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London-born mezzo soprano, Joanne Evans is a graduate of the 2023 Merola Opera Program and the 2024 Académie of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, where she was awarded Le Prix des Amis for Voice. Also in 2024, she is a fellow at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, after which she will travel to Aldeburgh to join the Britten Pears Young Artist Program for contemporary composition. Following this, she will attend the bel canto Voice Academy at Fondation des Treilles, and sing the role of Flora in La traviata with Annapolis Opera.
As a Vocal Fellow at Music Academy of the West in 2022, Joanne sang the role of Olga in Eugene Onegin, and was named winner of the Marilyn Horne Song Competition. She is a proud alumna of the Artist-in-Residence program at Opera Colorado, where her mainstage performances included the role of Maddalena in a student matinee of Rigoletto, and Lucienne in Die Tote Stadt.
Elsewhere, Joanne was first place in the 2022 Handel Aria Competition, and was a Boston District winner in the 2022 Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition. She is a beneficiary of a Career Bridges grant, and has also received awards from the Gerda Lissner Foundation and the Premiere Opera Foundation.
Alongside singer and conductor, Micah Gleason, Joanne is co-founder of Loam Music, an artistic partnership presenting semi-immersive musical works. Loam’s current project is Daughter of God, a newly commissioned one-woman chamber opera which received its inaugural workshop at the Curtis Institute of Music in May 2024.
Between 2014 and 2019, Joanne spent her time in London away from opera but performing in musicals and plays, including the U.K. regional premiere of Laura Wade’s ‘Posh’ at both Nottingham and Salisbury Playhouses, music for which was written for her by Isobel Waller-Bridge. Soon after, Joanne joined pop a cappella group Gobsmacked with whom she performed at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, London’s Southbank, the Udderbelly residency in Hong Kong, and as part of a seven-month North American tour (including three sold-out shows at The Kennedy Center). Elsewhere she is credited with co-writing and performing the theme tune for BBC prime time show ‘Pitch Battle’.
