Grammy award-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw will engage with students and faculty and offer a public performance as part of her visit to campus next week as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large.
Upshaw, winner of five Grammys and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, will present “Salon Solèy: Inhabiting Text & Music in Contemporary American Art Song,” at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 in Barnes Hall. The event is free and open to the public, but advance tickets are required from cornelltickets.com.
During the event, Upshaw will lead student singers and pianists in an evening centered on the intimate relationship between text, music, imagination and embodied performance in contemporary American art song. The concert will feature works by composers Margaret Bonds, George Crumb, Caroline Shaw and others.
“Dawn Upshaw is one of the great luminaries of our generation. Her work in opera, art song, new music and even musical theatre has inspired a whole generation of performers and audiences,” said Jean Bernard Cerin, assistant professor of music in the College of Arts & Sciences. “It's not an exaggeration to say that many of her iconic recordings are often considered the best of that particular piece. Barber's ‘Knoxville Summer of 1915’ and the operatic role of Ann Trulove in Stravinsky's ‘The Rake's Progress’ at the Metropolitan Opera come to mind.”
Upshaw’s career spans opera, concert performance, recital, contemporary music and higher education leadership. During her visit, she will also engage with students and faculty throughout the music department, including coaching sessions, class visits and a talk on West Campus.
“Dawn will be working very closely with singers and collaborative pianists in the Cornell voice and chamber music programs, culminating in the Oct. 22 concert,” Cerin said. “She has also curated a special listening party at the Keeton House featuring recordings that shaped her journey as an artist, from Joanie Mitchell and Stevie Wonder to Stephen Sondheim, W.A. Mozart and Kaija Saariaho.”
The A.D. White Professor-at-Large program brings the world’s foremost scholars, thinkers and artists to campus to engage with the Cornell community in multiple forums. There are currently 18 active professors, representing five disciplines.
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