Hubbry Logo
search
logo
706527

Allison Strong

logo
Community Hub0 Subscribers
Write something...
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
See all
Allison Strong

Allison Trujillo Strong is an American pop singer, songwriter, and actress of stage, television and film. She first gained notice for her Broadway work in the musicals Bye Bye Birdie and Mamma Mia!, has done voice-over work on the Nickelodeon's animated children's television program Dora and Friends, and appeared in other television series such as The Blacklist, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She gained wider exposure with her first feature film, playing Adam Sandler's daughter Sarah in The Week Of (2018).

Strong began acting at age 7, and won a national jingle-singing competition for Oscar Mayer at age 11. She appeared in local productions in and around her home of Union City, New Jersey since childhood, in venues such as the Park Performing Arts Center and Montclair State University, where she majored in musical theater. She is also a poetry reciter. She has performed at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and on the morning TV show Good Morning America, for numerous governors of New Jersey, as well as at the White House and for Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. A Colombian American herself, she writes and performs vocals in both English and Spanish, and composes on both piano and acoustic guitar.

Strong's debut, dual-language album, March Towards the Sun, was released August 31, 2014 to positive reviews. In 2015, she played Ado Annie Carnes in an Annandale-on-Hudson, New York production of Oklahoma!, for which she garnered praise by The New York Times.

Allison Trujillo Strong was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. She grew up in Union City, where her mother worked for 39 years as a school psychologist for the Union City Board of Education before her retirement.

Her great-grandfather, Rubén, who died in the 1940s, made his living in Colombia as a poet for the national periodical El Colombiano, an activity in which Strong herself developed a strong interest and connection to him. As a child, some of her earliest creative influences came from the Colombian folk songs and poetry that her grandparents, Soledad and Carlos, taught her at the dinner table. Strong grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and spoke only Spanish until an incident in a store. As Strong explains, "A woman yelled at my mother and told her that she should be ashamed of herself for not teaching me English, since I'd need it in school...From that point on, she only spoke to me in English. But once I got to high school, I decided to throw myself into the English as a Second Language program and took Spanish classes with all of the kids who had just come to this country, and it forced me to learn."

At age three, Strong was given a dollar store microphone with an echo function, which kindled her interest in singing. At age seven, her mother, Patricia Trujillo, addressed Strong's shyness by enrolling her in acting classes at the John Harms Center for the Arts (now the Bergen Performing Arts Center) in Englewood. From grades 1 - 8, Strong attended Woodrow Wilson School (now known as Sara M. Gilmore), an arts-integrated school in Weehawken, where she studied drama under Joseph D. Conklin.

Strong began her singing career in the contest circuit at age 9, when she won New Jersey Network (NJN)'s Hispanic Youth Showcase with the first show tune she ever learned, "Much More" from The Fantasticks. She would go on to win that competition three times, later hosting an Emmy-winning show for the channel. At age 10, Strong joined the Park Players of Union City, an acting troupe based out of Union City's Park Performing Arts Center. She received professional vocal training, and learned to sing opera, eventually becoming member of the Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus.

In November 2001, 11-year-old Strong was selected from more than 2,000 entries and 10 finalists as the winner of Oscar Mayer's second Concurso Cantando Hasta La Fama ("Sing for the Fame") contest, in which she sang the brand's jingle in Spanish. Her victory earned her the opportunity to appear in a national Oscar Mayer commercial and $20,000 toward her college fund.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.