Scott Joiner

Scott Joiner is an American operatic tenor, composer, jazz pianist and Artistic Trustee for composer, producer, musicologist, Eric Salzman. Joiner is an advocate of both traditional opera and Salzman's concept of New Music Theater as an art form differing from the Grand Opera tradition. He created the role of Dickon in the world premiere of The Secret Garden with the San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances in 2013. He composed the score and starred in the short opera film, Connection Lost (The Tinder Opera) or L'opera di Tinder, which was shortlisted for Best Score at Ireland's Kerry Film Festival. The miniature one-act opera will receive its live stage premiere by Opera Carolina in November 2016 as part of National Opera Week.
Opera
Joiner is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and the Manhattan School of Music (BM '05, MM ' 07, DMA candidate), where he studied with tenor Neil Rosenshein. Growing up in Colorado (where his paternal grandfather, Richard Joiner was principal clarinetist of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra), Joiner had toured nationally and internationally as a boy soprano in the Colorado Children's Chorale, under the direction of Duain Wolfe. Through his connection to Wolfe, Joiner was invited to sing the boy soprano role of Erste Knabe in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at Central City Opera (where he also sang in the children's chorus of La Boheme and Carmen) conducted by John Moriarty and the roles of Harry in Albert Herring and the Shepherd Boy in Tosca, directed by Nathaniel Merrill.
As a tenor, his first professional roles were with Asheville Lyric Opera, where he sang nine roles over four seasons, including Ferrando (Così fan tutte), Nemorino (L'Elisir d'Amore), Tamino (Die Zauberflöte), Goro (Madama Butterfly), and Basilio / Don Curzio (Le Nozze di Figaro). While in North Carolina, he appeared as soloist with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Daniel Meyer for For St Cecilia, Messiah, Mozart's Requiem, scenes from West Side Story and Holiday Pops Concerts. He also created the one-man show, Shakespeare Sings! with opera director Francis Cullinan, combining words alongside famous operatic settings of Shakespeare by great composers.
In the 2016/2017 season Joiner he makes his Carnegie Hall debut as Piemonteser in Richard Strauss' Friedenstag with the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein. Other career highlights include the San Francisco Opera premiere of the Secret Garden with music by Nolan Gasser and a libretto by Carey Harrison, and performances with Knoxville Opera, the Center for Contemporary Opera (where Joiner gave atelier performances as Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre), Colorado Music Festival, American Opera Projects, Teatro Grattacielo, Helena Symphony Orchestra, the New York International Fringe Festival, the Escher String Quartet and many others. He was invited by Tony and Emmy Award-winning director George Faison to perform at the Inaugural Gala of NYC's Faison Firehouse Theater, for guest of honor Maya Angelou. He was the 2011 winner of the Heafner Williams Vocal Competition.
Jazz piano
Joiner began his jazz piano studies with Keith MacDonald (a life-long friend of pianist Bill Evans), and continued in summer jazz programs at the University of Colorado (1995, 1996) and Eastman School of Music (1997). He participated in gospel music workshops with Horace Clarence Boyer (1997, 1998) and studied jazz with Dave Remington (bandleader at Jazz, Ltd.) at Interlochen Arts Academy. Since 2001 Joiner has played solo piano (or as a duo with various vocalists) at venues including the Tennessee Theatre, Le Malt Lounge (NJ), Biltmore Estate, (NC), Grove Park Inn (NC), Essex House on Central Park South, Mount Airy Casino Resort (PA), Hotel Bethlehem as part of Musikfest (PA), Grand Bohemian Hotel, Chez Josephine 42nd St., the Blue Ridge Performing Arts Center and others. At the Manahattan School of Music, he took jazz history classes with Ira Gitler.
Composition
While Joiner has no formal training in composition, he learned many aspects of the craft from other activities. He wrote band arrangements for his middle school band at the Dawson School and later studied orchestral conducting privately at Interlochen (even conducting the Interlochen Orchestra in rehearsal of Carmen Suite), and in classes with David Gilbert at the Manhattan School of Music. At MSM, he participated as a performer in workshops on new opera composition with Richard Danielpour and on new music with Pierre Boulez and took music theory. In an interview for Kevin Richard Doherty's Keep it Classical podcast, Joiner explained that he got a first-hand view of the composition process when Stephen Schwartz asked him to sing through early versions of his opera, Séance on a Wet Afternoon.
After filmmaker Adam Taylor approached Joiner about making a short opera film in 2015, Taylor wrote a screenplay-libretto in about ten days and Joiner had the piano/vocal score completed in five weeks. Connection Lost (The Tinder Opera) was released on April 18, 2016. The Metropolitan Opera Guild shared the video on their Backstage Stories social media page, the work received positive reviews from Schmopera.com and was called a "Charmer of an opera" by Richard Scheinin, former classical music and opera critic for the San Jose Mercury News.
Opera composer Mark Adamo called the piece, "Terrific: the idiom is charming and it certainly couldn't be more topical.” The film is an official selection of the Orlando Film Festival, the Fargo Fantastic Film Festival, and has been screened at Cinemartini at The Downtown Independent in Los Angeles. It will be presented at the cell Theater in NYC by the the Center for Contemporary Opera along with the live US premiere of Eric Salzman's one-woman opera Cassandra. Opera Carolina is staging the work as part of a National Opera Week Event, alongside A Hand of Bridge by Samuel Barber and The Telephone by Gian-Carlo Menotti.
Taylor and Joiner formed the group The Rainy Park Opera Company (derived from Rainey Park near Long Island City where both Taylor and Joiner have each lived at one time) and will release their second film, Something Blue (L'opera del Bachelor) in December 2016. Joiner's Three Transcendentalist Pieces for piano, will be premiered at Manhattan School of Music by pianist Jason Thomas in November 2016.

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