Susanna Maliki and James Burton will conduct a progrma of Tippett and Beethoven with soprano Amanda Majeski, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, tenor Stephen Costello with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. This is the 2023 Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert.
Tippet — Spirituals from A Child of Our Time
Beethoven — Symphony No. 9
Susanna Mälkki, conductor (Beethoven)
James Burton, conductor (Tippett)
Amanda Majeski, soprano
J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano
Stephen Costello, tenor
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
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Two time Grammy® Award-winning American mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, known for her “plush-voiced mezzo-soprano” (The New York Times), and “calmly commanding stage presence” (The New Yorker) has been heralded as “a rising star” (Los Angeles Times), gracing the world’s top opera and concert stages.
The 2022-23 season will spotlight Ms. Bridges in one of her signature roles as Carmen with debut engagements at the Arena di Verona, Canadian Opera Company, and a return to Dutch National Opera, and Lyric Opera of Chicago. As a native of Tacoma, WA, Bridges eagerly anticipates her Seattle Opera debut in a concert performance of Samson et Delilah as Delilah in January 2023. Additional concert engagements include Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony with the Detroit Symphony in November, and a world premiere by Carlos Simon in April 2023 with the National Symphony Orchestra.
Bridges’ recital engagements for the season begin with the performance of a world premiere by Jimmy Lopez at 92NY in December, and continue throughout 2023 at Washington University, Thomasville Center for the Arts, The Cliburn, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, San Francisco Performances, and the Mondavi Center in Davis, California.
Ms. Bridges’ 2021-22 season highlights included numerous world premiere engagements as a guest artist in The Kennedy Center’s 50th Anniversary Season. Ms. Bridges’ time in Washington D.C. also included performances with The National Philharmonic in the world premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s A Knee on the Neck, and Mozart’s Requiem, and her first performance of the Verdi Requiem with the Cathedral Choral Society.
She also appeared with the Amarillo Symphony as a guest artist in a world premiere piece by Chris Rogerson entitled Sacred Earth, and she gave a solo recital at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton. In June 2022 she performed Lieberson’s Neruda Songs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel as part of the Power to the People! festival, followed by her debut with the San Francisco Symphony singing Jocasta in Peter Sellars’ production of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. She concluded her summer season singing a solo recital at Caramoor.
In the midst of the worldwide pandemic, she emerged as a leading figure in classical music’s shift toward conversations of inclusion and racial justice in the performing arts. In 2022 she was announced as one of the Kennedy Center’s NEXT50 cultural leaders. Bridges led a highly successful panel on race and inequality in opera with the Los Angeles Opera that drew international acclaim for being a “conversation of striking scope and candor” (The New York Times).
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Internationally renowned American lyric soprano Amanda Majeski is rapidly garnering critical acclaim for a voice of “silvery beauty” (Musical America), “sings with remarkable commitment and radiance of tone…She sounds exquisite.” (The Guardian), and “Majeski’s well-rounded soprano…is so warm and glorious, the singing so outstanding, that she leaves no emotions unstirred.” (Financial Times) Her 2019-20 season includes four debuts with the Nürnberger Symphoniker, New York Philharmonic, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Teatro Real Madrid and performances with Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Majeski’s season commences with her debut with the Nürnberger Symphoniker bringing her Straussian expertise to his “Vier letzte Lieder” conducted by Kahchun Wong. She then returns to Lyric Opera of Chicago, the company that launched her international career, for her house role debut as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, followed by her debut with the New York Philharmonic as a soprano soloist in Mozart’s Mass in C minor under the direction of Jaap van Zweden.
She will also perform Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch at the 92nd Street Y, alongside bass-baritone Philippe Sly and pianist Julius Drake. Her season continues with a debut with Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, as the title role in Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová. The season closes with her reprisal as Marta in Weinberg’s The Passenger at Teatro Real Madrid for its Spanish premiere—a role she debuted at Lyric Opera of Chicago for which the Chicago Tribune hailed her as “radiant” and “immensely touching” adding that “she has done nothing finer.”
Highlights from her previous season include rave reviews for her Royal Opera House Káťa Kabanová, “If there is a more compelling solo performance on the operatic stage this year than Amanda Majeski’s in the title role of Janacek’s opera, I will need a new stock of superlatives. I unhesitatingly say that you are unlikely to encounter a Katya more profoundly acted than by the American soprano, nor more strikingly sung.” (The Times)
Her 2018-19 season also included her concert debuts with the Sydney Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Music of the Baroque, and her debut at Staatsoper Stuttgart as the title role in Iphigénie en Tauride was praised as “Amanda Majeski in the title role has a voluminous, clean-sounding and beautiful soprano. She is the ideal person for this role” (Kultura Extra), as well as a return to Santa Fe Opera as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte in a new production under conductor Harry Bicket and director R. B. Schlather.
Ms. Majeski made her Metropolitan Opera debut on the opening night of the 2014-2015 season as Countess Almaviva in a new production of Le nozze di Figaro conducted by James Levine, which was broadcast in HD internationally and on PBS across the United States. Since then, she has returned for revivals of Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, both conducted by Fabio Luisi, and a new production of Così fan tutte conducted by David Robertson which was a featured HD broadcast in the 2017-2018 season.
An alumna of the Ryan Opera Center, she made her mainstage Lyric debut with only a few hours’ notice as Countess Almaviva conducted by Andrew Davis. Named “Best Breakout Star” by Chicago Magazine, she has since continued her relationship with Lyric audiences as Vitellia in La clemenza di Tito, Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier and as Marta in The Passenger, hailed as a “shattering, star-making performance” by the Chicago Classical Review.