Dawn Upshaw News

The 50th annual George London Foundation Competition for young American and Canadian opera singers, which was scheduled to take place in April 2021, has been postponed until next year. The competition typically confers five George London Awards of $10,000 each. The remaining finalists receive Encouragement Awards of $1,000.

Renowned international music conservatory Manhattan School of Music (MSM) announced today that esteemed educator, director, and arts ambassador Dr. Carleen Graham will join the Vocal Arts division as the School's inaugural Associate Dean and Director of Vocal Arts beginning on July 1, 2021.

Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion, celebrated Brazilian guitarist Sérgio Assad, and his daughter, the vibrant vocalist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Clarice Assad, join forces for Archetypes, a collaboratively written program conjuring a dozen universal archetypes - timeless characters shared by cultures around the globe.

Today (February 19) in live streaming: Santino Fontana visits Backstage Live, Andréa Burns hosts game night on Stars in the House, and more!

Today's top stories: Liza Minnelli birthday concert will feature Chita Rivera, Joel Grey, Catherine Zeta Jones, Andrew Rannells, Nathan Lane, and more, plus @MCC_Theater's Miscast will stream for free, and more!

The Met has announced themed lineups for two weeks of its Nightly Met Opera Streams, a free series of encore Live in HD presentations and classic telecasts streamed on the company’s website during the coronavirus closure. The schedule includes a Franco Zeffirelli Week and a Dmitri Hvorostovsky Week.

The 50th annual George London Foundation Competition for young American and Canadian opera singers, originally scheduled for February, has been rescheduled to take place in April 2021 in New York City in order to allow for greater ease of travel for the competitors.

Three Broadway performers, Justin Smith, Sean Driscoll and Pete Donovan, can be found belting out hits at Calissa in Water Mill every Thursday night from 7pm - 9pm, immersing the diners in a musical experience that's been dearly missed since the Great White Way turned its lights off.

OPERA America has announced the inaugural group of inductees to the Opera Hall of Fame. The Opera Hall of Fame recognizes the achievements of outstanding living American artists, administrators, and advocates who have strengthened the art form and the field. It was established in 2020 on the occasion of OPERA America's 50th anniversary, a celebration of the progress of the industry over the past half-century.

New York singing star Seth Sikes has released a new video today. 'What More Do I Need' is his musical love letter to the city, and how it has rebounded in style after the worst days of the Covid pandemic.

In a Circle Records will release Osvaldo Golijov's Falling Out of Time, written for and recorded by the composer's longtime collaborators and friends, the Silkroad Ensemble. The group's most recent albums include the Grammy award-winning Sing Me Home and the soundtrack for Ken Burns & Lynn Novick's film, The Vietnam War.

Today, The Cleveland Orchestra is launching its third collection of full-length concerts on TCO Classics, Summer Nights, highlighting some of the ensemblea??s most memorable performances across its first half-century at Blossom Music Center.

The Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival is a groundbreaking digital series of audio and video streams featuring newly created content being recorded at Tanglewood's Linde Center in July alongside previously recorded material from Tanglewood being released for the first time.

Renowned international music conservatory Manhattan School of Music (MSM) announced today that acclaimed opera and theatre director Tazewell Thompson will join the School's Vocal Arts Division as Director of Opera Studies, effective immediately.

The Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival is being offered in response to continuing concerns over the spread of COVID-19 and official crowd restriction policies that have necessitated the cancellation of the festival's live performance series.

The Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival is a groundbreaking digital series of audio and video streams featuring newly created content being recorded at Tanglewood's Linde Center in July alongside previously recorded material from Tanglewood being released for the first time.

On Friday, May 22, 2020, GRAMMY-winning choir The Crossing, led by Donald Nally, releases CARTHAGE, an album featuring six striking pieces by composer James Primosch, on Navona Records. Internationally recognized and prolific, Primosch is the 2020 winner of The Virgil Thomson Award for Vocal Music from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

a?oeI have known for three generations how difficult the career of an opera singer remains,a?? said George London Foundation President Nora London at the announcement of the 2020 George London Award winners. a?oeThis all started because George wanted to help a?" and now we have been giving these awards for almost 50 years.a??

On February 21, 2020, some of the best young American and Canadian opera singers will perform with pianist Lydia Brown before a panel of judges and an enthusiastic audience at The Morgan Library & Museum. At the event's conclusion, a few of them will be named this year's winners of the George London Award, an honor that has been conferred upon hundreds of the best young singers since 1971. The award, currently a $10,000 prize, is named for the legendary Canadian-American bass-baritone, one of the greatest opera singers of 20th century.