Joyce DiDonato elected to the Board of Carnegie Hall

At a meeting on April 28, Joyce DiDonato was elected as a member of Carnegie Hall’s Board of Trustees. The news follows her hugely successful Carnegie Hall Perspectives residency this season, which showed off a wide range of her interests and talents not just as a leading opera star, but as an educator and passionate advocate for young singers.

Consolidating her place as a great favourite of Carnegie Hall audiences, Perspectives included a complete performance of Handel’s Alcina with The English Concert; a ‘Journey through Venice’ with pianist David Zobel, and a celebration of bel canto with The Philadelphia Orchestra. A particular highlight grew out of her participation in the Weill Music Institute’s Lullaby Project—a Carnegie Hall programme that engages young mothers from local shelters and prisons in song-writing workshops — when she selected and sang lullabies written by the participants in commissioned arrangements by Luna Pearl Woolf in a Zankel Hall concert with the Brentano String Quartet. She also led a set of public master classes for young singers which had an unprecedented number of views on the medici.tv website, nearly 300,000 to date, and worked extensively with New York City middle school students.

As a Trustee of Carnegie Hall, she joins an illustrious list of great artists including Emanuel Ax, Renée Fleming, Marilyn Horne, Yo-Yo Ma, Audra McDonald and Jessye Norman.

Joyce DiDonato said:

I am deeply humbled to have been invited to join Carnegie Hall as a Trustee, for joining an organization that so gloriously exalts music, harmony and peace not only in New York City, but around the globe, is precisely where I want to be. I’m particularly motivated to lend any help I can to the Weill Music Institute, which I think is truly leading the way for communities around the globe to use the music and the arts to heal and to uplift every member of their community. I look forward to this being a most inspired and explosive collaboration!

Clive Gillinson, Executive and Artistic Director, Carnegie Hall said:

“We’re delighted that Joyce has agreed to join Carnegie Hall’s Board of Trustees. Coming off a highly successful Perspectives series this past season, including wonderful performances and in-depth engagement with Carnegie Hall’s music education programs, we’re excited to continue our work with her in this meaningful and ongoing way. Joyce’s experience as a leading international artist and her keen insights into music, education, and service to audiences will make her a great asset to our board.”

For further information please contact Simon Millward at Albion Media:
Simon Millward: [email protected], +44-207 3077 4940

Editor’s Notes

Winner of the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo, Kansas-born Joyce DiDonato entrances audiences and critics alike across the globe, and has been proclaimed ‘perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation’ by The New Yorker. With a voice ‘nothing less than 24- carat gold’ according to the Times, DiDonato has soared to the top of the industry as both a performer and a fierce arts advocate, gaining international prominence in operas by Rossini, Handel and Mozart, as well as through her wide-ranging, acclaimed discography. Her signature parts include the bel canto roles of Rossini, leading the Financial Times to declare her Elena La Donna del Lago, ‘simply the best singing I’ve heard in years’.

Much in demand on the concert and recital circuit, DiDonato holds residencies this season at both the Carnegie Hall, New York and the Barbican Centre, London. Recently she completed an acclaimed recital tour of South America, and has appeared in concert and recital in Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Toulouse, Mexico City and Aspen, in addition to appearing as guest singer at the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, London.

In opera she appeared last season as Cendrillon at the Liceu Barcelona, Sesto La Clemenza di Tito at the Lyric Opera Chicago, Angelina La Cenerentola at the Metropolitan Opera, and the title role of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda at the Royal Opera House. Highlights this season include Romeo I Capuleti e i Montecchi in her native Kansas City, Elena La donna del lago at the Metropolitan Opera, Maria Stuarda in Barcelona, the title role of Alcina with the English Concert, and Marguerite La damnation de Faust with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle.

An exclusive recording artist with Erato/Warner Classics, DiDonato’s most recent recording, Stella di Napoli, is a sumptuous bel canto banquet including little-known gems alongside music by Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti. Her Grammy-Award-winning recording Diva Divo comprises arias by male and female characters, celebrating the rich dramatic world of the mezzo-soprano. The following recording Drama Queens was exceptionally well received, both on disc and on several international tours. A retrospective of her first ten years of recordings entitled ReJoyce! was released last year.

Other honours include the Gramophone Artist of the Year and Recital of the Year awards, a German Echo Klassik Award as Female Singer of the Year, and an induction into the Gramophone Hall of Fame.