ABOUT

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.

The 2025-2026 season includes appearances with the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Tokyo Spring Festival and at Festival Messiaen au pays de la Meije for performances of George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill, conducted by Pierre Bleuse and George Benjamin respectively, as well as two mainstage appearances at Opera San Jose: Dorabella in Così fan tutte and Flora in La traviata.  She also returns to the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, in partnership with the Ear Taxi Festival, to present a concert of newly commissioned vocal music.

The 2026-2027 season includes leading roles with the English National Opera (Dodo McNeill in Breaking the Waves) and Opéra Comique (Into the Little Hill), as well as an appearance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (Lessons in Love and Violence, conducted by Edward Gardner). 

In the summer of 2024, she was a fellow at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, after which she traveled to Aldeburgh, England to join the Britten Pears Young Artist Program for contemporary composition. Joanne then attended the bel canto Voice Academy at Fondation des Treilles, and performed the role of Flora in La traviata with Annapolis Opera. 

As a Vocal Fellow at Music Academy of the West, Joanne sang the role of Olga in Eugene Onegin and was named winner of the Marilyn Horne Song Competition in 2022. This performance prompted a commission by Tom Cipullo, ‘Aubade with a Chance of Rain’ which has since been recorded by Laduga Records. 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 placed first in the 2022 Handel Aria Competition, was a Boston District winner in the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, and was made finalist in the 2025 Dallas Lone Star Competition. She is a beneficiary of a Career Bridges grant and 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 projects include multi-disciplinary recital, Fragile Femme, and one-woman opera, Daughter of God, a newly commissioned one-woman chamber opera by Christopher Bell which received its inaugural workshop at the Curtis Institute of Music in May 2024. Loam’s next performance will be at the Spoleto Festival USA to perform as part of the Tell Your Story initiative.

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’. 

“Every so often a theatergoer comes across that incandescent creature—the stage animal—whose body is electrified by performance and whose joy in communication is palpable. Such was the young British mezzo soprano Joanne Evans in the long-lost comic opera I due Figaro... Evans’s singing was as elastic as her gestures. Her low notes were startlingly resonant, with an organ’s fullness; her upper reaches clear and supple, with a subtle control of dynamics.”