Dawn Upshaw & Brentano Quartet: Melinda Wagner’s Dido Reimagined

Hailed as “brilliant, virtuosic, and still mellow” (Los Angeles Times), the dynamos of the Brentano Quartet treat masterpieces with reverence and enthusiasm, rendering performances with equal passion and precision. In this concert, the Brentanos are joined by five-time Grammy Award-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw for their latest project: Dido Reimagined, a monodrama for quartet and voice composed by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Melinda Wagner and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann in collaboration with Dawn. Sparked by the famous “Dido’s Lament” from Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, the large-scale work is paired with Purcell’s aria and other selections from Baroque opera.

Since forming at The Juilliard School in 1992, the Brentano Quartet has recorded numerous gold-standard performances of Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Haydn and has won prestigious awards including the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award. A crucial note of distinction for Brentano has been a sharp eye for cohesive if counterintuitive programs.

A MacArthur Fellow and an American Academy of Arts & Sciences Fellow, soprano Dawn Upshaw exudes natural warmth and communicative power that has earned acclaim across repertoire on operatic and concert stages and has solidified partnerships with many of today’s greatest composers and ensembles, including Gilbert Kalish, the Kronos Quartet and Esa-Pekka Salonen.