The Cornell Department of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences and A.D. White Professors-at-Large program welcome internationally acclaimed and five-time GRAMMY Award-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw when she performs Maria Schneider’s “Winter Morning Walks” on Friday, Feb. 24, at 7 p.m. in Barnes Hall.
Guest artist Scott Robinson (saxophonist-clarinetist) will join Upshaw on stage, along with Cornell students and faculty. Upshaw will also share insights about the piece and her career.
A studio album composed by Maria Schneider and featuring Upshaw, “Winter Morning Walks,” won the 2014 GRAMMY for Best Classical Contemporary Composition; Best Engineered Album, Classical; and Best Classical Vocal Solo for Upshaw's performance.
The first vocalist to receive a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Upshaw has given acclaimed performances on the opera stage comprising the great Mozart roles (Susanna, Ilia, Pamina, Despina, and Zerlina), as well as modern classics 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, 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.
Upshaw is the Founding Artistic Director of Bard College-Conservatory of Music's Graduate Vocal Arts Program and head of Tanglewood Music Center's Vocal Program and has nurtured generations of young singers and composers at these institutions and throughout the world.
The concert is free, but an advance ticket is required from cornelltickets.com.
Additional concerts from March 1-2 include:
Midday Music for Organ, Wednesday, March 1, 12:30 p.m. in Anabel Taylor Chapel: David Yearsley, Herbert Gussman Professor of Music, presents a concert entitled “G. F. Handel vs. J. S. Bach.” Handel left little music for the organ, apart from a collection of concertos written for English organs—instruments that, for the most part, had no pedals. Yet the German organist was a pedal virtuoso. In a program that includes his own arrangements of some of Handel’s best-loved music, David Yearsley, stages an imaginary contest between Handel and the definitive 18th-century virtuoso pedalist, J. S. Bach. The performance is free with no tickets required.
Cornell Concert Series, Thursday, March 2 at 8 p.m. in Bailey Hall: The Quartetto di Cremona is noted for its lustrous sound, refined musicianship, and stylistic versatility. The Quartetto was founded in Cremona, Italy, the center of violin building and performance where Stradivari and Guarneri perfected their craft. Celebrating its 22nd anniversary, the quartet has toured extensively in Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia, appeared at leading festivals, and performed regularly on radio and television broadcasts. For their Bailey Hall performance, the Quartetto di Cremona presents a program of works by famed Italian composers Boccherini, Puccini, Respighi, and Verdi. Tickets $19-34 at cornellconcertseries.com.
