Commencement Spotlight: Christina Ramsey `25

I'm very excited. It's such an honor to represent the music department, as well as the vocal department for the Graduate Division. I'm looking forward to showing everyone what we're all about—sometimes it feels like we're off in our own little arts world. So it'll be nice for people to see a face to the name of the department.

I know all the words to the songs—thank goodness! I’ve already learned the alma mater. I’ve sung it with the UCSB choirs; we do the four-part version after every concert and of course, I’ve performed the national anthem a million times. In order to prepare, I’ll probably warm up a couple of times, take it easy, not talk too much—but talk a little bit. Then I’ll just go up, perform, start singing, and see what happens.

I kind of have a long roundabout way of coming to UCSB. I graduated in 2015 with my master's from Rice. I worked professionally as a singer—singing all over the country and performing. Then I got married and Covid happened. It led me to open a private studio to start teaching people how to sing and start training the next generation. I didn't realize how much I would love that. Through Opera Santa Barbara, my husband and I knew Professor Ben Brecher really well. He told us about the program and the advantages, and knowing that we would be here in such a wonderful community that we had already have ties to, was the biggest selling point for us. So we decided to start our doctorate degrees here at UCSB, and we're almost done.

I mean how can you say no to a beautiful place right next to the ocean? As well as the wonderful faculty that I've been able to work with here, not only the performance faculty, but the musicology faculty have been absolutely amazing in broadening our academic minds. They've been really helpful in talking to us about our next steps in the academic world as well as in the professional world. So just making even those connections within this community has been awesome.

My favorite performance that we did was an opera gala of scenes from Mozart and from Gluck, with the UCSB choir, orchestra members from the community, and the dance program. I got to do a big, long, scena or scene from Orfeo by Gluck with dancers from the dance program, which was really amazing.

I got to sing to my dying wife on the stage—since I was playing a man,—and while her spirit danced around me and tried to get me to see her, and to know that she is there with me, but he never actually sees her. It was really emotional for me because, I had just lost my dad at that time. To have something so beautiful also representing life after death was awesome.

The dance department is also so amazing. Christina McCarthy was wonderful in how she asked us to do different kind of acting with our bodies, as well as how she incorporated the dancers into what we were already doing, was absolutely fabulous and fantastic. I would highly recommend working with her and I would work with her again in a minute.

I plan to teach. I would love to start or build upon an undergraduate program. I really enjoy working with undergrads in college because I think that they're kind of at the crux of figuring out who they are as people and who they are as singers. I would really like to be the person to help them out with that. But otherwise, I'm still going to be preforming with Opera Santa Barbara next season. I'm doing Sharon Falconer in Elmer Gantry, which is the lead female role. I'm doing Mozart's Requiem with the symphony and all kinds of stuff. So I'll be continuing my performing career as well as adding in a little bit more stable, academic life.