Joyce DiDonato Launches 'Sing For Today' Project

The University Musical Society (UMS) and Princeton University Concerts have released the first installment of a new digital initiative conceived by multiple Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato as part of UMS's Digital Artist Residency. "Sing for Today" features DiDonato responding to current events and global concerns through the lens of song and conversation.

The first episode, available for free viewing at ums.org/singfortoday and princetonuniversityconcerts.org, taps into the energy of the upcoming general election. In response to images of long early-voter lines across the country, DiDonato sings "This Land is Your Land," accompanied by guitarist Àlex Garrobé, in tribute to the passionate voters.

She then frames the song in conversation with Hamilton lead producer Jeffrey Seller and with students Kai Tsurumaki (Princeton Class of 2023) and Saika Islam (University of Michigan Class of 2021) - members of the Poll Hero Project, dedicated to recruiting young people across the country to be poll workers.

Future episodes of "Sing For Today" will feature DiDonato singing and in dialogue with people from a variety of different backgrounds, calling on great songs to help make sense of the profound events of the present day. The first episode, and all future episodes, will be available for free viewing at ums.org/singfortoday and princetonuniversityconcerts.org. Joyce DiDonato appears by kind permission of Warner Classics/Erato.

In all her endeavors, both on and off the stage, Joyce DiDonato engages audiences through her energy, imagination, and commitment to her art form. Through these qualities, and with a constantly questing spirit, she has nurtured the vocal, musical and dramatic talents that have taken her to the pinnacle of her profession as a performer. Equally, they serve her as an eloquent and formidable advocate for the transformative power of the arts as she takes music far beyond the world's great stages - to educational institutions, refugee camps, and maximum-security prisons. "Music heals," she has said, "and it can fire people up with purpose and courage to change the world."

The winner of multiple Grammys and the 2018 Olivier Award, Kansas-born Joyce DiDonato is, in the words of the New Yorker, "perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation," her voice having been described by The Times as "nothing less than 24-carat gold." For all its beauty and agility, its true impact lies in Joyce's capacity to illuminate character and meaning through nuances of color and phrasing and her unfailingly communicative way with the text. DiDonato is part of UMS's Digital Artist Residency program in the 2020/21 season, alongside Wendell Pierce, Cleo Parker Robinson, Tunde Olaniran, Tarek Yamani and the Spektral Quartet, and Brian Lobel and Gweneth-Ann Rand.

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