Scott Joiner is an American operatic tenor, composer, teacher and conductor. He created the role of Dickon in the world premiere of Nolan Gasser's opera The Secret Garden with the San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances in 2013. Among the five one-act operas he has written, The Shower was presented at the Wiener Kammeroper in 2019, and Death of a Grailsman received a YouTube premiere in 2021. He composed the score and starred in the short opera film, Connection Lost (The Tinder Opera) or L'opera di Tinder, which won Best Score at Ireland's Kerry Film Festival. The miniature one-act opera received its live stage premiere by Opera Carolina in November 2016 as part of National Opera Week. Joiner and Tinder Opera Co-creator, Adam Taylor (writer/director) were featured on NPR’s All Things Considered in 2017.
During the pandemic of 2020, Joiner was a featured vocalist for GRATEFUL, The Songs of John Bucchino 20th Anniversary Virtual Concert along with Leslie Odom Jr., Stephen Schwartz, Corey Cott, Mykal Kilgore, Ann Hampton Callaway, Toni Tennille, Amanda McBroom, and Andrea Marcovicci. Joiner also performs as a jazz pianist and his body of work includes compositions for piano, vocal, choral and chamber music ensembles. In 2021 Minton's Cabaret presented the retrospective, The Sounds of Scott Joiner, featuring Jessica Fishenfeld, Edward Hardy and others. From 2020 to 2023 he was music director and choral conductor at the Savannah Country Day School.
Vocal career
Joiner is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and the Manhattan School of Music (BM '05, MM '07, DMA '19) with additional graduate studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. At MSM, studying under tenor Neil Rosenshein, he performed the role of Chevalier de Danceny in Conrad Susa's The Dangerous Liaisons conducted by George Manahan; collaborated with the Escher String Quartet and artists such as Marcus Paus, Wang Jie, Ted Hearne and Jeanine De Bique; and appeared in a live stream master class with Thomas Hampson broadcast on Medici.tv. He studied acting at Michael Howard Studios. Joiner was the 2011 winner of the Heafner-Williams Vocal Competition and won the Middle/East Tennessee district of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (2011) when the judges included soprano Diana Soviero.
Growing up in Colorado (where his grandfather, Richard Joiner had been 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 in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at Central City Opera conducted by John Moriarty and the roles of Harry in Albert Herring and the Shepherd Boy in Tosca at Opera Colorado, directed by Nathaniel Merrill. As a tenor, his first professional roles were with Asheville Lyric Opera, 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 in Gerald Finzi's For St Cecilia (broadcast live on WCQS Radio), Handel's Messiah, Mozart's Requiem, scenes from West Side Story and Holiday Pops Concerts. In 2011 he was a fellow at the Wintergreen Music Festival and created the operatic one-man show, Shakespeare Sings! with spoken word and musical settings of Shakespeare (co-conceived and directed by Francis Cullinan).