Dawn Upshaw

Possessing rare natural warmth and a fierce commitment to the transforming and communicative power of music, Dawn Upshaw has achieved worldwide renown as a singer of opera and concert repertoire ranging form the sacred works of Bach to the freshest sounds of today. From Salzburg, Paris, and Glyndebourne to the Metropolitan Opera, Ms. Upshaw has championed numerous new works created for her, including The Great Gatsby by John Harbison, the Grawemeyer Award–winning opera L’amour de loin by Kaija Saariaho, John Adams’s nativity oratorio El Niño, and Osvaldo Golijov’s chamber opera Ainadamar and song cycle Ayre, both recorded on Deutsche Grammophon. In her work as a recitalist, and particularly in her work with composers, Ms. Upshaw has become a generative force in concert music, having premiered more than 25 works in the past decade. The Artistic Partner of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, she is a member of the faculty at the Tanglewood Music Center and is Artistic Director of the Vocal Arts Program at Bard College Conservatory of Music. A four-time Grammy Award–winner, Ms. Upshaw holds honorary doctorate degrees from Yale University, the Manhattan School of Music, Allegheny College, and Illinois Wesleyan University. In 2007 she received a 2007 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as a “genius grant.” Ms. Upshaw has recorded extensively for the Nonesuch label. She may also be heard on Angel/EMI, BMG, Deutsche Grammophon, London, Sony Classical, and Telarc, as well as Erato and Teldec in the Warner Classics Family of labels.