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 from 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.
Her acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprise the great Mozart roles 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. They include The Great Gatsby by John Harbison; the Grawemeyer Award-winning opera, L'Amour de Loin by Kaija Saariaho; John Adams's nativity oratorio El Nino; and Osvaldo Golijov's opera Ainadamar and song cycle Ayre.
In her work as a recitalist, and particularly in her work with composers, Dawn Upshaw has become a generative force in concert music, having premiered more than 25 works in the past decade. From Carnegie Hall to venues throughout the world she regularly presents specially designed programs composed of lieder, unusual contemporary works in many languages, and folk and popular music. She furthers this work in master classes with young singers. She is a member of the faculty at the Tanglewood Music Center, and is Artistic Director of the Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music.
A four-time Grammy Award winner, Dawn Upshaw is featured on more than 50 recordings, including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki. Her most recent release on Deutsche Gramophon is ‘Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra’, the third in a series of acclaimed recordings of Osvaldo Golijov's music. Upshaw has also recorded several beloved discs of music theater repertoire.
Dawn Upshaw holds honorary doctorate degrees from Yale, the Manhattan School of Music, Allegheny College, and Illinois Wesleyan University. She began her career as a 1984 winner of the Young Concert Artists auditions and the 1985 Walter W. Naumburg Competition, and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program.
In 2007, Dawn Upshaw was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation, which was created to recognize "talented indviduals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction". This five-year award, popularly known as the ‘genius grant’, noted her as "a new model of a performer who is directly involved in the creation of contemporary music."