I am a Houston-based singer-songwriter, puppeteer, and teaching artist. My work is founded on love, community, mutual aid, and connection, and my conviction that art and creativity are for EVERYONE!
I grew up in southwest Louisiana, surrounded by music. When I was born, my grandmother heard my wail and said I’d be a singer. She was right. I started singing at the age of 3, began playing the oboe at 11, and started singing professionally when I was 13. At 19 I started studying classical voice, and a couple years later I picked up the ukulele and have not put it down since.
After earning my Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance with a concentration in Musical Theatre in 2006, I worked as a singing waitress in Colorado, a retail nerd in Nashville, and an educational theater performer in West Virginia. There I fell in love twice: first with my husband Jeffrey Villines, and secondly with teaching voice.
Puppetry entered my life in 2008 when I started working as a Sesame Street character in Williamsburg. This led to a gig performing voice and puppetry for the Emmy award-winning educational film A Global Economy. This kicked off many years of working in musical and puppet theater, until graduate school called my name. In 2015 I received my Master of Music in Voice Performance with a concentration in Musical Theatre from Arizona State University.
I’ve performed with theaters large and small across the South and Southwest, and for the last eight years have made my home in the concrete jungle of Houston, where I spend my days teaching, composing and arranging, performing, and collaborating my way across the city.
In recent years I’ve moved into producing original work, including my solo show Come to Cry, Call Me Ann: The Ann Richards Rock Opera (for which I won a 2020 Houston Arts Alliance grant), and Catastrophic Theatre’s Drama Squads. In 2018 I won a Houston Press award for Best Cabaret for Horse Head Theatre Company’s We’re Gonna Die, for which I starred and was music arranger and music director.
My work these days includes singing and playing with hospitalized children multiple times a week through Theatre Under the Stars’s Arts in Medicine; writing music and designing crankies as Executive Whimsist at lo-fi puppets and stuff; and decolonizing my voice & ukulele teaching practice as I center my pedagogy on science-based, singer-centered teachings. For many years, I was always “and Alli” in my collaborations; so my upcoming solo original music projects will be released as “Ampersand Alli.”
ukulalli 