Clinton Smith joins the faculty in the fall of 2025 as Assistant Professor, Music Director/Conductor of Opera and Collaborative Pianist at the University of South Carolina School of Music. He brings twenty-five years of experience as an operatic and orchestral conductor, vocal coach, and collaborative pianist, with a particular interest in bel canto and new music. This season he will conduct all productions at USC, return to Dayton Opera to conduct The Cook-Off by Shawn Okpebholo, and continue his role on The Atlanta Opera’s conducting and coaching staff, where he has worked since 2016, regularly coaching the Glynn Studio Artists.

Before coming to Carolina, he served on the faculty of Georgia State University from 2023-2025 as Music Director of Opera and Vocal Coach and on the Santa Fe Opera’s music staff from 2013-2021.

His 2023-2024 season included a return to Arizona Opera to conduct the world premiere of Frankenstein with sold-out performances in Phoenix and Tuscon. He made his Indianapolis Opera debut conducting Charlie Parker's Yardbird, served on the Atlanta Opera's coaching and conducting staff, and was a guest faculty coach at Emory University and OperaWorks. 

Smith’s 2022-2023 season included a return to Dayton Opera to conduct Charlie Parker's Yardbird with the Dayton Philharmonic in the pit. He returned to Arizona Opera and led an orchestral workshop of the newly commissioned Frankenstein and conducted members of the Atlanta Symphony at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church for their annual presentation of Messiah. On the orchestral stage, he made his guest conducting debut with the Georgia Philharmonic, leading two subscription concerts.

His 2021/2022 season included a return to Dayton Opera to conduct L'elisir d'amore and Opera Las Vegas to conduct Strawberry Fields/Trouble In Tahiti. He covered Tosca and Attila at Sarasota Opera, and made his Opera Company of Middlebury conducting debut with Orphée aux Enfers. He spent his ninth summer on the music staff at Santa Fe Opera covering the world premiere of Corigliano/Adamo's Lord of Cries.

Smith’s recent appearances on the podium include the Atlanta Opera, Minnesota Opera, Florentine Opera, Arizona Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Dayton Opera, Opera Orlando, Kentucky Opera, Opera Birmingham, Tacoma Opera, Opera Las Vegas, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Pacific Northwest Opera, University of Michigan, Baldwin-Wallace University, and have included the preparation of over 70 operas in German, Italian, French, English, Czech, Russian, and Mandarin.

On equal footing in the orchestral world, Smith recently concluded a collective nine years as music and artistic director of both Orchestra Seattle/Seattle Chamber Singers and the St. Cloud Symphony, conducting over 60 orchestral, oratorio, chamber, pops, educational, and holiday concert performances. While music director of OSSCS, he conducted up to ten subscription concerts each season, created a chamber music series, led annual Messiah performances, and partnered with numerous cultural and educational organizations including the Hong Kong Association of Washington, the Seattle Chinese Arts Group, German Consulate, Chopin Foundation of the US, Cornish College, and Seattle University, to name a few. He launched a composer competition which premiered a new work annually, and a concerto competition to showcase local talent. His carefully curated programming focused on locally relevant themes, and explored an enormous breadth of musical styles and genres.

From 2008-2012, Minnesota Opera engaged Smith as assistant conductor and chorus master, where he conducted mainstage performances of La traviata and Madama Butterfly and covered the St. Paul Chamber and Minnesota Opera Orchestras in over 20 productions. During 2011, Smith conducted a workshop and prepared the world premiere of Kevin Puts' opera Silent Night, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music. For Minnesota Opera's New Works Initiative, Smith prepared workshops & performances of Douglas J. Cuomo's Doubt, Rick Ian Gordon's The Garden of the Finzi Continis, and the North-American premiere of Jonathan Dove's The Adventures of Pinocchio, as well as Dominick Argento's Casanova's Homecoming and Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights.

Previous positions include assistant conductor and chorus master for San Francisco Opera's Merola Program, assistant conductor for Glimmerglass Opera, assistant conductor for Juilliard Opera, music director for Western Ontario University's Canadian Operatic Arts Academy, guest coach at the National University of Taiwan, music director and conductor of the Franco-American Vocal Academy in France, the Austrian-American Mozart Academy in Salzburg, and the University of Michigan Life Sciences Orchestra. Born in Texas,  an alumnus of the Conductor's Institute of South Carolina, Smith holds degrees in orchestral conducting from the University of Michigan and piano performance from the University of Texas at Austin.