Internationally acclaimed for her
crystalline soprano, assured musicality and interpretive insight, American soprano Ilana Davidson's
repertoire spans the 12th to the 21st centuries. Her recording of William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and of
Experience conducted by Leonard Slatkin won four Grammy Awards including Best Classical Album. She has closely collaborated
with such composers as John Zorn (in his Pierrot Lunaire-like setting of Chimeras, recorded on the Tzadik
label) and Bright Sheng (performing his setting of Three Love Songs with violist Ida Kavafian, clarinetist Jon Menasse
and the composer at the piano).
Several years ago 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
ongoing performances of his opera What Price Confidence (which returned to New York's Austrian Cultural Forum
in September 2007).
In the 2006-2007 season the soprano sang the world premiere of Libby Larson's
opera Everyman Jack (in the pivotal role of the Young Girl) and made her Alice Tully Hall debut as the Wife in Philip
Glass/Robert Moran's The Juniper Tree, earning unanimous critical acclaim for both. Her other operatic
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; Adina in L'Elisir d'Amore and Gilda in Rigoletto at the Crested Butte
Music Festival; Flora in The Turn of the Screw and Amore in L'incoronazione di Poppea with the Florida
Grand Opera, in addition to roles with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Skylight and Glimmerglass Operas, and Jugendstil
Theatre of Vienna.
Other career highlights include two engagements at New York's Carnegie Hall: Songs of
Innocence and of Experience with Mto. 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. In the 2007-2008 season she added the
composer's Carmina Burana to her repertoire, performing it with both the Houston and Toledo Symphonies.
She reprises it in 2008-2009 with the Alabama, Edmonton and Reading Symphonies and the same season makes her Charlotte Symphony
debut in the Faure Requiem under Thierry Fischer. She rejoins Mto. Botstein and the American Symphony
Orchestra for Bach's B Minor Mass in May 2007 at New York's Symphony Space. In summer 2008 she enlivens
the Monadnock and Staunton Music Festivals.
Equally at home in the Baroque repertoire Ms. Davidson has regularly
performed as soloist with the Orchestra of St Luke's as part of their Cantatas in Context since 2001. For her
debut with Boston's distinguished Handel and Haydn Society (2007) she performed Bach's BWV 49 and BWV 58. Other
early-music engagements include Amor in Giovanni Legrenzi's La Divisione del Mondo conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock
in a co-production with the Austrian festivals of Innsbruck and Schwetzingen; Handel's Messiah with the Pacific
and Nashville Symphonies, and National Philharmonic; the Angel in Schütz's A Christmas Story with the EOS
Orchestra at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (broadcast live on National Public Radio); 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; and the Requiem with the Schleierbacher Chamber Orchestra
and Harrisburg Symphony. In summer 2007 she sang her first-ever Mass in C Minor at the Berkshire Choral Festival.
A prolific recording artist, other recent and forthcoming recordings 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). Conductors with whom she has collaborated include Keith Lockhart, Reinbert de Leeuw, Oliver Knussen, Stuart
Malina, Harry Bicket, Carl St. Clair, Claus Peter Flor, Michael Riesman, Lothar Zagrosek, and Reinbert de Leeuw.
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.
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