Possessing a voice praised by the San Francisco
Chronicle for its “effortless precision and tonal luster,” Grammy
Award-winning soprano Jessica Rivera is one of the most creatively inspired
vocal artists performing before the public today. The intelligence, dimension
and spirituality with which she infuses her performances on great international
concert and opera stages has garnered Ms. Rivera unique artistic collaborations
with many of today’s most celebrated composers, including John Adams, Osvaldo
Golijov, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jonathan Leshnoff, Nico Muhly, and Paola
Prestini, and has brought her together with such esteemed conductors as Gustavo
Dudamel, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Markus Stenz, Bernard
Haitink, and Michael Tilson Thomas.
During the 2019-2020 season, Ms. Rivera returns to the
Aspen Music Festival for an evening of Spanish art songs with guitarist Sharon
Isbin. She performs Golijov’s La Pasión
según San Marcos in her debut with the Minnesota Orchestra, led by María
Guinand. Additional orchestral engagements include Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Colorado
Symphony and Brett Mitchell, Golijov’s She
Was Here with the Milwaukee Symphony and Ken-David Masur, Mahler’s Symphony
No. 2, "Resurrection,” with the Grand Rapids Symphony and Marcelo
Lehninger, and Frank’s Conquest Requiem
with the Nashville Symphony and Giancarlo Guerrero in a performance to be recorded
live for future release on Naxos.
A
champion of new music, Ms. Rivera recently gave the world premiere of Nico
Muhly’s The Right of Your Senses,
commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and performed by the National Children’s Chorus and the American Youth
Symphony conducted by Carlos Izcaray at Walt Disney Concert Hall. A major voice
in the rich culture of Latin American music and composers, Ms. Rivera recently performed
in Antonio Lysy’s beloved Te Amo
Argentina with Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and partnered with pianist
Mark Carver for a recital titled Homage
to Victoria de los Angeles at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach,
Florida. Recent seasons have seen Ms. Rivera premiere Gabriela Lena
Frank’s ConquestRequiem with the Houston Symphony and Chorus conducted by Andrés
Orozco-Estrada, and perform John Harbison’s Requiem with the Nashville
Symphony and Chorus under Giancarlo Guerrero, recorded and released on the
Naxos label in October 2018.
Ms. Rivera treasures her decade-long collaboration with
Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and was recently featured as
soprano soloist in Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem and Jonathan
Leshnoff’s Zohar with the ASO and Chorus at Carnegie Hall. Additionally,
she joined Spano for Richard Strauss’s Four
Last Songs with the Fort Worth Symphony and for Christopher Theofanidis’s Creation/Creator
in Atlanta and at the Kennedy Center’s 2017 SHIFT Festival of American
Orchestras. Here she also sang Robert Spano’s Hölderlin Lieder, a song
cycle written specifically for her and recorded on the ASO Media label.
Recent orchestral highlights include Gabriela Lena
Frank’s La Centinela y la Paloma with
the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra led by Federico Cortese, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with Jerry Hou
at the Grand Teton Music Festival, Mozart’s Requiem
with the Louisville Orchestra conducted by Teddy Abrams, Handel’s Messiah with the Nashville Symphony and
Giancarlo Guerrero, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Thomas Søndergård, Mahler’s
Fourth Symphony with Colombia’s Orquestra Filarmónica de Bogotá led by Juan
Felipe Molano, the Mozart Requiem with the San Diego Symphony under the
baton of Markus Stenz and with Roberto Abbado leading the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra, Brahms Requiem with the Kansas City Symphony, the Mozart
orchestration of Handel’s Messiah with Ottawa’s National Arts Centre
Orchestra with Alexander Shelley, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Five Images After Sappho and Poulenc’s Gloria with the Colorado Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony with the Grand Rapids Symphony, Barber’s Knoxville:
Summer of 1915 with Karina Canellakis and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra,
Strauss’s Orchesterlieder with Johannes Stert and the Orquestra
Sinfónica Portuguesa in Lisbon, and Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 with Gustavo
Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among many others. She joined in the celebrations of Leonard Bernstein’s
centennial at the Celebrity Series of Boston’s What Makes It Great with
Rob Kapilow and performed the role of Eileen in Bernstein’s Wonderful
Town for her debut with the Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot.
Ms. Rivera has worked closely with John Adams throughout
her career, and received international praise for the world premiere of A
Flowering Tree, singing the role of Kumudha in a production directed by
Peter Sellars at Vienna’s New Crowned Hope Festival. Under Adams’s baton, she
has sung the role with the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic,
Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lincoln Center and the London Symphony Orchestra at
the Barbican Centre. She has also performed Kumudha in her debut with the
Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle, the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in
Lisbon and the Cincinnati Opera led by Joana Carneiro. Ms. Rivera made her
European operatic debut as Kitty Oppenheimer in Sellars’s acclaimed production
of Adams’s Doctor Atomic with the Netherlands Opera, a role that also
served for her debuts at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Finnish National Opera and
Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Spain. She joined the roster of the
Metropolitan Opera for its new production of Doctor Atomic under the
direction of Alan Gilbert. Ms. Rivera has also performed Nixon Tapes
with the Pittsburgh Symphony under John Adams’s direction, as well as his
composition El Niño with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Saint Louis
Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson, San Francisco Symphony under John
Adams, and at the Edinburgh International Festival with James Conlon and the
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Ms. Rivera made her critically acclaimed Santa Fe Opera
debut in the summer of 2005 as Nuria in the world premiere of the revised
edition of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar. She reprised the role for the
2007 Grammy Award-winning Deutsche Grammophon recording of the work with the
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Robert Spano, and bowed in the Peter Sellars
staging at Lincoln Center and Opera Boston, as well as in performances at the
Barbican Centre, the Adelaide Festival of Arts, Cincinnati Opera, and the Ojai,
Ravinia, and New Zealand International Arts Festivals. Performances of
Margarita Xirgu in Ainadamar took
place in the summer of 2007 at the Colorado Music Festival under the
baton of Michael Christie and she reprised the part recently for the Teatro
Real in Madrid.
Committed to the art of recital, Ms. Rivera has appeared in
concert halls in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Cincinnati,
Oklahoma City, Las Vegas and Santa Fe. She was deeply honored to receive a
commission from Carnegie Hall for the World Premiere of Nico Muhly’s song cycle
entitled The Adulteress, for her Weill Hall recital performance.
As a recording artist, Ms. Rivera’s extensive discography
includes releases on the Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Naxos, Telarc, Urtext, VIA
Records, Opus Arte, CSO Resound, and ASO Media labels. Her third release for
Urtext, an Homage to Victoria de los Angeles, is due for release in 2020.
Updated JULY 2019