 |
Keri-Lynn Wilson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | May 17, 1967 (age 56) Milwaukee, Wisconsin U.S. |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Education | |
| Occupation | Conductor |
| Agent | Hilbert Artist Management |
| Height | 6 ft 1 in (185 cm) |
| Spouse | |
| Website | keri-lynnwilson |
Keri-Lynn Wilson (May 17, 1967) is a Canadian conductor of operatic and symphonic repertoire. She is the founder and music director of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra.
Wilson was born on May 17, 1967, in Milwaukee in the U.S. state of Wisconsin to an accomplished musical family. The richly artistic tradition into which she was born includes a grandfather who was an operatic baritone and a pianist grandmother. Her mother, Lynn Sharples, was a professor of English at the Université de Toulon, and her father, Carlisle Wilson, is a violinist and music educator. [1] [2]
As a child, she studied flute, piano and violin, was a member of the Winnipeg Youth Orchestra and performed as a flute soloist with the Winnipeg Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic. She also attended the Banff School of Music summer program. Later, she continued her studies in the United States at the Juilliard School, where she studied flute under Julius Baker. Mounting interest in conducting put her under the tutelage of Otto-Werner Mueller. During her student years at Juilliard, she first performed at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in May 1989. [3] She graduated from Juilliard with master's degrees in both flute and conducting. She made her debut with the National Arts Center Orchestra of Canada at the age of 23. [4]
From 1994-1998, Wilson was the associate conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. After her time in Dallas, she entered the international circuit as a guest conductor for both opera and symphonic repertoire with extensive engagements throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. Wilson became chief conductor of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra in 2013, becoming the first female chief conductor in the orchestra's history. She held the post through the 2014–2015 season. [5]
Her operatic work has brought her to the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, Bolshoi Opera, Mariinsky Theater, English National Opera, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Rome Opera, Palermo Opera, Parma Opera, Verona Arena, Macerata Festival, Puccini Festival, Los Angeles Opera, Washington Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Leipzig Opera, Czech National Opera, Nice Opera, Bilbao Opera, Royal Swedish Opera, Norwegian National Opera, Warsaw Opera, Bucharest National Opera, Israeli Opera, New National Theater of Tokyo, Opera Australia, and the Juilliard Opera, amongst others. [6] [7]
Her operatic repertoire includes: Eugene Onegin , Pique Dame , Boris Godunov , Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district , Iolanthe , Rusalka , Rigoletto , La Traviata , Simon Boccanegra , Nabucco , Don Carlo , Aida , Otello , Un Ballo in Maschera , Attila , Il Trovatore , Falstaff , Cosi fan tutte , Don Giovani , Carmen , Faust , Romeo et Juliette , Manon Lescaut , Tosca , La bohème , Turandot , Madama Butterfly , La fanciulla del West , Gianni Schicchi , La Rondine , Tannhäuser , Der Fliegende Holländer , Il Barbiere di Siviglia , Sigismondo , La Cenerentola , La Fille du Régiment , L'Elisir d'Amore , Lucia Di Lammermoor , Les Mamelles de Tirésias , L'Heure Espagnol , Hänsel und Gretel , Cavalleria Rusticana , Pagliacci , The Merry Widow and Der Kaiser Von Atlantis . [8]
Her symphonic and concert work has brought her to Los Angeles, St. Louis, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Seattle, Ravinia Festival, Dallas, Houston, New York, Hannover, Aachen, Düsseldorf, Wiesbaden, Munich, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Paris, Vienna, Milan, Verona, Florence, Prague, Budapest, Moscow, Kiev, St. Petersburg, Madrid, Bilbao, Oviedo, Bratislava, Zagreb, Reykjavik, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Beijing, Toronto, Montreal and Caracas, amongst others. [8]
Her repertoire ranges from Classical to Contemporary music. Personal favorites include Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Mahler, Bruckner, Beethoven, and Brahms.
In 2020, she was nominated for an Opus Klassik 2020 Award as "Conductor of Year," in recognition of her work on the recording of Rossini's Sigismondo.[ citation needed ]
In April 2022, she came up with the idea for the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, eager to find a way to help musicians and others in Ukraine. [9] In the summer of 2022, she embarked on a European and North American tour with the orchestra, including an acclaimed performance at the BBC Proms: "Brahms's Symphony No 4 – conducted by Wilson without score and with serious guts – had raw swagger to burn". [10]
To commence her 2022/23 season, Wilson made her Metropolitan Opera debut, conducting Shostakovich's Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk. [11] Following on from this, she conducted concerts with the Orchestre national de Bordeaux Aquitaine [12] and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra. [13] In November, she made her debut at Teatro Colon, conducting Tosca. [14] In 2023 Wilson returned to Wiesbaden to conduct the Hessisches Staatstheater Orchester. [15] She then conducted the Filarmonia Arturo Toscanini in Parma, Italy. [16] In February 2023, on the eve of the first anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Wilson led a special concert in Lviv, Ukraine commemorating the victims of the invasion. Entitled "The Concert of the Invincibles", Wilson led the orchestra and chorus of the Lviv Opera house in a performance of Verdi's Requiem and Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva's "Bucha Lacrimosa". The concert was broadcast throughout Ukraine on the radio and streamed live. [17] In April 2023, she made her debut with Houston Grand Opera, conducting Salome . [18] Ms. Wilson returned to the Royal Opera House in the summer to conduct Verdi's La traviata . [19] In the summer of 2023, Wilson embarked on a second Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra tour throughout Europe and the UK. [20]
Wilson began the 2023/24 season conducting a concert with the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, [21] [ failed verification ] She then conducted at the Opéra national de Paris conducting Cendrillon, [22] followed by La bohème at the Royal Opera House. [23] In February 2024, a recording of her conducting the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony was released by Deutsche Grammophon. [24] She returned to the English National Opera to conduct Jenufa in March.
Wilson is 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m). In a feature article about her in the April 2004 American edition of Vogue magazine she says it was during her time at Juilliard that she came to feel her height was an asset rather than a liability, saying. "I loved being tall in New York. I came into my own." She speaks Russian, French, Italian and German, and enjoys reading poetry in her free time.
Wilson has been married to Peter Gelb, the General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, since 2003. [1] [2]
Ileana Cotrubaș is a Romanian operatic soprano whose career spanned from the 1960s to the 1980s. She was much admired for her acting skills and facility for singing opera in many different languages.
Carlo Maria Giulini was an Italian conductor. From the age of five, when he began to play the violin, Giulini's musical education was expanded when he began to study at Italy's foremost conservatory, the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome at the age of 16. Initially, he studied the viola and conducting; then, following an audition, he won a place in the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Cheryl Studer is an American dramatic soprano who has sung at many of the world's foremost opera houses. Studer has performed more than eighty roles ranging from the dramatic repertoire to roles more commonly associated with lyric sopranos and coloratura sopranos, and, in her late stage, mezzo-sopranos. She is particularly known for her interpretations of the works of Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner.
Søren Nils Eichberg is a German/Danish classical composer and conductor.
Roberto Abbado is an Italian opera and symphonic music conductor. Currently he is an Artistic Partner of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. In 2015 he has been appointed music director of Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain. From 2018 he's Music Director of the Festival Verdi in Parma. Previously he held the position of Chief Conductor of Münchner Rundfunkorchester.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, CC is a Canadian conductor and pianist. He is currently music director of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montréal), the Metropolitan Opera, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was the principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 to 2018.
Hong Hei-Kyung, often known in the west as Hei-Kyung Hong, is a South Korean operatic lyric soprano.
Jan Lisiecki is a Canadian-born classical pianist of Polish ancestry. Lisiecki performs over a hundred concerts annually and has worked closely with the world's leading orchestras and conductors, in a career at the top of the international concert scene spanning over a decade. He has been a recording artist with Deutsche Grammophon since the age of fifteen.
David Porcelijn is a Dutch composer and conductor.
Yuja Wang is a Chinese pianist. Born in Beijing, she began learning piano there at age six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Frank Lopardo is an American operatic tenor who was born in Brentwood, New York. Early in his career he specialized in the repertoire of Mozart and Rossini and later transitioned to the works of Puccini, Verdi, Donizetti and Bellini.
Marina Rebeka is a Latvian soprano, active on both opera and concert stages. Associated with Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, she performs primarily in the 19th-century Italian and French repertoire, most notably works by Gioachino Rossini, in addition to Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni, another frequent role.
Heather Engebretson is a Chinese-American operatic soprano who made a career mostly in Europe. Based at German opera ensembles for several years, she has worked freelance from 2017, and widened her repertoire from coloratura roles to leading characters such as Puccini's Madama Butterfly. She has been praised for her convincing acting as well as the expressiveness of her lyric voice, with performances including the Royal Opera House in London, the Bolshoi Theatre and Oper Frankfurt.
Michele Mariotti, born in 1979 in Urbino, near Pesaro, is an Italian conductor, the direttore musicale since 2014 of Teatro Comunale di Bologna. A graduate in composition of Pesaro's Conservatorio Rossini, where he also studied orchestral conducting, he made his professional opera debut with Il barbiere di Siviglia in Salerno on Oct. 12, 2005. As of April 2017, his repertory included nine Rossini and eight Verdi operas, an extraordinary achievement, as well as symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner and Schubert, the Rossini Stabat mater, the Mozart Requiem and the Verdi Requiem.
Oksana Lyniv is a Ukrainian conductor.
Joana Mallwitz is a German conductor and pianist.
Elsa Dreisig is a French-Danish operatic soprano. Based at the Berlin State Opera, she made a European career in both opera and concert. Her opera roles include, besides the standard lyric soprano repertoire such as Mozart's Fiordiligi and Bizet's Micaëla, Baroque opera such as Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, and the world premiere of Beat Furrer's Violetter Schnee.
Giedrė Šlekytė is a Lithuanian conductor, who works in Europe with a focus on opera. After she was one of three conductors for the Young Conductor Award of the Salzburg Festival in 2015, she worked at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt for two seasons. She conducted Schreker's Die Gezeichneten at the Opernhaus Zürich, and Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites at the Oper Frankfurt in 2021.
The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra is an orchestra composed of Ukrainian refugees who have fled the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Ukrainian members of other European orchestras. Canadian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who has Ukrainian ancestry, provided the impetus for the creation of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, which the Metropolitan Opera of New York and the Polish National Opera immediately supported as a gesture of solidarity with the victims of the war in Ukraine.
Sung Min Song is a South Korean operatic tenor who has performed internationally, based in Germany. He is focused on Italian opera and 19th-century oratorios including Puccini's Messa di Gloria and Verdi's Requiem. A member of the Saarländisches Staatstheater from 2017, he is capable of performing tenor roles with a high tessitura such as Arnold in Rossini's Guillaume Tell.
Keri-Lynn Wilson and Evelino Pidò conduct three wonderful casts in Richard Jones's captivating production.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
