B i o g r a p h y
Soprano Kristina Bachrach is an artist confident in an extensive range of styles and languages. The 2023-2024 season brought many exciting debuts. She appeared for the first time with the University of Chicago's ensemble-in-residence, the Grossman Ensemble, singing Unsuk Chin's Akrostichon Wortspiel. She also appeared in recital with the Grand Valley Piano Chamber Series, performing works by Clara Kathleen Rogers, Carl Reinecke, and Robert Schumann. She debuted with Dartmouth's Glee Club and the Handel Society as the soprano soloist in their joint performance of Honegger's King David. She also appeared again with many beloved organizations including the Brooklyn Art Song Society, San Antonio College, and Guarneri Hall, in their festival celebrating Bernard Rands' 90th birthday. She once again apppeared with pianist Winston Choi, performing Armando Bayolo's Neruda Enamorado as part of the inaugural concert of the University of Illinois at Springfield's New Music series. She also participated in a remounting of Because I Could Not Stop: An Encounter with Emily Dickinson at both Holyoke Media and the Emily Dickinson Museum.
The previous season saw Ms. Bachrach's debut in Hong Kong, performing a staged rendition of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire at the Intimacy of Creativity festival. That same season Kristina participated in a Musicians from Marlboro tour, performing Shulamit Ran's Moon Songs in six different cities and at Carnegie Hall. She returned to San Antonio College to give a recital and masterclass, and had return performances with Lyric Fest, Brooklyn Art Song Society, and the Marlboro Festival in Vermont. She also had the honor of premiering several new pieces with the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition.
During the COVID-19 crisis Ms. Bachrach appeared in on-line performances with the Agarita Chamber Ensemble, New England Music Camp, Berkshire Choral International, the Metropolis Ensemble, the LYNX Project, MIOpera, Avaloch Farms Music institute, Token Creek Music Festival, Pegasus, Brooklyn Art Song Society, and the Artist Presentation Society of Saint Louis. She also performed in the on-line premiere of Njabulo Phungula's Lingering Echoes with the Thompson Street Opera Company.
As live performance returned in 2021, Ms. Bachrach returned to the Yellow Barn Festival to perform works by Eisler, Janáček, Bach, Crumb, James Macmillan, and Karen Rehnqvist. That fall she performed with the Nexus Chamber Music Festival at the Ravinia Pavilion as part of the festival's mainstage series. The group performed Alma Mahler's 5 Lieder alongside the world premiere of Upon Wings of Words, which was written for the group by Augusta Read Thomas. That same season she appeared in recital with Washington D.C.'s Constellations Chamber Series, the LYNX Project, Boston's Music for Food and Vermont's Marlboro Music Fesitval. She also participated in a staged reading with Chicago Opera Theater, and performed David Ludwig's Songs from the Bleeding Pines with the Brooklyn Art Song Society, both in NYC and on tour in North Carolina.
2019 saw Ms. Bachrach performing solo recitals through Dame Myra Hess and the Artist Presentation Society of Saint Louis Ms. Bachrach made her Japanese debut in a series of opera galas and she joined the roster of Chicago Opera Theater covering the role of Mae in the world premiere of Freedom Ride. . During the 2019-2020 season, Ms. Bachrach returned to the Brooklyn Art Song Society for concerts of Britten Folk Song Arrangements and Grieg’s 6 Lieder Op. 48 and to the Center for Contemporary Opera for their workshop of Outcast at the Gate. That same season saw Ms. Bachrach performing solo recitals through Dame Myra Hess and the Artist Presentation Society of Saint Louis. Ms. Bachrach made her Japanese debut in a series of opera galas and she joined the roster of Chicago Opera Theater covering the role of Mae in the world premiere of Freedom Ride.
In the fall of 2018, Ms. Bachrach made her off-Broadway debut with Ensemble for the Romantic Century for a 39-show run of their original work Because I Could Not Stop: An Encounter with Emily Dickinson. Also in 2018, she joined New York's Center for Contemporary Opera as the principal soprano characters in Taggart's Swan's Inlet and Pascal Dusapin's To Be Sung. Her 2017 operatic appearances included Musetta in MetroWest Opera Company's production of La femme bohème, an all-female take on Puccini's evergreen masterpiece; her American Lyric Theater debut as part of their The New Crew event, presenting the initial hearings of works by Shuying Li and Andy Teirstein; and Susanna in Bare Opera's two-hour Mozart / Rossini pastiche Figaro / Figaro! She also appeared in concert with the String Orchestra of Brooklyn as soloist for Knoxville: Summer of 1915. A frequent and beloved guest artist with the Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS), she appeared with them on a variety of French mélodie concert programs throughout the season. In the spring of 2018 Ms. Bachrach served as Artist-In-Residence at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she performed a recital and delivered a lecture on music by composers who were suppressed or killed during the Holocaust.
During the 2016–2017 season, Ms. Bachrach made her debut with the New York Choral Society at St. Patrick's Cathedral for the American premiere of Joseph Vella's The Hyland Mass, produced by the Order of Malta, and joined the Brooklyn Art Song Society (BASS) in repertoire ranging from Schubert Lieder to Hanns Eisler's Hollywood Liederbuch. In recent seasons, Ms. Bachrach has become increasingly in demand for fulfilling prestigious artist residencies. During the summer of 2019, she returned for a third consecutive season to North America's most prestigious chamber music retreat, the Marlboro Music Festival. In the spring of 2017, she joined the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar under the guidance of Stephanie Blythe and Alan Smith, to focus on the study and performance of song literature written by living composers. Ms. Bachrach served as a 2016 Artist in Residence at Yellow Barn Music Festival and at SongFest, where she gave a recital with composer John Musto at the piano.
As a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, Ms. Bachrach performed Pierrot Lunaire and was a featured soloist in the Mark Morris Dance Group's production of Dido and Aeneas. She enjoys a long-standing relationship with SongFest at Colburn, as a three-time recipient of the Marc and Eva Stern Fellowship, and has recorded songs of John Harbison for a new recording commemorating SongFest's twentieth anniversary.
Ms. Bachrach's concert activity includes recital performances of Milhaud's rarely-performed song cycle Alissa in the Masterworks Series at BargeMusic and at Notre Dame University, and performances of Schoenberg's Second String Quartet with the Cantata Profana Ensemble in New Haven and New York. Additional New York performances include her appearance with the Westchester Choral Society for their 2013 Christmas concert, her debut with the String Orchestra of Brooklyn as the soprano soloist in the Pergolesi Stabat Mater, and her Carnegie Hall debut with the Cecilia Chorus and Orchestra as the soprano soloist in the Bruckner Te Deum at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium. Ms. Bachrach has performed in recital under the auspices of the Moravian Music Foundation and the Joy in Singing Foundation, and toured a Brahms Lieder program with the Brooklyn Art Song Society.
Equally adventurous as an operatic artist, Ms. Bachrach has appeared in new and rarely-performed repertoire with Thompson Street Opera Company (Louisville, KY and Chicago, IL), Gotham Chamber Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Opera Naples, and New York's Bare Opera, in whose inaugural production of L'enfant et les sortilèges she made her role debuts as the Princess and Shepherdess. Ms. Bachrach has fulfilled residencies with Nashville Opera, where she appeared as Clorinda in La Cenerentola and Papagena in Die Zauberflöte, and Lyric Opera of Virginia, where she returned to perform Musetta in La bohème.
Ms. Bachrach holds degrees from Mannes College and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (summa cum laude). She is an award winner with the Artists Presentation Society of St. Louis, Ziering-Conlon Art Song Competition, American Prize Competition, the Philharmonic Society of Arlington’s Young Artist Competition, the Metrowest Opera Competition, and the Schuyler Foundation for Career Bridges.