The Voice That Crosses Oceans

She has sung on the world’s greatest stages. She has won every honor a singer could dream of. And yet, before her first visit to Hong Kong, Dawn Upshaw speaks with the fresh wonder of someone still falling in love with music.
That wonder is the secret. It’s why her voice still moves people after all these years.
A Journey Made of Songs
For her debut with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, Upshaw chose two collections built entirely from folk melodies. Not grand arias. Not the obvious showpieces. Songs that ordinary people once sang in kitchens and fields.
The first is Berio’s Folk Songs, a set drawn from across the world. Some tunes will feel familiar the moment they begin. Others will sound like distant countries you’ve never seen. Berio asked the orchestra to do something unusual — to comment on the roots of each song, so you hear whole cultures blooming in the instruments themselves.
For a city as global as Hong Kong, it’s a perfect choice. In one piece, the whole world passes through the concert hall.
Where the Winds Sing
Her second offering is Canteloube’s beloved Songs of the Auvergne, music she has carried close for well over a decade. These are lush, glowing arrangements, and the wind players carry gorgeous solos throughout.
Place them beside the Berio, and the two collections begin to speak to each other. Folk melody answering folk melody. One earthy and adventurous, the other soaring and tender. Upshaw and her collaborators built the program so the pieces would complete one another, like two voices in the same conversation.
Giving the Music Back
Long before the accolades, there was Tanglewood. Upshaw arrived there as a fellow in 1983, and those summers became some of the most powerful musical experiences of her early twenties.
Now she leads the vocal program, guiding a small class of gifted young singers. Her mission is simple and generous. She wants to protect their imaginations. To build each summer around the unique gifts of each artist, rather than forcing everyone into the same mold.
She believes this new generation arrives with a beautiful vision all its own. Her job, as she sees it, is to hand them room to grow.
The Courage to Sing What’s New
Here is what makes her rare. While she treasures Bach and Mozart — and admits those masterpieces made her a better person — her heart beats loudest for music being written right now.
More than twenty-five premieres in a single decade. She calls this her most alive work: sitting in the rehearsal room beside a living composer, shaping something that has never existed before.
One of those creations was Saariaho’s opera L’Amour de loin, which she premiered in 2000 in the leading role. It became a landmark, the start of a lasting partnership, and proof of what happens when an artist refuses to play it safe.
That refusal is her truest gift. To honor the old, to fight for the new, and to keep singing as if the world still needs one more brave, honest voice — which, of course, it always does.