Pedro Barbosa

A b o u t

M e

Picture of Pedro's family dressed as the Adams Family, of Pedro singing in 'Barber of Seville', and a wedding photo with Pedro and his wife

In a Nutshell

It all started in Feira de Santana in the state of Bahia in Brazil where I was born to a Brazilian father and an American mother. We moved to the US before I was even a year old. Growing up, we moved a lot. Before college, I had lived in Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, and Illinois. Throughout my time in school, I was involved in various sports, concert band and marching band, choirs, plays and musicals, and the oh-so-fun brain bowls.

My undergraduate degree from Northern Illinois University was a Bachelor of Arts that focused on music, theatre, and dance training. For many years, I was involved in various professional plays and musicals in Chicago and across the Midwest. At LSU, I earned a Master of Music in Operatic Vocal Performance. In the middle of my time at LSU, I met my wife, Dana Pundt, while we were involved in an opera contract in Des Moines, Iowa.

From there, we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where we continued to persue operatic careers, and rear two beautiful young girls.

Opera

As far back as I can remember, I have been exposed to a broad range of music from all over the world. From a young age, I enjoyed a rich musical heritage from both my Brazilian side and from my mother, who is a retired classically trained singer and voice professor.

Growing up, I was involved in children's chorus throughout elementary school, youth choir at my church during junior high, chamber choir and show choir in high school, as well as regional and state competion choir. Getting my degrees in performance and voice was a natural outgrowth from a life-long musical path.

As soon as I finished my B.A. in Music, Theatre and Dance from N.I.U., I moved to Chicago. There, I had the opportunity to work locally in plays and musicals, as well as perform at larger regional musical theatre venues in Oklahoma. Over time, I realized that performing opera was what I truly wanted to do, so I moved from Chicago to Baton Rouge to earn a Master of Music in Operatic Vocal Performance from L.S.U.

While still in school, I gained contracts with two big companies in the Midwest, and by the time I graduated, a steadily growing career began to flourish.I had the great fortune to perform with many companies between the Midwest and the East Coast until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although I still perform, it is not the same as it was before the pandemic, and I no longer treat it as a main source of income.

Coding

The pandemic made me take a hard look at how I approach providing for my family. At the beginning, I started down a medical path: Taking nursing classes and becoming an EMT. But after only a year and a half working for private ambulance companies, I began to burn out.

One of the times I contracted COVID, I had a lot of extra time to consider options and to recall the things that made me happy when I was younger. I recalled a pottery class I used to take. At the end of each class, while I was waiting to be picked up, my instructor would teach me HTML. This was back in 1996, when CSS was just taking off. I loved making rudimentary Star Trek: The Next Generation appreciation pages with animated Borg graphics.

This prompted me to take a number of free online coding courses. I thoroughly enjoyed the learning and creating. Within a couple of months, I had learned some basic C, Python, Java, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. As I went back to work, it was very challenging to find time to continue my learning, so I decided to take the bootcamp plunge!

The next step would be to attend a remote Full-Stack bootcamp with We Can Code IT. Through WCCI I would gain valuable skills which I am eager to combine with all the experience I have developed along the path to a career in performance!

Skills

Java • Spring • Thymeleaf • JavaScript • MVC • HTML • CSS • TDD • Agile (Scrum) • Object Oriented Programming (OOP) • JSON • React • REST APIs • Responsive Design / Mobile • Relational Databases • Source Control / GitHub