Janna Baty

Janna Baty
mezzo-soprano

Hailed by The London Financial Times for her "eloquent dignity and vibrant tone" and by The Boston Globe for her "sumptuous tone and vivid theatrical presence," soprano Janna Baty enjoys an exceptionally versatile career. Recent engagements include appearances with the Hamburgische Staatsoper, Orchestre National du Capitole Toulouse, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Yale Symphony, Tallahassee Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogatá (Columbia), Eugene Opera, Opera North, and Boston Lyric Opera. She has sung under Seiji Ozawa, Michel Plasson, Carl Davis, Robert Spano, Steuart Bedfored, Shinik Hahm, and Paul Moravec, among others. She has appeared at the Aldeburgh and Britten Festivals in England, the Semanas Musicales de Frutillar Festival in Chile, and the Tanglewood and Norfolk Festivals in the US. Her most notable opera roles include the Duchess (Powder Her Face), Alice Ford (Falstaff), Donna Anna and Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), the Countess (Le nozze di Figaro), Vittelia (La Clemenza di Tito), Madame Lidoine (Dialogues of the Carmélites), Lady Billows (Albert Herring), Musetta (La Bohème), La Ciesca (Gianni Schicchi), Dinah (Trouble in Tahiti), the Mother (Amahl and the Night Visitors), the Contessa di Folleville (Il viaggio a Rheims), and Mrs. Grose (The Turn of the Screw).

Equally at home in both standard and contemporary repertoire, she appears regularly with such noted contemporary ensembles as Collage New Music, Auros Group for New Music, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and has worked alongside many composers including Bernard Rands, Sydney Hodkinson, Peter Child, Christopher Lyndon Gee, Fred Lerdahl, Yehudi Wyner, and John Harbison, on performances of their music. Winner of several international competitions, most notably the XXI Concurso Internacional de Ejecución Musical "Dr. Luis Sigall" (Chile), she has given concerts across Europe, the US, and South America, in the company of such distinguished musicians as violist Nobuko Imai, pianists Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, and Christopher Lyndon Gee, and guitarist Stephen Marchionda. She can be heard on the critically-acclaimed recording of Lukas Foss's opera Griffelkin (Chandos, 2003); and on Vali: Flute Concerto/Deylaman/Folk Songs No. 10 (Naxos, 2004), on which she sings orchestral songs in Persian by Iranian composer, Reza Vali. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and Yale School of Music, she is married to acclaimed jazz guitarist and singer Doug Wimble.

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Performances

Voice of America: Florestan Recital Project presents BarberFest
Distler Performance Hall at Tufts University | September 26, 2009
Concert Details
Winter's Tale
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | March 20, 2009
Concert Details
Our American Cousin
Buckley Recital Hall at Amherst College | March 31, 2007
Concert Details
Bernard Rands: Canti Trilogy
Capistrano Hall at California State University, Sacramento | November 5, 2004
Concert Details
Bernard Rands: Canti Trilogy
Edward M. Pickman Concert Hall at Longy | October 29, 2004
Concert Details
Lukas Foss: Griffelkin
Ozawa Hall at Tangelwood | July 25, 2002
Concert Details
Lukas Foss: Griffelkin
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | March 29, 2002
Concert Details
Sounds of the Near East
Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory | March 24, 1999
Concert Details

News and Press

[CD Review] The Classical Voice of New England reviews John Harbison: Full Moon in March
This recording from Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project includes two of John Harbison’s prominent vocal works, the Mirabai Songs and his opera, Full Moon in March. The former is based on a text by a 16th-century Indian mystical poet and street-dancer, while the latter is loosely adapted by the composer from a play by William Butler Yeats. The last piece on this recording is an elegiac tribute to Calvin Simmons, a young conductor of the Oakland Symphony who died in a boating accident.
Classical Voice of New England Full review
[Concert Review] Harbison's ambitious Winter's Tale arrives with spring
John Harbison’s music is so ubiquitous here that you might think there was nothing more to discover. Yet until Friday, Boston had never heard Winter’s Tale, the Shakespeare-based opera he composed in the 1970s. The ever-intrepid Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s concert performance took place, ironically, on the first day of spring.
The Boston Globe Full review
[Concert Review] Mad love
The destructive power of jealousy makes a good subject for opera. One of Shakespeare’s plays about this most irrational emotion, the tragedy Othello, has been turned into a very good opera by Rossini and a great one by Verdi and his best librettist, Arrigo Boito.
The Boston Phoenix Full review
[CD Review] American Record Guide reviews Eric Sawyer: Our American Cousin
A glance at the above cast list might prove to be confusing. Here real people are juxtaposed with characters from a play. What kind of opera is this? A finely crafted, cleverly inventive one. Librettist John Shoptaw has combined a play (Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor, 1851) and real history (the assassination of President Lincoln, April 14, 1865). The assassination is told from the perspective of the actors performing the play at Ford’s Theater in Washington. Backstage and audience realities alternate with (decidedly unfunny and rather too many) scenes from the play.
American Record Guide Full review
[CD Review] ClassicalCDReview reviews Eric Sawyer: Our American Cousin
Don’t expect the Tom Taylor comedy Lincoln attended the night he got shot. The opera tells the story of the Lincoln assassination seen through the viewpoints mainly of the actors in Ford’s Theater. The effect comes close to what it would be like if Hamlet were told by the company of players. One notes a lot of talk about the Founding Fathers these days, and other than the cynical manipulations of those figures and their thought according to whatever party line, it probably goes through and over most people’s heads.
ClassicalCDReview Full review

 

It is a short, sentimental, and gentle personal piece of music that points forward rather than wrapping up the entire CD.

— Classical Voice of New England Full review