American soprano Ilana Davidson brings a crystalline soprano, assured musicality and interpretive insight to repertoire spanning the 12th to the 21st centuries. She has closely collaborated with composers William Bolcom, John Zorn and Bright Sheng. And conductors Alan Gilbert, Jaap van Zweden, Keith Lockhart, Reinbert de Leeuw, Oliver Knussen, Miguel Harth-Bedoya , Harry Bicket, Carl St. Clair, Michael Riesman, Lothar Zagrosek, Lawrence Renes and Claus Peter Flor.
Her recording of William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and of Experience conducted by Leonard Slatkin won four Grammy Awards including Best Classical Album.
Ms. Davidson made her Carnegie Hall debut in Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience with Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony. Recent Carnegie Hall appearances include Mahler's Second Symphony with the Boston Philharmonic. She made her Avery Fisher Hall debut in Carl Orff's Trionfo di Afrodite with Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra. Alice Tully Hall appearances include a debut as the Wife in Philip Glass/Robert Moran's The Juniper Tree to rave reviews. And this season at Alice Tully Hall Ms. Davidson gabe the New York Premier of Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon’s Pluck.Pound.Peel.
Ms. Davidson has sung Carmina Burana with the Houston, Edmonton, Reading, Alabama and Toledo Symphonies; and appeared at the Monadnock, Bard, Berkshire Choral and Staunton Music Festivals, the latter as Galatea in Händel’s Acis and Galatea. Engagements with Yoav Talmi and the Québec Symphony include Amor in Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice and Mahler’s Second Symphony; she also sang the Fauré Requiem with the Charlotte Symphony under Thierry Fischer; J.S. Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium, Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen and a series of many Bach Cantatas with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, BWV 49 and 58 with Boston's Handel and Haydn Society; Cupid in Purcell's King Arthur in Stuttgart, Amor in Legrenzi's La Divisione del Mondo conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock with the Innsbruck Altemusik Festwochen and The Schwetzingen Festspiele; Händel's Messiah with the Pacific, Ann Arbor, Alabama, Nashville Symphonies, and National Philharmonic; the Angel in Schütz's A Christmas Story at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (NPR); Haydn's Creation with Philadelphia's Voces Novae et Antiqua and Harrisburg Symphony. In Amsterdam she has sung Mozart arias with Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam; Zerlina in Don Giovanni with the National Philharmonic; Papagena in Die Zauberflöte with the Vlaamse Opera and Staatsoper Stuttgart; the Requiem with the Schleierbacher Chamber Orchestra and Harrisburg Symphony; Mass in C Minor and Solemn Vespers of the Confessor at the Berkshire Choral Festival.
Ms. Davidson’s operatic experience includes the world premiere of Libby Larson's opera Everyman Jack, Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Chef der Gepopo in Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, and Erste Blumenmädchen in Parsifal, all performed in the Netherlands; Flora in The Turn of the Screw and Amore in L'incoronazione di Poppea with the Florida Grand Opera.
This season includes her debut with Miguel Harth-Bedoya in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate, return engagements with the Callithumpian Consort of Boston, Schoenberg String Quartet No 2 at the Curtis Institute of Music with Ida Kavafian, a DVD production in works of Ernst Krenek with pianist Mikhail Korzhev in LA, This spring Ms. Davidson sings Mahler’s Second Symphony with Colorado Springs and Dayton Philharmonic. The 2013 season includes Ein Deutches Requiem with Grant Llewellyn and the North Carolina Symphony, Mahler’s Second Symphony with Rhode Island Philharmonic and Exsultate Jubilate with Wheeling Symphony.
Other recordings include John Zorn’s Chimeras (Tzadik), Kurt Weill's Down in the Valley (Capriccio), Stanley Kubrick's Mountain Home by Paul Elwood and What Price Confidence by Ernst Krenek (Capriccio).
Ms. Davidson is a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music. She was a vocal fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and a participant in the Aston Magna Early Music Academy.
Ms. Davidson is the co-founder of ClassicalCafé.org concert series, and is a member of both the National Association of Teachers of Singing and NYSTA.