Photo by Janette Beckman Sarah Wolfson, Soprano

www.sarahwolfson.com

First Prize, 2007 CAG Competition

Lyric soprano Sarah Wolfson is the First Prize Winner of the 2007 Concert Artists Guild International Competition.  With infectious energy and innate musicality that have earned her praise from The Washington Post for “working magic,” Ms. Wolfson possesses a remarkable ability to communicate with audiences on recital, orchestral, cabaret and operatic stages. 

During the 2007-08 season, Ms. Wolfson can be heard as a soloist in Poulenc’s Gloria with the Asheville Symphony and in recital at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival.  Ms. Wolfson recently made her Lincoln Center recital debut at Alice Tully Hall as a result of winning The Juilliard School’s Vocal Arts Alice Tully Recital Debut.  Other recital engagements include the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, the Austrian Embassy in Washington, DC (as part of the Embassy Series), and Juilliard’s Paul Hall. 

Recent oratorio appearances include Schubert’s Mass in E-flat with The Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, Brahms’ Requiem with The Columbia University Orchestra and excerpts from Handel’s Messiah at The Kennedy Center Concert Hall. 

An avid performer of new music, Ms. Wolfson created the role of Celia in the world premiere of John Musto’s Volpone, a comic opera based on the 16th-century Ben Johnson satirical play, commissioned and presented by the Wolf Trap Opera Company.  Making her Off-Broadway debut, Ms. Wolfson created and recorded the role of Jane/Aeola in The New Group’s world premiere production of Wallace and Allen Shawn’s play/opera, The Music Teacher, soon to be released on Bridge Records.

In 2006 she developed and performed Love Past Cure, a new opera based on Monteverdi madrigals interwoven with Shakespeare sonnets, with the International Sejong Soloists as part of La Jolla SummerFest.  Ms. Wolfson also participated in the Steans Institute for Young Artists at The Ravinia Festival and the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, and she recently sang Ravel's Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé as part of the Aspen Stravinsky Rex Minifestival

In the opera house, Ms. Wolfson has performed the role of Bacchis in Offenbach’s La belle Hélène and covered Zerlina in Don Giovanni at The Santa Fe Opera.  Other recent engagements include her debut with Kentucky Opera as Crobyle in Thaïs, Poppea in L’incoronazione di Poppea with Opera North, Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro with the Wolf Trap Opera Company, Priestess in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride with Spoleto Festival USA and Anne in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music with the Brevard Music Festival.  As a member of the Florida Grand Opera Young Artists Program, Ms. Wolfson performed the roles of Lucy in Menotti’s The Telephone, and Micaela in La Tragédie de Carmen and this past summer she sang Despina in Cosi fan tutte with Aspen Opera Theater to critical acclaim.

Sarah Wolfson earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees as a student of Cynthia Hoffman at The Juilliard School.  She is featured on the PBS American Masters documentary The Juilliard Experience, and she received the William Schuman Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music, the highest award given to a Juilliard graduate student.  She is currently studying in New York with Edith Bers.

Ms. Wolfson is on the faculty of Columbia University, where she teaches vocal performance, and is a member of Sing for Hope, a non-profit organization founded by opera singers that links artists and charities.  Through Sing for Hope she has worked closely with Bent on Learning, which brings yoga and meditation to underserved students in New York City Public Schools.