston Mayor’s Office for Cultural Arts through the Houston Arts Alliance to write and mount “Triumphant Over Triple Negative,” a production that tells the story of how music inspired her through her breast cancer journey. The Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame honored her for her contributions as an international vocalist and arts educator in 2012. The Amistad Center for Art & Culture housed at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, honored her with the 2014 Spirit of Juneteenth Award.
While her singing career continues to soar, her dedication to training and providing performing opportunities for young artists is unwavering. Dr. Rocke draws from her total life experience when she takes the stage or works with aspiring young artists. For more than thirty years, her passion for music and the desire to pass it on to her students, leads her to produce concerts, direct community arts programs and train aspiring singers as a private voice teacher, coach, and mentor. Her students have become internationally professional singers and artists of renown, while others have continued studies at the masters’ and doctoral levels in prestigious collegiate programs. Several are currently private studio teachers, public school educators, and professors.
Rocke earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in Vocal Performance from the University of Connecticut, a Master of Early Childhood Education from Loyola College in Baltimore, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Hartford’s Hartt School. Currently a Lecturer II at Prairie View A&M University, she has taught at San Jacinto College (TX), Texas Southern University (TX), Manchester Community College (CT), and the University of Connecticut. In 2022, she led the charge to re-establish the John ‘Blind” Boone Symposium for the Boone Heritage Foundation in Columbia, Missouri in collaboration with The Boone County Historical Society, The University of Missouri (Columbia), Lincoln University of Missouri (Jefferson) and University of Central Missouri (Warrensburg). As Executive Artistic Director of Driven Theater Company, Dr. Rocke founded HBCU ArtsTM in 2023, to provide showcase, promote, and celebrate student, faculty, and alumni artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The current foci of her research are community-based arts programming, broad perspectives in the training of arts administrators, and documenting the life and work of HBCU artists.