Ami Bouterse, SLP-CF

Ami Bouterse, SLP-CF has been an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin - Parkside for two decades. She serves as the Voice Area Coordinator and Contemporary Commercial Music - Voice Program Coordinator. Her main teaching responsibilities include applied voice and directing the contemporary a cappella group, Parkside Range along with other courses in the CCM and voice areas.

Ami has performed soprano favorites and premieres in opera and musical theater with such venues as Skylight Opera Theatre, Ash Lawn Opera Festival, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, New York Japan Society, Operafestival di Roma, Dorian Opera Theater, Milwaukee Opera Theater, Theatre X, and locally with Music and More Concert Series, Belle Ensemble, Racine Symphony, Racine Theatre Guild, and Kenosha Symphony. Premieres have included works by composers Dr. Jorge Muniz, Ayesu Lartey, and Ruben Prieto. Former awards include those from Gerda Lissner International Vocal Competition, Metropolitan Opera District Auditions, National Association of Teachers of Singing, Kenosha Symphony, and Milwaukee Civic Music Foundation. Ms. Bouterse's solo performances have been praised as producing "sweetness and gentility," "fully-realized character," "exquisite mastery of pitch and nuance," and "the clarity of Purcell’s melodies."

Under the direction of Prof. Bouterse since 2016, Parkside Range has been the flagship ensemble of the Contemporary Commercial Music - Voice program. The group has appeared at SoJam’s A Cappella Festival, the National A Cappella Convention, Tall Tales Music Festival, A Cappella University, and on Acaville Radio. The group has worked with professional clinicians and vocal bands such as Tony Huerta, Edge Effect, Six Appeal, Freedom’s Boombox, and Christopher Diaz.

Prof. Bouterse received voice and opera theater performance degrees from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and Carnegie Mellon University respectively. In addition, Ami earned Level III Certification in Jeanne LoVetri’s Somatic Voicework™, which featured contemporary commercial music vocal pedagogical technique at Shenandoah University. On a recent sabbatical, Prof. Bouterse completed a Master of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders from Emerson College for licensure as a speech language pathologist, which allowed her to specialize in habilitation and rehabilitation of vocal function, and learn effective teaching and learning strategies for motor planning, linguistic and cognitive skills required for singing.