Clinton Smith
Opera Music Director/ Vocal Coach School of Music- Biography
- This season Clinton Smith joins the faculty of Georgia State University as Opera Music Director and Vocal coach and services on the Atlanta Opera’s coaching and conducting staff.Clinton’s recent conducting appearances have included Atlanta Opera (Charlie Parker’s Yardbird, Threepenny Opera, Der Kaiser von Atlantis), Minnesota Opera (Madama Butterfly, La Traviata), Arizona Opera (Frankenstein, Charlie Parker’s Yardbird), Florentine Opera (Le nozze di Figaro), Indianapolis Opera (Charlie Parker’s Yardbird), Dayton Opera (Charlie Parker’s Yardbird, Il barbiere di Siviglia, L’elisir d’amore, La Cenerentola), Opera Orlando (Pagliacci/Pulcinella), Kentucky Opera (The Mikado), Opera Birmingham (Cendrillon), Tacoma Opera (Le nozze di Figaro, L’elisir d’amore), Opera Las Vegas (Trouble in Tahiti/Strawberry Fields, Noah’s Fludde), Opera Company of Middlebury (Orphée aux Enfers), Fargo-Moorhead Opera (Alcina), and Pacific Northwest Opera (Turandot, Norma, Hansel und Gretel) and Skylark Opera (Mademoiselle Modiste).For nine seasons, he served on the music staff of Santa Fe Opera as cover/assistant conductor, coach, continuo, and orchestral pianist, most recently as the cover conductor for Corigiliano and Adamo’s world premiere of The Lord of Cries. For four seasons he was chorus master and assistant conductor at Minnesota Opera where he prepared over 20 productions and conducted the first workshop of Pulitzer Prize winning Silent Night and prepared the chorus for the premiere. As part of the MN Opera’s New Works Initiative, he prepared workshops of Ricky Ian-Gordon’s Garden of the Finzi Continis, Douglas Cuomo’s Doubt, and Paul Moravec’s The Shining. Other music staff positions have included Juilliard Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program Atlanta Opera, Portland Opera, Sarasota Opera, Kentucky Opera, and Ash Lawn Opera and has included the preparation of over sixty operas in German, Italian, French, English, Czech, Russian, and Mandarin. He has made guest faculty/conducting appearances at the University of Michigan, Baldwin-Wallace University, Western Ontario University’s Canadian Operatic Arts Academy in Ontario, Franco-American Vocal Academy, in France, Austrian-American Mozart Opera Academy in Salzburg, and the National University of Taiwan.On equal footing in the orchestral world, Mr. Smith recently concluded a collective nine years as music and artistic director of both Orchestra Seattle/Seattle Chamber Singers (now called Harmonia Seattle) and the St. Cloud Symphony, conducting over 60 orchestral, oratorio, chamber, pops, educational, and holiday concert performances. While music director of OSSCS, he saw subscriptions double and worked in tandem with the managing director to double annual fundraising events. Among his many accomplishments include conducting seven to ten subscription concerts a season, creating a chamber music series, annual Messiah performances, and partnering with numerous cultural and educational organizations including the Hong Kong Association of Washington, the Seattle Chinese Arts Group, German Consulate, Cornish College, and Seattle University, to name a few. He launched a composer competition which premiered a new work annually, and a concerto competition to showcase local talent. His carefully curated programming focused on locally relevant themes, and explored an enormous breadth of musical styles and genres. Born in Texas, Dr. Smith holds degrees in orchestral conducting from the University of Michigan and piano performance from the University of Texas at Austin.