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Dawn Upshaw Soprano

Joining a rare natural warmth with a fierce commitment to the transforming communicative power of music, Dawn Upshaw has achieved worldwide celebrity as a singer of opera and concert repertoire ranging form the sacred works of Bach to the freshest sounds of today. Her ability to reach to the heart of music and text has earned her both the devotion of an exceptionally diverse audience, and the awards and distinctions accorded to only the most distinguished of artists. In 2007, she was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation, the first vocal artist to be awarded the five-year “genius” prize, and in 2008 she was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Her acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprise the great Mozart roles (Pamina, Ilia, Susanna, Despina) as well as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Messiaen. From Salzburg, Paris and Glyndebourne to the Metropolitan Opera, where she began her career in 1984 and has since made nearly 300 appearances, Dawn Upshaw has also championed numerous new works created for her including The Great Gatsby by John Harbison; the Grawemeyer Award-winning opera, L’Amour de Loin and oratorio La Passion de Simone by Kaija Saariaho; John Adams’s Nativity oratorio El Niño; and Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber opera Ainadamar and song cycle Ayre.

Ms. Upshaw’s 2009-10 season opens with concerts in Edinburgh, Montreux, Zurich and the Proms featuring the music of Mahler, Berio, and Golijov performed with David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra. This season she also sings the world premieres of two new works written for her: a chamber piece by David Bruce to open the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center season in New York and an orchestral work by Alberto Iglesias with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, where Ms. Upshaw is an Artistic Partner. She joins Emanuel Ax for a recital tour with stops in Amsterdam, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and at Carnegie Hall. Ms. Upshaw appears twice again at Carnegie this season, reprising her celebrated role in John Adams’s El Niño and taking part in a festival celebrating Louis Andriessen. She performs for the first time with the Toronto Symphony, and joins Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for his inaugural season at Disney Hall, among other highlights.

A four-time Grammy Award winner, Ms. Upshaw is featured on more than 50 recordings, including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki, a dozen recital recordings, and several discs of music theater repertoire, on Nonesuch Records.

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