“A voice as towering as the Smoky Mountains”
- Nancy Steele Brokaw for The Pantagraph
Nole Jones is a singer, actor, voice teacher, and stage director originally from Birmingham, Alabama. Nole is currently pursuing an MFA in Musical Theatre at San Diego State University, where he is a graduate instructor teaching courses in musical theatre performance and music theory. Prior to joining SDSU, he served for six years as a member of the Music Theatre faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Nole has appeared in musicals with the Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre, Dollywood Entertainment, Music Theatre Works (formerly Light Opera 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).
Also a regular concert soloist and choral singer, Nole appeared last August in Sondheim Tonight! A Celebration of Genius with the San Diego Symphony at Ray shell, conducted by Broadway legend Rob Fisher and featuring Len Cariou, Emily Skinner, and Tony Yazbeck. He was featured in An Evening on Broadway with Julie and Nathan Gunn at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. 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 16-voice ensemble with whom he performed over 250 concerts around the Southeastern U.S.
As a faculty member in Illinois Wesleyan University’s School of Theatre Arts from 2018 to 2024, Nole taught Applied Musical Theatre Voice, Music Theatre History & Literature, Acting the Song, and Musical Theatre Scene Study. As a voice teacher he specializes in Music Theatre and Contemporary Commercial singing with a focus on voice science and functional training. His research at SDSU focusses on voice pedagogy for Country and American music in musical theatre. His former students are employed as professional singers and actors in NYC and 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 San Diego with his wife Hannah, a public school teacher, and his daughter, Tzeitel.