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Dawn Upshaw (born July 17, 1960) is an American soprano. She is the recipient of several Grammy Awards and has released a number of Edison Award-winning discs; she performs both opera and art song, and her repertoire spans Baroque music to contemporary. Many composers, including Henri Dutilleux, Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, and Kaija Saariaho, have written for her. In 2007, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2006, she founded the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College Conservatory in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, serving as artistic director until 2019. She currently serves as head of the Vocal Arts Program at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.
She has premiered more than twenty-five new works, notably Henri Dutilleux's song-cycle Correspondances, and has embraced several pieces created for her, including the Grawemeyer Award-winning opera L'Amour de Loin by Kaija Saariaho, The Great Gatsby by John Harbison, the nativity oratorio El Niño by John Adams, and Osvaldo Golijov highly acclaimed chamber opera Ainadamar and song cycle Ayre. In 2009, she premiered David Bruce's song cycle The North Wind was a Woman at the gala opening of the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Centre's season.
In addition to her operatic recordings, she has also sung the title role in the first complete recording of the score of Gershwin's Oh, Kay!. Oh, Kay! restored by Tommy Krasker, starring Dawn Upshaw and Kurt Ollmann, Roxbury Recordings (Nonesuch 1995) She has also recorded albums of songs by Vernon Duke and Rodgers and Hart. Dawn Upshaw sings Rodgers & Hart, recorded NYC June 1995, (Nonesuch 1996) Upshaw was a guest of President of the United States Bill Clinton and Mrs. Clinton on the NBC special Christmas in Washington. The BBC presented a prime-time telecast of her 1996 London The Proms, Dawn at Dusk, in which she performed songs from American musical theater. Her engagements with James Levine over many years led to a 1997 recording of Claude Debussy songs.
Upshaw appears on an album of Christmas music in association with the male vocal ensemble Chanticleer titled Christmas with Chanticleer featuring special guest Dawn Upshaw for Teldec Classics.
Upshaw tours regularly with pianist Gilbert Kalish. Richard Goode and Margo Garrett are also long-standing partners. She has worked with director Peter Sellars many times, including on his staging of Handel's Theodora at Glyndebourne, his Paris production of Igor Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress—as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen's month-long residency at the Théâtre du Châtelet, 1996—a staging of Bach's cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199, presented in the 1995–96 season at New York's 92nd Street Y, and the Salzburg Festival production of Olivier Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise (1998). Upshaw has often performed as a soloist at the annual Ojai Music Festival in California; most recently in 2006, 2008, and 2009. In 2011, she was the music director of the festival, where she performed the world premiere of the Peter Sellers-staged production of George Crumb's work Winds of Destiny. She joined the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as artistic partner beginning with the 2007–08 season. In 2006, she founded the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College Conservatory in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, serving as artistic director until 2019, when she was succeeded by Stephanie Blythe. She currently serves as head of the Vocal Arts Program at Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Upshaw holds honoris causa doctorates of arts from Yale University, the Manhattan School of Music, Illinois Wesleyan University, and Allegheny College. She is an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University from 2020 to 2026.
1991 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Soloist
2003 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance
2006 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording
2014 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Soloist
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