Dawn Upshaw

The World So Wide

About this Album

Dawn Upshaw has emerged as one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary opera. Through her acclaimed performances in the world’s finest opera houses, she has become identified with the signature operas of our time, including those of Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Messiaen. Upshaw’s affinity for 20th-century repertoire is showcased in The World So Wide, a diverse collection of American opera arias that includes works by John Adams, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Kurt Weill, among others. Her imagination and range are highlighted in this new set—from the humor of Bernstein’s “What a Movie!” to the yearning romanticism of Copland’s “Laurie’s Song,” to the modern idiom of Tania León’s “Oh Yemanja.”

A favored partner of many of today’s leading musicians and stage directors including Richard Goode, Robert Wilson, Kronos Quartet, James Levine, and Peter Sellars, she is known not only as an interpreter of eclectic and modern works, as in Górecki's Symphony No. 3—a seminal modern work that is the biggest-selling record ever by a living composer—but as a primary proponent and seeker of those works. Her Grammy-winning disc, The Girl with Orange Lips, furthered her identification as an artist of this nature.

Upshaw’s talent for interpreting American song has been recognized through her Grammy Award–winning collection Knoxville: Summer of 1915, the Gramophone Award winning I Wish It So, and the top-selling Rodgers & Hart and Leonard Bernstein’s New York, the latter of which received the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis for 1996.

Having culled such an eclectic catalog, Dawn Upshaw now has an expansive audience which is captive to her unique talents, rather than to a specific genre. The Sunday Telegraph (UK) said about Upshaw, “It is some singer who can cast equal spells in Handel’s Theodora and Rodgers & Hart. She brings integral artistry to everything she undertakes.” The World So Wide offers Upshaw performing works of some of the 20th century’s most respected composers, and serves to showcase her in a role for which she is perfectly suited.