Elizabeth Keusch

American soprano Elizabeth Keusch is rapidly emerging as an artist to watch and has already been heard in major venues worldwide. She has performed recently in Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and composer/conductor Thomas Ades in works by Castiglioni and Kurtag and in the Seattle Chamber Players’ Icebreaker III Festival. Ms. Keusch made her Arizona Opera debut in the past season as Polly Peachum in Bernard Uzan’s production of Kurt Weill’s Three Penny Opera conducted by George Hanson. The 2005-06 season also saw her debut with Washington DC Choral Arts Society in Mozart’s Requiem conducted by Norman Scribner, and with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Elliott Carter’s Tempo e tempi, conducted by Scott Yoo. Successive engagements since 2003 with Maestro Helmut Rilling of the Oregon Bach Festival and Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart include Handel’s Belshazzar (role of Nitocres), Jeptha (role of Iphis), the Bach Magnificat, Bach Cantatas 14, 36, 112, 140, 147, Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem and C Minor Mass and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. In Spring 2005 she performed Elijah with Maestro Rilling in her Seattle Symphony debut.

Last season, Ms. Keusch returned to the Chameleon Arts Ensemble for Harbison’s Book of Hours and Seasons, sang Messiah with the Peniel Concert Choir at Avery Fisher Hall and collaborated with Bang on a Can in Lost Objects. Next season, Mahler’s 8th Symphony with the Canterbury Choral Society is on the program.

She began the 2010/11 season singing Mahler Symphony No. 8 with Nashua Symphony, then went to Luxembourg, Paris and Amsterdam to perform Helmut Lachenmann’s . . .got lost. . .. In the Spring of 2011 she sang Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen and Gyorgy Kurtag’s Scenes from a Novel with Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston, Mozart’s Requiem with the Choral Arts Society of Washington at Kennedy Center as well as Ralph Johnson’s St. Olaf and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms with Handel Society of Dartmouth College.

Highlights of the 2009/10 season included …got lost…at the ECLAT Festival Neue Musik in Stuttgart, Germany, and a Mozart Requiem and Haydn’s Paukenmesse with the National Chorale at Avery Fisher Hall. During the summer of 2010 she is heard at the Oregon Bach Festival and with the Colorado Symphony.

Season 2008/09 brought debut performances with the Cleveland Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra chamber ensemble in Oliver Knussen’s Requiem: Songs for Sue, two engagements with Louisiana Philharmonic in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Handel’s Messiah, as well as Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the Helena Symphony. She also gave a recital at New York’s 92^nd Street Y in celebration of Maurice Sendak, joined the Asheville Choral Society in Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony, and appeared with Boston Musica Viva in Chris Arrell’s All Fall Down.

Season 2007-08 continued the successful collaboration with Helmut Rilling in Britten’s War Requiem with the Bachakademie Stuttgart. Other notable engagements included a recital at the Jasper Arts Center and performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Handel’s Messiah with the National Chorale under Martin Josman. During 2006-07 Ms. Keusch made her debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Knussen’s Songs for Sue under the composer’s direction, appeared with Helmuth Rilling and the International Bachakademie Stuttgart as Merab in Handel’s Saul and sang under Norman Scribner and the DC Choral Arts Society in Poulenc’s Stabat Mater and Amy Beach’s Canticle to the Sun. Appearances with the Florida Orchestra in Schubert’s Mass No. 6 under Stephan Sanderling and the Xalapa Symphony with Haydn’s Jahreszeiten under Carlos Miguel Prieto rounded out the season.

Performances of Academy-Award winning composer Tan Dun’s Water Passion for St. Matthew have taken her to the Europaische Musikfest 2000 in Stuttgart, Germany for the world premiere and to both Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2002 Next Wave and 2005 South Street Seaport Festivals in New York City, the 2002 Oregon Bach Festival, the 2003 Macau International Festival and the 2005 Perth International Arts Festival. The soprano has performed additional works of Tan Dun with the Taipei Symphony, Singapore Symphony and Shanghai Broadcasting Orchestras. Ms. Keusch’s Boston Symphony Orchestra debut with conductor Robert Spano occurred with the 2000 American premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión Según San Marcos.

Other orchestral performances include Beethoven’s 9^thSymphony with Dallas Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, George Benjamin’s Mind of Winter and Oliver Knussen’s Whitman Settings with Berlin Philharmonic and New World Symphonies, Liszt’s Missa Solemnis with American Symphony Orchestra, Handel’s Messiah with Minnesota Symphony, and the Mater Gloriosa in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with Boston Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra. Widely recognized for her remarkable musicianship, Ms. Keusch is an avid champion of chamber music and new music. In 06 the soprano toured Portugal with Ensemble Contrapunctus performing Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Shostokovich’s Seven Block Songs. The soprano has had successive collaborations on Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series and with Boston Musica Viva, Collage New Music (Boston), the Seattle Chamber Players and Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin. In 2005 Ms. Keusch has toured the northeast with both the Borromeo and Brentano String Quartets performing Schoenberg’s 2^nd String Quartet, and she debuted at the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in Alice Tully Hall with the Pacifica Quartet in Osvaldo Golijov’s Tenebre and How Slow the Wind.

Also in demand for opera productions worldwide, the soprano gave the 2005 world premiere of Matthias Pintscher’s L’espace dernier conducted by Kwame Ryan in her debut with Opéra National de Paris and she also premiered Paul-Heinz Dittrich’s opera Zerbrochene Bilder (role of Medea) with the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin and Musikakademie Rheinsberg. She also performed the leading role of First Soprano in Helmut Lachenmann’s Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern with the Stuttgart Staatsoper in Stuttgart and Paris with director Peter Mussbach and conductor Lothar Zagrosek. She repeated the work in a production directed by Alfred Kirchner with Neue Oper Wien in the 2003 Wiener Festwochen. With Encompass New Opera Theatre (NYC) the soprano was seen as Yvonne in Antheil’s Venus in Africa, Phaedra in Britten’s dramatic oratorio of the same name and the title role in Argento’s Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night. Ms. Keusch holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Texas, a Master’s of Music Degree and an Artist Diploma from New England Conservatory. While at New England Conservatory she was named the 2001 Presidential Scholar for the Conservatory. The soprano was a Tanglewood Fellow in summers 1997 and 1999. Elizabeth Keusch resides in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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Elizabeth Keusch, soprano