Her secret weapon is a casual, unpretentious demeanor that lessens the distance between stage and audience.

—Boston Globe

Program

Songs by PURCELL, DOWLAND, BACH, HAYDN, BARTÓK, DEBUSSY, SCHUBERT, SCHUMANN, RACHMANINOFF, RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER, RICHARD RODGERS and DONNACHA DENNEHY

About This Performance

This beloved American soprano combines natural warmth with a deeply felt belief in the communicative and transformational power of music. Upshaw’s diverse and devoted audiences attest to her ability to reach directly into the heart and soul of each song and role. Her commitment to authentic and emotionally powerful repertoire has elevated her to one of today’s most distinguished artists.

Artist Biography

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. 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.

It says much about Upshaw’s sensibilities as an artist and colleague that she is a favored partner of many leading musicians, including Richard Goode, the Kronos Quartet, James Levine and Esa-Pekka Salonen. In her work as a recitalist, and particularly in her work with composers, Upshaw has become a generative force in concert music, having premiered more than 25 works in the past decade. From Carnegie Hall to large and small 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 and workshops with young singers at major music festivals, conservatories, and liberal arts colleges. She is artistic director of the vocal arts program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and a faculty member of the Tanglewood Music Center.

A four-time Grammy Award winner, Upshaw is featured on more than 50 recordings, including the million-selling Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Gorecki. Her discography also includes full-length opera recordings of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro; Messiaen’s St. Francois d’Assise; Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress; John Adams’s El Niño; two volumes of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne, and a dozen recital recordings. Her most recent release on Deutsche Grammophon is Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra, the third in a series of acclaimed recordings of Osvaldo Golijov’s music.

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.

Stephen Prutsman has been described as one of the most innovative musicians of his time. Moving easily from classical to jazz to world music styles as a pianist, composer and conductor, Prutsman continues to explore and seek common ground in the music of all cultures and languages. Recently he was appointed artistic director of the Cartagena International Festival of Music, South America’s largest festival of its kind, programming and curating concerts with themes ranging from Mozart celebrations, to eclectic evenings of folk and popular music of the Americas, to hybrid programs fusing art and dance music of multiple musical dimensions.

From 2004–07 Prutsman was artistic partner with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, where he conducted concertos from the keyboard, performed in chamber ensembles, conducted works of living composers, developed and arranged collaborations for their Engine 408 series of contemporary and world music, and wrote several new works for the orchestra.

In the early 90’s Prutsman was a medal winner at the Tchaikovsky and Queen Elisabeth Piano Competitions, and received the Avery Fisher Career Grant. He has since performed the classical concerto repertoire as soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Symphony Orchestras of San Francisco, Baltimore, Detroit, Indianapolis, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne, Prague Radio Symphony and the Orchestre National d'Île de France. His classical discography includes acclaimed recordings of the Barber and McDowell concerti with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Committed to chamber music, Prutsman has collaborated with many of the world’s great string quartets and soloists and often performs with his trio Nobilis both in major cultural centers and in diverse locales throughout the developing world. The trio has recently released a recording of the music of Tchaikovsky.

Prutsman first began playing the piano by ear at age 3, before moving on to more formal music studies. In his teens and early 20s he was the keyboard player for several art rock groups including Cerberus and Vysion. He was also during those years a solo jazz pianist playing in many southern California clubs and lounges and was the music arranger for a nationally syndicated televangelist program. A former student of Aube Tzerko and Leon Fleisher, Prutsman studied at the University of California at Los Angeles and the Peabody Conservatory of Music.

As a composer, Prutsman’s long collaboration with Grammy Award–winning Kronos Quartet has resulted in over 40 arrangements and compositions for them. Other leading artists and ensembles who have performed Stephen’s compositions and arrangements include Leon Fleisher, Dawn Upshaw, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Spoleto USA, and the Silk Road Project. As a pianist or arranger outside of the classical music world he has collaborated with such diverse personalities as Tom Waits, Rokia Traore, Joshua Redman, Jon Anderson of Yes, Sigur Rós and Asha Bhosle.

In years past his dedication to the creation of new musical environments led him to create music festivals in such far-flung places as the island of Guam and the border town of El Paso, Tex. Passionate about the value of music for all, Prutsman is active promoting music and arts education wherever he visits, and continues to be a leader in the Cartagena Music Festival’s musical outreach program, bringing free concerts and classes to outlying areas of the city. Prutsman lives in San Francisco.

Links/Downloads

*To view the program notes, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader (available as a free download from Adobe).