Profile of Dawn Upshaw on Famous Like Me

Dawn Upshaw (born July 17, 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee), is an American soprano. The recipient of several Grammy- Gramophone-, and Edison Prize-winning discs, Upshaw is at home both in opera and art song, and in repertoire from Baroque to contemporary; many composers, including John Harbison. have written for her, and she has worked repeatedly with the director Peter Sellars, in his staging of Händel's Theodora at Glyndebourne; his Paris production of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1996); and a staging of Bach's cantata BWV 199, presented in the 1995-96 season at New York's 92nd St. YMCA.

Upshaw received a B.A. in 1982 from Illinois Wesleyan University (which later awarded her an honorary doctorate), and went on to study voice with Ellen Faull at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, earning her M.A. in 1984. She also attended courses given by Jan DeGaetani at the Aspen (Colorado) Music School. She was a winner of the Young Concert Artists auditions (1984) and the Walter M. Naumburg Competition (1985), and was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Young Artists Development Program.

Her engagements with James Levine over the years led to a 1997 recording of Debussy songs. She tours regularly with piano accompanist Richard Goode; Margo Garrett and Gilbert Kalish are also long-standing partners.

She came to international fame with her recording (1993) of the hauntingly powerful Symphony No 3 by Henryk Górecki, known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych).

Upshaw was a guest of President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton on the NBC special, Christmas in Washington. The BBC presented a prime-time telecast of her 1996 London Proms Concert, "Dawn at Dusk", in which she performed songs from the American musical theater.

Awards and Recognitions

Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance:

• The Kronos Quartet & Dawn Upshaw for Berg: Lyric Suite (2004)

External link

• NewMusicBox: Dawn Upshaw in conversation with Frank J. Oteri, 2002
• A biography

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