An A.D. White Professors-at-Large keynote public event

Join us for a special evening with internationally acclaimed and five-time GRAMMY Award-winning soprano  Dawn Upshaw when she performs Maria Schneiders’ Winter Morning Walks, on Friday, Feb. 24, at 7pm, 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.

This event is free and open to all. Advance ticket required: cornelltickets.com.

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.

This event is part of an  A.D. White Professors-at-Large (ADW-PAL) visit and is co-sponsored by the  Dept. of Music. Upshaw visits the Cornell campus in Ithaca as an ADW-PAL Feb. 20-24. Upshaw was elected as an ADW-PAL in 2020. Her appointment runs through 2026.