Rowan Tech Guy Has Two Faces

Rowan network administrator John Lyden is a quirk of nature but he's all right with that, thank you very much.

Techno guy by day, baritone singer by night, he's the kind of person - and there aren't too many like him - who's just as happy talking up his slick new cell phone as his favorite opera.

That's right, opera. Some he actually sang in. Plus choral works. At CARNEGIE HALL!

"I love it," he says, indistinct about what he means -- the chirping, beeping, GPS-enabled new Motorola Q in his palm - or La Boheme, the classic Italian opera he'd been contemplating a moment before.

A 2001 classical voice graduate from Rowan's esteemed music program, Lyden's been singing opera since childhood. In addition to having performed at New York's legendary Carnegie Hall in high school and college, Lyden has sung with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, trained with a bass singer from the Metropolitan Opera and did lots of community and regional theater.

But, as he learned early, life on stage isn't all champagne and roses.

"My worst experience had to be when I was 10 years old," he recalls. "I was singing a solo in this old folks home when my voice cracked. I just stopped singing and ran out of there and didn't sing again until I was 14."

Eventually, Lyden returned to the stage, took it seriously, and attended Rowan on a full voice scholarship. Since graduating he's performed in such celebrated productions as La Boheme and The Marriage of Figaro and on stages as varied as Carnegie Hall and The Ritz Theater in Haddon Township.

"I've done lots of regional theater but opera fits my voice," Lyden says, the cell phone in his hand now chirping and warbling like a ferret.

"The thing I find frustrating is most modern musical theater is written for guys with higher pitched voices - think Justin Timberlake.

"Operas also have more clearly defined parts and, I think, are more compelling. I just don't understand people who like Rent but don't ‘get' La Boheme (on which Rent , the popular Broadway show and feature film, was based.) The emotional appeal of La Boheme is just so much more."

A bearded, affable guy, he's often mistaken for Hollywood director and New Jersey native Kevin Smith.

"I get it all the time," he says, mildly amused at the continual comparison between himself and the actor/director of such films as Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. "Yes I look like Kevin Smith. Yes I like his movies. No I don't go to his conventions."

And, like Smith, Lyden remains committed to both his family and the theater. The married father of one said the money he makes on weeks-long theater gigs barely puts gas in the tank -- let alone food on the table or diapers on his baby boy's bum.

"Being a professional singer is what I have a day job for," he says.

A Rowan tech guy since 2000, Lyden finds harmony, you should pardon the expression, between his day gig and his singing career.

"I've always been the kind of guy who learns by doing," he says. "I pay attention to stuff and it's really much the same way I learn my music. It's a system that just works for me but directors hate it. They're always like, ‘so, when you gonna memorize this?' And I'm like ‘gee, I don't know. When's opening night?' "