If you’ve watched “Star Wars,” “Frozen” or “Shazam,” you may have heard Pierce College professor Garineh Avakian’s voice.
Avakian, who is a professor of voice and choir, often gets calls from SAG-AFTRA and AGMA, and she also hears from producers and agents to come in for Netflix series or Amazon series and movies.
“I get the opportunity to sing in movies like ‘Stars Wars,’ I sang on ‘The Last Jedi,’ ‘The Rise of the Skywalker,’ I sang in one of the Marvel movies, ‘Shazam,’ and I worked with top notch producers and composers like Michael Abels,” Avakian said. “I take all of these connections and experience I get and I give it straight to my students.”
Avakian grew up in Los Angeles and has been teaching for almost a decade at Pierce.
“I always knew I was going to be a musician from a very young age,” Avakian said. “I love teaching. I love having light bulbs go off in my students.”
Avakian said she cares about students and how much they can accomplish.
“Dr. Garineh Avakian is invested in the progress of all of her students, and she also brings her connections from her own professional work into the classroom,” said Herschel Aberson, a music major currently attending Avakian’s voice and choir class who added that she gets tickets to performances for her students because she knows someone in the play.
Avakian said she is not afraid to bring in people she knows in the larger music world to teach and instruct the students the standard of being a musician for her classroom.
Avakian has many returning students, such as Hasti Almasi who studied in her performance workshop class and choir.
Avakian encourages her students—whether they are pursuing music as a hobby or as a professional career—to not do anything halfway, but to do things all the way for the true, best results, according to Almasi.
“Do something all the way through or don’t do it all,” Almasi said. “She’s adamant about making that point.”
Avakian believes music classes are a gateway to many future opportunities and is persistent to make the point come across for the potential students considering a music major.
“Signing up and registering for a music class, you never know what windows and doors that can open,” Avakian said. “That is how music majors are recruited because they end up taking a class and are caught by surprise on how much it helps.”
