Upshaw has been featured on more than 50 recordings, including recital discs of music ranging from Baroque to contemporary, as well as several recordings of music-theater material and full-length operas. Since her 1987 Grammy® Award-winning debut disc Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Upshaw has been featured on 20 Nonesuch discs, including the internationally successful Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Górecki, which has sold more than one million copies. Her recent recording of Berg's Lyric Suite with the Kronos Quartet earned a Grammy® in 2004.

On the opera stage, Upshaw has performed the great Mozart roles as well as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc and Messiaen. From Salzburg and Paris to New York, she has championed the creation of numerous new operatic and orchestral works, including those by John Adams, Henri Dutilleux, Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison and Kaija Saariaho.

As a recitalist, Upshaw has premiered more than 40 works in the past decade. From the three stages of the venerable Carnegie Hall to large and small venues throughout the world, she regularly presents specially designed programs composed of art songs, unusual 20th-century works and folk and popular music. A consummate collaborator, Upshaw has worked with many leading musicians and stage directors, including Richard Goode, the Kronos Quartet, James Levine, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Peter Sellars.

Upshaw was recently selected as a prestigious Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist—the first singer to be given this honor. Her Perspectives concerts began in the spring of 2004 with the world premiere of Golijov's Ayre in Zankel Hall. Commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation, this new work for small chamber ensemble and voice is a collection of traditional and new folk songs in several different languages, arranged by the composer to work as a companion piece to Luciano Berio's Folk Songs, which was also on the program. These two folk song collections—from Upshaw's performance in Carnegie Hall's new Zankel Hall—are featured in her Creators at Carnegie program. Interviews with Upshaw and Golijov round out the program. This latest installment in the Creators at Carnegie series highlights the exciting collaboration that features Nonesuch Records' artists playing a key role in Carnegie Hall's new and adventurous programming.

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