Janna Baty

 

Biography

 

Praised by the Boston Globe for “a rich, viola-like tone and a rapturous, luminous lyricism,” mezzo-soprano Janna Baty enjoys an exceptionally versatile career as a mezzo soprano and as an educator. She has sung with Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Daejeon Philharmonic, Hamburgische Staatsoper, L’Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Tallahassee Symphony, Tuscaloosa Symphony, South Florida Symphony, Longwood Symphony, Hartford Symphony, the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Eugene Opera, Opera North, and Boston Lyric Opera. She has sung under the batons of James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Michel Plasson, Carl Davis, Robert Spano, Steuart Bedford, Stephen Lord, Stefan Asbury, Gil Rose, David Hoose, and Shinik Hahm, among numerous others. As a soloist, chamber musician, and recitalist, she has performed at festivals worldwide, including the Aldeburgh and Britten Festivals in England, the Varna Festival in Bulgaria, the Semanas Musicales de Frutillar Festival in Chile, and the Tanglewood, Norfolk, Monadnock, and Coastal Carolina festivals in the United States. A noted specialist in contemporary music, Ms. Baty has worked alongside many celebrated composers, including John Harbison, Bernard Rands, Yehudi Wyner, Sydney Hodkinson, Peter Child, Reza Vali, Paul Salerni, and Paul Moravec, on performances of their music.

Ms. Baty is very proud to have enjoyed a long collaboration with conductor Gil Rose and Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and with them has recorded the critically lauded Vali: Folk Songs (sung in Persian); Lukas Foss’ opera Griffelkin; the world-premiere recording of Eric Sawyer’s Civil War-era opera Our American Cousin; and John Harbison’s Mirabai Songs. A BMOP recording, "Reza Vali: Towards That Endless Plain", on which Ms. Baty is prominently featured, was one of NPR Classical's 10 Favorite Albums of 2013.

An alumna of Oberlin College and the Yale School of Music, she began her career as a teacher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and joined the faculty of the Yale School of Music in 2008.