Marin Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice, a conductor of vision and distinction who passionately believes that “music has the power to change lives”. She is recognized internationally for her innovative approach to programming and audience development, for her deep commitment to education and advocating for music’s importance in the world.

From the 2019/20 season, Alsop becomes Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (Vienna RSO), performing in their main series at the Wiener Konzerthaus and Wiener Musikverein, recording, broadcasting, and touring nationally and internationally. Her first season coincides with the orchestra’s 50th anniversary and will emphasize women in classical music.

Her outstanding success as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) since 2007 has resulted in two extensions in her tenure until 2021. Alsop has led the orchestra on its first European tour in 13 years and created several bold initiatives including OrchKids, for the city’s most disadvantaged young people. At the end of 2019, following a seven-year tenure as Music Director, she becomes Conductor of Honour of the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP), where she will return to conduct major projects each season.

Photo source: https://www.marinalsop.com/media/
Biography source: https://www.marinalsop.com/biography/

Xian Zhang currently serves as Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. She will become the Principal Guest Conductor of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2020. She also holds the post of Conductor Emeritus of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, following a hugely successful period from 2009–2016 as Music Director. She has previously served as Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales, becoming the first female conductor to hold a titled role with a BBC orchestra.

The acclaim she has been receiving for her work in New Jersey has resulted in a strong North American career, with upcoming engagements which include Chicago, Dallas, Baltimore, Montreal, Ottawa (NAC), Cincinnati, Houston, Minnesota Symphonies. In August 2019, she returned to Los Angeles Philharmonic to conduct the world premiere of a work by Caroline Shaw and Beethoven 9.

Biography and photo source: https://imgartists.com/roster/xian-zhang/

Grammy-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center and Artistic Adviser of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. Hailed for having “Toscanini’s tight control over ensemble, Walter’s affectionate balancing of inner voices, Stokowski’s gutsy showmanship, and a controlled frenzy worthy of Bernstein”, she is a leading force for the music of our time.

Internationally celebrated as a vibrant ambassador for music and an inspiring artistic leader, Ms. Falletta is invited to guest conduct many of the world’s finest orchestras. She has guest conducted over a hundred orchestras in North America, and many of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.

Biography source: http://www.joannfalletta.com/biography.html
Photo source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JoAnn_Falletta

Kay George Roberts is the founder and music director of the New England Orchestra (NEO). Based in Lowell, Massachusetts, NEO is committed to building a vital artistic partnership with the community by linking cultures through music.

Guest conducting engagements have included the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Nashville and National Symphony orchestras as well as the Orchestra Svizzera Italiana, where she conducted Jazz greats Max Roach, Diane Reeves, and the New York Voices. Ms. Roberts has served as a cover conductor for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra and Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In addition, she is the conductor for Philadelphia’s Opera North performances of Leslie Burrs’ award-winning opera, Vanqui. In 2006, The Washington Post praised her “intensely paced concert version of Vanqui, carefully balancing soloists, orchestra and chorus”.

An advocate for new and overlooked music, critics admire her “precision and passion” in leading audiences “to make new discoveries.” She premiered Jennifer Higdon’s Fanfare Ritmico at the Blossom Music Festival with the Cleveland Orchestra and was co-conductor for the highly acclaimed 2004 Sphinx Inaugural Gala Concert in Carnegie Hall. In 2007, she led the Sphinx Symphony in the world premiere of Michael Abels’ Delights and Dances in Detroit’s Orchestra Hall to celebrate the Sphinx Competition’s 10th anniversary.

A champion of music education, Ms. Roberts is a professor of music at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) and director of the UML String Project, a community outreach program for public school students that fosters diversity in classical music. She is the first woman to earn the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in conducting from Yale University where she studied with Otto-Werner Mueller. Ms. Roberts also studied conducting at Tanglewood with Leonard Bernstein, Gustav Meier and Seiji Ozawa, and at the Bachakademie Stuttgart with Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

Photo source: https://www.uml.edu/fahss/music/faculty/roberts-kay.aspx
Biography source: http://www.operanorthinc.org/kay-george-roberts

Russian-American conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya is a fiercely committed advocate for Russian masterpieces, operatic rarities, and contemporary works on the leading edge of classical music.

As Music Director of Chicago Opera Theater, this season Ms. Yankovskaya leads the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride and the Chicago premieres of Joby Talbot’s Everest, Rachmaninoff’s Aleko, and David T. Little’s Soldier Songs at Chicago Opera Theater. Elsewhere in the 19/20 season, she conducts Ricky Ian Gordon’s Ellen West at New York’s critically acclaimed Prototype Festival, and makes house debuts leading Daron Hagen’s Shining Brow at Arizona Opera and the world premiere of Paola Prestini’s Edward Tulane at Minnesota Opera. In standard repertoire, she leads performances of Stravinsky’s The Firebird at Illinois Philharmonic, Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony in C minor at Chicago Philharmonic, and Mozart’s Don Giovanni in her Glimmerglass Festival debut.

Ms. Yankovskaya is Founder and Artistic Director of the Refugee Orchestra Project, which proclaims the cultural and societal relevance of refugees through music, and has brought that message to hundreds of thousands of listeners around the world. In addition to a National Sawdust residency in Brooklyn, ROP has performed in Boston, Washington, D.C., and the United Nations, and will make its UK debut in London in an upcoming season. She has also served as Artistic Director of the Boston New Music Festival and Juventas New Music Ensemble, where she led operatic experiments with puppetry, circus acts, and robotic instruments, as well as premieres by more than two dozen composers. Under her artistic leadership, Juventas was the recipient of multiple NEA grants and National Opera Association Awards.

Photo source: https://lidiyayankovskaya.com/
Biography source: https://lidiyayankovskaya.com/bio

Gabriela Lena Frank

Currently serving as Composer-in-Residence with the storied Philadelphia Orchestra and included in the Washington Post’s list of the 35 most significant women composers in history (August, 2017), identity has always been at the center of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank’s music. Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Gabriela explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Gabriela is something of a musical anthropologist. She has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.
Recommended Listening: Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout

Caroline Shaw

A New York-based musician, vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer, who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member. Recent commissions include new works for Renée Fleming with Inon Barnatan, Dawn Upshaw with Sō Percussion and Gil Kalish, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with John Lithgow, the Dover Quartet and many more.
Recommended Listening: To the Hands: No. 6. I Will Hold You

Angélica Negrón

Puerto Rican-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Angélica Negrón writes music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys and electronics as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras. Her music has been described as “wistfully idiosyncratic and contemplative” (WQXR) and “mesmerizing and affecting” (Feast of Music) while The New York Times noted her “capacity to surprise” and her “quirky approach to scoring”. Angélica is currently working on a lip sync opera titled Chimera for drag queen performers and chamber ensemble exploring the ideas of fantasy and illusion, as well as the intricacies and complexities of identity.
Recommended Listening: Sueño Recurrente

Fanmi Imen (Human Family) by Valerie Coleman

Last year, I premiered in Oregon, Valerie Coleman’s Fanmi Imen (Human Family), inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem Human Family. Written in 2018, the piece acknowledges differences within mankind, due to ethnicity, background, or geography. Angelou’s refrain: “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unlike,” reaffirms our humanity as a reminder of unity. Coleman’s work draws inspiration from French flute music blending with an underlying pentatonicism found in Asian traditions, a caravan through Middle Eastern parts of the world merging with Flamenco, and an upbeat journey southward into Africa with the sounds of Kalimba. I absolutely love playing this piece! Fanmi Imen speaks to me on a deep level and one that brings peace and unity to myself as I read the poem. Fanmi Imen helps to make people feel good about the progress we have made in society.

Tangente au Yanvalou by Julio Racine

Last year, I heard of another composer and fellow flute player by the name of Julio Racine. He’s a Haitian-born flute player that studied flute with the legendary Francis Fuge at the University of Kentucky at Louisville. One of my favorite pieces of his is, Tangente au Yanvalou for flute and piano which represents a form of dance associated with Haitian Voodoo, but originated in Benin, West Africa. In Haiti, Yanvalou is performed in a group as a prayer, invoking deities and moving the dancers to lose consciousness and enter into a state of trance. Even though I’m not of Haitian descent, I truly connected with the sacredness of this piece after doing much research, and it helped me to eliminate certain projected biases and prejudices of the Voodoo religion. Julio’s daughter, Maria, was a 2010 Abreu Fellow and like myself, became a program director for an El Sistema inspired program. After learning about Julio and his beautiful works for flute, I sent Maria a Facebook message asking her about Julio and letting her know that I had recently discovered his music and how much I was in love with his works. She proceeded by giving me his phone number so I can call him myself. I haven’t called, yet.

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (c.1819-1876) was born into slavery in Mississippi. A pianist, harpist, and foremost a soprano, she challenged listeners’ preconceptions in her 1851 national concert tour. Greenfield showed astonishing resilience performing under outrageous conditions: her manager wouldn’t allow Black patrons to attend her concerts, and reviewers were constantly distracted by the “novelty” of a Black woman beautifully singing operatic repertoire. On March 31, 1853, she debuted at New York City’s Metropolitan Hall, and despite being met with laughter when she took the stage, her performance was critically acclaimed and led to a successful European concert tour, during which she sang for Queen Victoria.

Wikimedia Commons: Portrait of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield

Sissieretta Jones

Sissieretta Jones (1868/9-1933) was the first African-American woman to sing at Carnegie Hall, headlining a concert there in 1893. She sang at Madison Square Garden (conducted by Dvořák), toured internationally, and sang for President Harrison and for European royalty. Critics dubbed her “The Black Patti,” after Italian soprano Adelina Patti; Jones disliked the monicker but it dogged her throughout her career. From 1896 to 1915 she toured with the “Black Patti Troubadours,” a company whose performances began with vaudeville acts but closed with staged operatic arias by Jones. In a time of segregated opera, this was Jones’ only opportunity to be an opera singer in her own country. After leaving the stage to care for her ill mother, Jones passed away in relative obscurity, but recent scholars have led efforts to celebrate her legacy.

[Wikimedia Commons: portrait of Sissieretta Jones, 1904]

Florence Cole-Talbert

When Florence Cole-Talbert (1890-1961) was fifteen, she attended a performance of Verdi’s Aida, and was inspired to become an opera singer. In a 1930 interview, she said,

“I was impressed by the opera as nothing had ever moved me before. I sat breathlessly watching the artists, and as the opera progressed, a desire (an impossible desire, so it seemed at the time) took possession of me. I wanted to sing the title role in Aida.”

After study in America and Europe and years of distinguished work as a recitalist and recording artist, Cole-Talbert achieved her dream, performing the title role of Aida in 1927 at the Teatro Communale in Cosenza, Italy.

Cole-Talbert’s career as an educator was central to her legacy. She taught privately, served as Director of Music at Bishop College in Texas and as head of Fisk University’s voice department. One of the young singers she encouraged was Marian Anderson, whose voice so impressed Cole-Talbert that she gave a benefit concert to help fund Anderson’s music education.

Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson (1897-1993) began singing at 6 as a member of her church’s junior choir. When her family couldn’t afford to pay for high school or music lessons, her church community created a “Marian Anderson’s Future Fund” to provide these opportunities for her. At 17, Anderson won a contest to appear as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, and subsequently began a wildly successful career of study and performance in Europe. Though she was courted by several opera companies, Anderson chose to be a concert artist, specializing in Lieder, oratorio and spirituals. It was in this capacity that Howard University tried to book her a concert at the D.A.R.’s Constitution Hall in Washington D.C., only to be rejected because the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to host Black artists. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was so outraged that she resigned from the D.A.R. and helped arrange for Anderson to perform her historic 1939 recital on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In 1955, near the close of her career, Anderson made history as the first African-American to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, appearing as Ulrica in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.

[Wikimedia Commons: portrait of Marian Anderson, 1940]

Ruby Elzy

Like Marian Anderson, soprano Ruby Elzy (1908-1943) started singing in her church choir. She went on to study at Ohio State University and the Julliard School. In 1933 she appeared in the film The Emperor Jones with Paul Robeson. George Gershwin composed the role of Serena in Porgy and Bess for Elzy, and she performed the role over 800 times during the course of her career. Elzy’s life was cut tragically short in 1943 when she died from complications after an operation. Her early death makes this charming interview and performance from 1937 all the more precious. Another treasure is the recording linked below, in which Elzy sings her signature aria “My Man’s Gone Now,” introduced and conducted by Gershwin.

[Wikimedia Commons: portrait of Ruby Elzy, 1935]

Dorothy Maynor

When Serge Koussevitzky heard soprano Dorothy Maynor (1910-1996) in 1939 at Tanglewood, he said (allegedly leaping in joy), “It is a miracle! It is a musical revelation! The world must hear her!” A pastor’s daughter from Virginia, she changed her college major to music at the advice of her choir director, and went on to win a scholarship to Westminster Choir College. Maynor concertized internationally in the 1940s and 50s, and recorded the role of Leonore in Fidelio under Toscanini. In 1963 Maynor retired from the concert stage and founded the Harlem School of the Arts, where she made arts education accessible to countless underprivileged children.

[Wikimedia Commons: portrait of Dorothy Maynor, 1936]

In 1945, Camilla Williams (1919-2012) appeared in Madama Butterfly with the New York City Opera, becoming the first African-American woman to win a contract with a major American opera company. Williams’ performance predated Anderson’s Metropolitian Opera debut by a decade, and she went on to sing the roles of Nedda, Mimì and Aida at City Opera as well. While Williams paved the way for Anderson’s operatic appearance, she also benefited from Anderson’s concert legacy, as a two-time winner of the Marian Anderson Award. In 1963, when Anderson was delayed by traffic, it was Camilla Williams who sang the National Anthem at the March on Washington before Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1977, Williams became the first Black voice faculty member at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she would teach for twenty years.

[Wikimedia Commons: portrait of Camilla Williams, 1946]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=iuyLIkCxiFo%3Frel%3D0

Gloria Davy (1931-2012) was a Julliard-educated lyrico-spinto soprano. She had already performed the role of Aida in Nice, Bologna and Zagreb before she became the first African-American woman to sing the role at the Metropolitan Opera. She appeared at the Met in the roles of Nedda, Pamina, and Leonora in Trovatore before moving to Switzerland in 1959, when she chose to base her performance career in Europe. One of Davy’s specialties was 20^th century music: she recorded works by Stockhausen and Bowles, as well as singing in 1957 premier of Hans Wernber Henze’s Nachtstücke und Arien. From 1984-1997, Davy taught at Indiana University.

[Wikimedia Commons: Portrait of Gloria Davy: 1958]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=im5zokZfWNo%3Frel%3D0

It seems fitting to close this list of history’s divas with the great dramatic soprano Jessye Norman (1945-2019). It was only last year that Norman left us and entered history. Born into segregated Georgia, Norman studied at the Peabody Institute and won the Munich International Music Competition in 1968. She made her operatic debut in Berlin as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, and became one of the foremost singers on the international stage. Her 1983 Met debut in Les Troyens was the first of countless appearances at that company.

Norman was vocal about the powerful legacy of history’s African-American singers. One of her final artistic endeavors was a project honoring Sissieretta Jones. Of the historical artists who inspired her, she said in 1983,

“They have made it possible for me to say, ‘I will sing French opera,’ or, ‘I will sing German opera,’ instead of being told, ‘You will sing Porgy and Bess.’ Look, it’s unrealistic to pretend that racial prejudice doesn’t exist. It does! It’s one thing to have a set of laws, and quite another to change the hearts and minds of men. That takes longer.”

[Wikimedia Commons: Portrait of Jessye Norman: 2014]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=709TjFmoKAs%3Frel%3D0