Rachel Calloway, mezzo-soprano

calloway

Rachel Calloway’s recognition continues at a very high level as a leading proponent and interpreter of contemporary music and the avant-garde. She has focused her career on works by living composers who champion their celebrated mentors.

Recently she appeared with New York’s Ensemble Signal in a program of Composer Portraits trumpeting the work of the Korean born composer, Unsuk Chin; concerts with the Amernet String Quartet at Bowdoin College a world première by Vineet Shende and Gabriela Ortiz’s Baalkah; Chameleon Arts Ensemble with performances in Boston; and Ekmeles music ensemble performing works by Salvatore Sciarrino, Kaija Saariaho, Peter Ablinger, Evan Johnson, and Thanasis Deligiannis.

In the 2013-14 season Ms. Calloway made her Latin American debut at the Festival Internacional Cervantino with the Amernet String Quartet and sang the world première of Gabriela Frank’s Santos with the San Francisco Girls’ Choir with Joana Carneiro conducting. She also created the title role in the first staged production of Mohammed Fairouz’s Sumedia’s Song in the inaugural Prototype Festival in New York City and later returned to France for performances of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. She also appeared with Ensemble Signal in a portrait concert of Oliver Knussen at Miller Theater and with Alarm Will Sound singing Donnacha Dennehy’s The Hunger in New York’s Zankel Hall and St. Louis. With the contemporary vocal ensemble Ekmeles, Ms. Calloway performed at Princeton University, Roulette, and the Bohemian National Hall in with Talea Ensemble in Beat Furrer’s FAMA. This summer she made her Lincoln Center Festival debut with Ensemble Signal in Monkey Opera: Journey to the West and appeared at the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival singing works by Brahms and George Crumb.

She made her European debut in 2011-12 as Mrs. Grose in The Turn of the Screw in theatres across France and was guest artist with the Manhattan School in an orchestration by Steven Stucky of the Spanisches Liederbuch. In addition to the world première of Mohammad Fairouz’s Third Symphony at Miller Theater, other highlights include debuts with the Berkeley Symphony under Joana Carneiro and Cal Performances with Lorin Maazel at the Castleton Festival. She has performed with Tulsa Opera, Central City Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, the Kennedy Center, Steinway Hall, the Bulgarian Consulate, the Chautauqua Institution, Alice Tully Hall, and the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. She joins the faculty of Cortona Sessions for New Music this summer.