T.J. Turner

Dr. T. J. Turner, tenor, was named one of Memphis’s Top 20 Under 35 as a result of his variety of experiences as a performer and pedagogue. He also received positive reviews of his “solid performances” in his professional debut as The Doctor in The Handmaid’s Tale with GLOW Lyric Theatre. Opera Wire described his “crystalline high tenor” as “delightful to listen to.”

He performed in Kristin Chenoweth’s My Love Letter to Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York, NY. Notable roles include Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, William Barfée in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Enoch Snow in Carousel, and the Baker in Into the Woods. Dr. Turner’s operatic credits include the title roles in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Bizet’s Le docteur miracle. 

Other recent appearances include Sam in Susannah and Carlo in the American premiere of Judith Weir’s Armida with Opera at USC.

Equally at home on the concert stage, Dr. Turner has recently been featured in concerts alongside Renée Fleming, Opera Memphis, and Memphis Symphony Orchestra. He is a 2023 Winner of the BeethovenClub Young Artist Competition and a 2022 District Qualifier of the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition.

Dr. Turner is a recent recipient of the Doctorate of Music Arts degree in Voice Performance and Opera Stage Directing at the University of Memphis, TN, where he received the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music Graduate Document Award for his dissertation research, titled The New Messiah: A Neo-Baroque Approach to Ornamentation in the Performance of Paul Ayres’s Messyah. 

He also holds degrees from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, and Furman University, Greenville, SC. Dr. Turner is currently Teacher of Voice at the Lawson Academy of the Arts at Converse University, Spartanburg, SC, and continues to perform extensively throughout the southeast.

Website: https://www.toddjaredturner.com/