Looking back on his life in the arts, voice and dialect coach Thom Jones ’91 thought he would become a painter,
until he discovered in his childhood that, not only could he carry a tune, but he could sing really well.
Yet for all of his considerable talent, there was one major obstacle for Jones: he suffered from horrible stage fright as a performer. But when he came to Purchase, Jones found that preparing for a career in acting helped him find his own voice. He’s built an impressive career helping others find theirs—first in academia, then in Hollywood.
“Now I use my singing voice to help other people sing and speak well,” Jones said. “I think if the focus was on me, I would be more frightened, but since my focus is always on helping my students, I feel very free in using it in service for somebody else's talent to be revealed and expressed.”
Jones has helped dozens of stage and screen actors, many of whom went on to deliver award-winning performances. Notably, he’s coached actors who portray highly recognizable figures, including Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Being the Ricardos (2021) and Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin in Respect (2021).
How The Queen of Disco Helped the Process
Most recently, Jones worked with Da’Vine Joy Randolph for her role in The Holdovers (2023), helping her perfect the specific dialect of a Black woman in 1960s Boston.
To do that, Jones attends to what he calls the three pillars of a dialect: rhythm, or musicality; vocal posture; and phonetics. But to prepare any actor for dialect work, the first thing Jones does is read the script to get to know the character. In Randolph’s case, he knew he had to find a Black woman from Boston in the late 1960s.
Luckily, he discovered that Donna Summer, the “Queen of Disco,” was from Boston, and that he could access a plethora of interviews with her on the internet.
“It was so great to get this because, yes, there are the Boston-isms [in her voice], but there's also African Americanisms that come up from the South and also from Africa,” Jones said, “and I needed to also have those things in there.”
Jones said he prefers clips of speakers getting emotional because they're not concentrating as much on how their speech sounds to others.
“African Americans have to code switch in America because of racism,” Jones said. “Everybody, to a certain extent, code switches—you sort of make your speech more proper if you’re talking to a fancy person or whatever. But if you're a Black American and you're talking to a white person, you're aware that you're talking to a white person, and you're probably being judged. You have that awareness.”
Jones sought instances of Donna Summer code-switching to add authenticity. Given the setting—American society in the tumultuous 60s—it was likely that Da’Vine’s character had different modes of speaking depending on the situation.
“I transcribe a paragraph of Donna Summer speaking in an impassioned way, and then [Da’Vine and I] just listen to it as though it's music, just listen for rhythms without thinking about the words, because this is the base of a dialect,” Jones said.
“Vocal posture” comes next. This has to do with the sensation and shape that is formed inside of the mouth and down into the vocal track, changing the shape and climate of the vocal instrument. It relates to how tension is employed in different ways of speaking.
“Then you have to connect the dialect to the actor’s voice, because if you don't, it will sound false,” Jones said. “It'll sound like somebody doing a Saturday Night Live impersonation.”
Randolph’s performance earned several awards, notably the Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe, SAG, and many more, for Best Supporting Actress —a testament to Jones’ work.
Gratitude for Teachers
Before becoming the sought-after voice, speech, and dialect coach he is today, Jones spent seven years as Head of Voice and Speech at Purchase in the ’90s, followed by nearly 20 years as the Head of Voice and Speech for the Brown University/Trinity Repertory Company master’s program in Acting and Directing.
Jones enjoyed his time in academia, while at the same time his client list as a voice coach started to snowball, beginning with Nicole Kidman—whom Jones said “fell into my lap,” thanks to dialect coach Elizabeth Himelstein, who taught acting students at Purchase when Jones was a freshman.
“Liz was my first speech teacher at Purchase,” Jones said. “She had been working with Nicole for years and years. There was a project Nicole was going to do and Liz wasn't available, so she asked me if I would do it. Since then, Nicole and I have done close to 20 projects together.”
Jones’ second speech teacher at Purchase was Barbara Knowles. While Himelstein’s work was mainly about the structure of the words themselves, Knowles taught him how variations of pitch, rhythm, and volume come into play.
In addition to Knowles and Himelstein, Jones said, there were three other teachers at Purchase who most influenced his ability to inhabit a character, and thereby help his clients do the same.
The first was Ronni Stewart, Jones’ movement teacher. “She taught me that the body is the container for your spirit/soul,” Jones said, “and because of this, we must continue to develop our awareness of our spiritual connection through our ability to move and breathe. We must learn to move our feelings.”
The other two were voice teacher Chuck Jones and acting teacher Joan Potter.
“Joan was wonderful in helping young actors make their imagination personal, and Chuck was great at how to use your voice to connect with your emotional life through your breath,” Jones said.
“These teachers were probably the biggest influence in my work, for technique and for the imagination, so I'm eternally grateful to them—they were the ones who really made a difference.”
