“A voice as towering as the Smoky Mountains”
- Nancy Steele Brokaw for The Pantagraph
Nole Jones is an Illinois-based singer, actor, voice teacher and director originally from Birmingham, Alabama. He is an active performer in the Chicago area and around the country, and teaches on the faculty of the nationally recognized Musical Theatre training program at Illinois Wesleyan University’s School of Theatre Arts.
Nole has appeared onstage with the Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre, Dollywood Entertainment, Music Theatre Works, Lyric Theatre Illinois, and Prairie Fire Theatre. Favorite roles have included Jimmy Ray (Bright Star), Georg Nowack (She Loves Me), Judas Iscariot (Jesus Christ Superstar), Archibald Craven (The Secret Garden), and Mitch Mahoney (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee). Nole is also a regular concert soloist and choral singer; he is an inaugural member of VocalSpace, a new professional vocal ensemble based in Asheville, North Carolina, and was a long-time member of the Lake Junaluska Singers, a professional touring 16-voice ensemble.
Since 2018 Nole has served on the faculty of Illinois Wesleyan University’s School of Theatre Arts, teaching applied voice as well as courses in music theatre performance, history, and literature. As a voice teacher he specializes in Music Theatre and Contemporary Commercial singing with a focus on voice science and functional training. His former students are employed as professional singers and actors around the country. His stage directing credits at IWU include Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World, [title of show] in IWU’s Phoenix Theatre, and Music Theatre Senior Showcases in New York and Chicago. Vocal directing credits include Carrie: The Musical, Head Over Heels, and The Lighting Thief.
Nole earned a Master of Music degree in Voice Performance and Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was a Stotler Graduate Voice Fellow, and also holds bachelor’s degrees in both Music and Theatre from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He lives in Champaign, IL with his wife Hannah, an English teacher.