Royce Strider is best known throughout the U.S.A. as a versatile and charismatic singer and performer. The 2023/2024 season will see him returning to sing with Transcendence, a new professional choir in Erie, PA. While living in the Pittsburgh area, Royce enjoyed four seasons as a chorister and soloist with the Pittsburgh Camerata. He also debuted with Washington & Jefferson College, singing the tenor solo for Mozart’s Requiem. With an affinity for early music and chamber collaboration, Royce completed training with Seraphic Fire’s Professional Choral Institute at the 2021 Aspen Music Festival. He also trained in Baroque performance at the Cincinnati College - Conservatory of Music Baroque Collective program. Royce was named a National Finalist for the 2018-2019 American Prize in Art Song/Oratorio Performance. 

    

     Royce previously served as a Voice Instructor at the Mercyhurst University D’Angelo Department of Music and as Artistic Director of the D’Angelo Opera Theatre. Royce has received a Certificate of Distinction in Vocal Pedagogy from Boston Conservatory at Berklee. His students have been cast in leading roles in their school musicals, as well as earned recognition in national competitions and state, regional, and national honor choirs.

 

    While his Jazz at Lincoln Center debut with Teatro Nuovo was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020/2021 season saw Royce in a new recording of Le nozze di Figaro as part of the inaugural season with Social Distance Opera, an extension of Barn Opera. He has performed on stage throughout the country with organizations such as the Natchez Festival of Music, Pittsburgh Musical Theater, Painted Sky Opera, and Ohio Light Opera. 

 

     His concert work includes the solos for Brahms's Requiem, Fauré’s Requiem, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, and numerous Bach cantatas.

 

     Favorite opera and theatre roles include Carl-Magnus Malcolm (A Little Night Music) Oliver Hix (The Music Man), Second Gunman (Kiss Me Kate), Detective Baker (Jerome Kern’s Have A Heart), and the Baker (Into the Woods), 

 

     With roots in Norman, OK, he completed his Bachelor of Music at the University of Missouri - Kansas City and his Masters at the University of Houston. Royce is currently based in the Philadelphia area, and loves good food, good wine, and his not-so-good cats, Hamlet and Horatio.