Ilana Davidson
soprano
American soprano Ilana Davidson brings a crystalline soprano, assured musicality and interpretive insight to repertoire spanning the 12th to the 21st centuries. She has closely collaborated with composers John Zorn and Bright Sheng, and conductors Alan Gilbert, Leonard Slatkin, Jaap van Zweden, Keith Lockhart, Reinbert de Leeuw, Oliver Knussen, Stuart Malina, Harry Bicket, Carl St. Clair, Michael Riesman, Lothar Zagrosek, Lawrence Renes, Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Claus Peter Flor.
Ms. Davidson's association with the music of the Austrian composer Ernst Krenek began with rapturously received performances as the Queen in Das Geheime Königreich at the Krenek Festival in Vienna and Die Nachtigall with the Austrian Chamber Symphony. The former spawned a series of projects dedicated to the composer's works including solo debut recording of his lieder, a recital tour, and multiple New York City performances and a recording of his opera What Price Confidence.
Ms. Davidson’s operatic experience includes the world premiere of Libby Larson's opera Everyman Jack, and an Alice Tully Hall debut as the Wife in Philip Glass/Robert Moran's The Juniper Tree. Other roles include Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Amor in Gluck's Orfeo, Chef der Gepopo in Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, and Erste Blumenmädchen in Parsifal, all performed in the Netherlands; Flora in The Turn of the Screw and Amore in L'incoronazione di Poppea with the Florida Grand Opera.
New York’s Carnegie Hall welcomed Ms. Davidson for William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience with Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony, and Mahler's Second Symphony with Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic. She made her Avery Fisher Hall debut in Carl Orff's Trionfo di Afrodite with Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra; sang Carmina Burana with the Houston, Edmonton, Reading, Alabama and Toledo Symphonies; and appeared at the Monadnock, Bard, Berkshire Choral and Staunton Music Festivals, the latter as Galatea in Händel’s Acis and Galatea. In October 2011 she sang Mahler's Fourth Symphonywith the Fort Worth Symphony. Her engagements with Yoav Talmi and the Québec Symphony include Amor in Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice and Mahler’s Second Symphony; she also sang the Fauré Requiem with the Charlotte Symphony under Thierry Fischer; J.S. Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium and the solo cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, with which she regularly performs as part of its Cantatas in Context series. Other baroque projects include Bach’s Cantatas BWV 49 and 58 with Boston's Händel and Haydn Society; Cupid in Purcell's King Arthur in Stuttgart, Amor in Legrenzi's La Divisione del Mondo conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock in a co-production with the Austrian festivals of Innsbruck and Schwetzingen; Händel's Messiah with the Pacific, Ann Arbor, Alabama, Nashville Symphonies, and National Philharmonic; the Angel in Schütz's A Christmas Story at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (broadcast live on NPR); and Haydn's Creation with Philadelphia's Voces Novae et Antiquae.
Her strong affiliation with the music of Mozart has been heard in programs of the composer's arias with the Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam; Zerlina in Don Giovanni with the National Philharmonic; Papagena in Die Zauberflöte with the Vlaamse Opera and Staatsoper Stuttgart; the Requiem with the Schleierbacher Chamber Orchestra and Harrisburg Symphony; and an especially memorable Mass in C Minor at the Berkshire Choral Festival which led to an immediate return engagement for the composer’s Solemn Vespers of the Confessor.
Highlights of the 2012-2013 season include Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate with Andre Raphael-Smith and the Wheeling Symphony, the Brahms Requiem with Grant Llewellyn and the North Carolina Symphony, and her Rhode Island Philharmonic debut in Mahler's Second Symphony under Larry Rachleff.
Ms. Davidson's recording of William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and of Experience won four Grammy Awards including Best Classical Album. Other releases include Kurt Weill's Down in the Valley (Capriccio), Stanley Kubrick's Mountain Home by Paul Elwood and What Price Confidence by Ernst Krenek (Capriccio).
Ms. Davidson is a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music. She was a vocal fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and a participant in the Aston Magna Early Music Academy.
back to top
|
info@chameleonarts.org
