Winner, Astral Artists’ 2009 National Auditions
Consistently singled out by critics for her “perfect baroque voice” (Seattle Times), Russian-American soprano Yulia Van Doren has established herself as a rising star of the new generation of Baroque specialists. Of her performance of Handel arias with conductor Nicholas McGegan, Northwest Reverb wrote, “It was immediately obvious why she is so highly regarded despite her relative youth: she sang in a dizzyingly intricate coloratura, flawless in timbre while executing rapid, difficult ornamentation with pinpoint accuracy, despite the merciless tempo.” Her operatic debut as the title role in L’Incoronazione di Poppea with Stephen Stubbs and the Early Music Guild of Seattle received unanimous critical acclaim, with one reviewer calling her the “Anna Netrebko of early music” (OperaNow!).
Ms. Van Doren recently appeared as soloist at the Cartagena International Music Festival, in Bach’s Coffee Cantata with the Brentano String Quartet and in nationally televised performances of Bach’s B minor Mass with soprano Dawn Upshaw and the City of London Sinfonia. Dawn Upshaw is an important mentor; Ms. Van Doren was personally invited by the legendary soprano to be a member of the inaugural class of her graduate program at Bard College, where she received her Master’s degree in 2008. Other recent engagements include returns to the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Pacific Musicworks, Seraphic Fire, American Bach Soloists, Clarion Music Society, the Ottawa Chamber Music and Vancouver Early Music festivals, and two major roles with the Boston Early Music Festival: Belinda in Dido and Aeneas, and Manto in the North American première of Agostino Steffani’s Niobe. In recent seasons she has also appeared with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Phoenix Symphony, Asheville Symphony, Pacific Symphony, UC Davis Symphony, Colorado Music Festival, and Mercury Baroque, as well as with the ensembles Tragicomedia, Teatro Lirico, and Harmonious Blacksmith.
Ms. Van Doren’s extensive upcoming engagements include a tour to the Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, and Tanglewood festivals with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra as Dorinda in Handel’s Orlando, Dido and Aeneas with Philharmonia Baroque and the Mark Morris Dance Group, Galatea in Handel’s Acis and Galatea at China’s Macau International Music Festival with the Akademie für alte Musik Berlin, Mereo in Scarlatti’s Tigrane with Opéra de Nice, Betsy in the modern revival of Monsigny’s Le Roi et le Fermier with Opera Lafayette (a production that tours to the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and Versailles and will be recorded for Naxos), St. Theresa in Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts with the Mark Morris Dance Group at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Messiah with both the Houston Symphony and the Vancouver Chamber Choir, chamber music concerts with the Folger Consort, debuts with the American Symphony Orchestra (at the Bard Music Festival in Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3) and Chicago’s Music of the Baroque, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah with Nashville Symphony. A winner of Astral Artists’ 2009 National Auditions, she makes her Philadelphia recital debut in January 2012 on Astral’s series.
Passionate about 20th- and 21st-century music, Ms. Van Doren recently sang the Hungarian première of Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, marking her European debut. She made her Carnegie Hall debut premièring a specially commissioned work by Taiwanese composer Angel Lam, and created the role of Bird in British composer David Bruce’s opera A Bird In Your Ear at Bard Conservatory, which was also showcased at New York City Opera’s VOX Festival.
The only singer to win top prizes in all four North American Bach vocal competitions, Yulia Van Doren recorded her debut solo disc with the American Bach Soloists in the spring of 2011. Her discography also includes two Grammy-nominated opera recordings with the Boston Early Music Festival, a disc of rare French baroque music with ensemble La Donna Musicale, and a forthcoming disc of early English music with Canadian ensemble Les Voix Baroques, to be released on the ATMA label in 2011.
Born in Moscow and raised in the United States, Ms. Van Doren has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival, Villecroze Académie (France) and Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme (UK). She has been the recipient of numerous academic scholarships, including the Soros Fellowship for New Americans. She is also the recent winner of a prestigious Frank Huntington Beebe fellowship for European study.
Updated: JULY 2011
