Sharleen Joynt

Scofield: Now, I can’t let you go, Sharleen, before you tell me a little bit about your much publicized appearance on the ABC reality TV show The Bachelor. How did it affect your career, was it a positive or not?

Joynt: It was a positive for me in every way, I think, other than my singing career. In many ways, it was just a real opportunity to do something for yourself, as weird as that sounds, like something you sort of learn a lot about yourself, and learn a lot about how you’re perceived, and how you react to different situations. On a personal and psychological level, it was such an interesting and unique, once in a lifetime adventure. But professionally, I’ll never really know whether or not it hindered me. I don’t think it helped me for what it’s worth.

Scofield: I see. Well, Sharleen, but you seem like a really fun person. You know you wouldn’t let those kinds of worries play too heavily on your mind.

Joynt: All I can do is sing my best, and earn my jobs, that’s all I can do. Enough years have gone by now that I don’t think it matters. Now, I audition just like anyone else, and I perform just like anyone else, and it’s sort of an irrelevant thing on the side. But there was a while where I think I was taken a little less seriously for maybe two years or so. I’ll never really know the impact it had on my singing career. But in the long run, I’m hoping it made no difference. I continue to just work my butt off, and I believe in that it’s some sort of meritocracy, and that I can just earn the work that I get.

Scofield: Sure, well and let’s face it, even under the best of circumstances, being an opera singer is really a tough profession, isn’t it?

Joynt: It’s very difficult.

Scofield: Not an easy way to earn a living. All those obstacles, despite all of them, why do they still do it, Sharleen?

Joynt: Yeah, it’s funny. When you’re young, I remember distinctly when I was still deciding what I wanted to pursue and thinking, “oh, how glamorous it seemed,” and how “it doesn’t get any better than being paid to sing and being paid to travel”. But most the time, when I’m performing, it’s usually an opera, and I’m gone for anywhere from four to six weeks at a time, and it takes a toll on you to live out of a suitcase like that, and to be away from home. And at the end of the day, it’s also a difficult journey in that most singers I know, anyone singing professionally, anyone who’s reaching this point, where it’s they are lucky enough to earn their living singing, they tend to be perfectionists and very self-critical. And that’s why they get work, because they are the type of people that continue to improve and are able to criticize themselves and grow.

That being said, when you’re that self-critical, you don’t end up being very happy with most of your performances. That’s the sort of funny part, is that you would think that “oh, you’re so thrilled just singing”, but I will say that the times where you really are happy with how it went, it’s positively euphoric. It’s a high that you cannot get doing anything else, and I feel like that’s one of the reasons why we do it. It’s that sort of pursuit of perfection, the pursuit of doing the music justice, and doing the character’s justice, and it’s such a roller coaster. [Laughter] I ask myself this all the time, but I do love it at the same time. You know, it’s horrible and wonderful. It’s the best thing ever and also just difficult.