Our Leaders

Clarice LaVerne Thompson is a multi-AUDELCO award-winning composer, musical director, musicologist, and entertainer. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Music from Lane College, an HBCU located in Jackson, Tennessee. Thompson received her Master of Music in music composition and her Doctor of Arts in music history, both from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi. With Elmo Terry-Morgan, she created the musicals Song of Sheba, Crescent Tales, Ophelia’s Cotillion, and Hot Comb. She has also composed incidental scores for Harriet Jacobs (by Lydia Diamond), The Children’s Legacy (by Lola Louis), and Profiles and Shadows and Heart-to-Heart: Ain’t Your Life Worth Saving? (both by Terry-Morgan). As a musical director, she worked on productions for the Boston Center for the Arts, Company One Theatre, Central Square Theatre, the Underground Railroad Theatre, Mixed Magic Theatre, the Providence Black Rep, the National Black Theatre in New York, numerous other theatres in New York, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, and international venues in Japan. She has been a public school educator, a consultant for the Providence Public School Department of Fine Arts, and was a Professor of African American Music (and resident Music Director at Rites and Reason Theatre) at Brown University from 2002-09. She has previously served as the Minister of Music at Bethel AME Church and Gospel Choir Director at Beneficent Congregational Church, both in Providence, Rhode Island, and has toured the United States, Europe, and Japan. She founded RPM Voices of Rhode Island, then known as the RPM Singers, in 2003, ultimately creating a home for over 200 performers. She is now enjoying her retirement with family in North Carolina.

Shaunne N. Thomas has directed and acted in theatre, including at Brown University’s Rites and Reason Theatre and at WORD Theatre at the Roots Cafe in downtown Providence. Since co-founding RPM Voices of Rhode Island, she has pivoted to making use of her nearly two decades of experience in procurement, diversity and inclusion, and project management, first serving the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, as the Interim Compliance Manager and the Senior Services and Technology Procurement Officer, leading the development of the City’s inclusion policy dictating all citywide procurements, and going on to join Guilford County as the County’s Director of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Department. She also serves as the Legislative Chair for the North Carolina MWBE Coordinators’ Network.

Beginning piano lessons at age 7, Frances-Elayne Johnson has strived to share and expand her music career. While still in high school, she joined The Good News Kids, an ecumenical singing group that toured the country spreading the gospel. During those same years, Frances started studying piano at the University of Rhode Island. After graduating from high school, she enrolled at Roger Williams University, where she majored in music and theatre. Frances was accepted into their extended-course program in London, England, where she spent a year in advanced studies. To “support” her music career, Frances started working as an insurance field examiner in Boston. She continued for the next fifteen years working as an examiner by day and at cabarets, supper clubs, and theaters at night in Boston, MA, and Chicago, IL. In 2007, Frances returned “home” to church. She became the Music Director at Community Baptist Church in Newport, RI, in 2007. In 2011, she took the position of Worship Leader at Luther Rice Memorial Baptist Church in Silver Spring, MD. 2013 saw Frances return to Newport, this time as the Director of Music Ministry at Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church. She currently serves as the Minister of Music at Beneficent Congregational Church in Providence, RI. She is also the Artistic Director and one of the primary Music Directors of RPM Voices of Rhode Island.

Delbert L. Collins, a talented soloist, arranger, composer, and freelance musician, exhibited considerable skill from a tender age, nurtured and developed in his paternal grandfather’s Baptist church and the Tulsa, Oklahoma, public school system. Upon graduating from high school, he began his musical studies at Langston University before transferring to Lane College, an HBCU located in Jackson, Tennessee, at the urging of Dr. William B. Garcia. There, he earned a B.A. in Music with an emphasis in Voice and Piano, accompanied the Concert Choir, served as Assistant Choral Director and College Organist after completing his degree, and first established a musical partnership with Dr. Clarice LaVerne Thompson, the co-founder of RPM Voices. (He also later returned to serve as a voice coach, music theory tutor, and collaborative pianist in the Music Department.) During his career, Delbert has been a Minister of Music at churches in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, a staff musician and soloist for the National Baptist College of Christian Education’s Youth Rally Choir, performed with Mixed Magic Theatre, the Beneficent Church choir, and the Chorus of East Providence, and appeared as a featured soloist at the Heroes of Faith Breakfast and the Interfaith Poverty Conference.

Gibson DelGiudice began his entertainment career when he was first discovered at 15 by Broadway legend Michael Butler, of Hair fame. Butler and his production unit introduced Gibson to Richard Haase, an NYC-based producer/auteur, as a prodigy whom Butler recommended Haase take a professional interest in. After five years of apprenticeship, Gibson emerged as a vital member of the producers’ unit at Haase’s Two Per Cent Solution in NYC (and, later, its affiliate East West Image Media International), and became a director of project development, involved in the company’s major stage, film, and TV productions, as well as heading their publicity and public relations department. In those roles, and as East Coast project development coordinator for TW3 Entertainment and founder of his own Hunter Arrogant Entertainment, Gibson has been privileged to work with several world-class media legends, including Michael Jackson, Jim Steinman, Barry Keating (composer of six-time Tony-nominated Starmites), Harry J. Lennix (most recently of NBC’s The Blacklist), and noted TV director Oz Scott. On his own steam, Gibson helps administer Jesus Christ Superstar Zone (one of the foremost Internet fan communities for the beloved rock opera, now a noteworthy source for documentaries and publications on the subject), which has spun off an eBook (Impressions of a Crucifixion), a Substack column (Jesus Christ Supernerd), and a burgeoning side hustle as an at-large creative consultant on numerous JCS productions, both professional and amateur. (He has also dabbled in the show that brought him into the business, serving as creative and historical consultant on West Bay Community Theatre’s 2022 concert production of Hair.) When not engaged in these enterprises or his work with RPM Voices, Gibson makes his home in scenic suburban Rhode Island, whence he moonlights as a singer, and will marry you for pizza (see link for details).

(Photo and bio currently not available)