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The event:

On April 9th, 2024, at 7:30pm, the celebrated soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen will make her New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall as a guest of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. Willis-Sørensen is a regular at leading opera houses around the world, from the LA Opera to Opéra national de Paris. She is known for her diverse repertoire ranging from Mozart to Wagner.

At Zankel Hall, Willis-Sørensen will sing works by Strauss and song cycles by Rachmaninoff, Beach, and more. She will also give the world premiere of S. Andrew Lloyd's Amaranthine, winner of the 2022 Prize of The Ariel Bybee Endowment at the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, an endowment created to honor the legacy of Metropolitan Opera mezzo, Ariel Bybee (1943-2018). Willis-Sørensen shares her delight in honoring the legacy of the female opera singer. She also shares her faith tradition with the late mezzo singer. She states, "It is a privilege and an honor to take the stage in celebration of Ariel Bybee, who poured all of her prodigious skill through the lens of her awe-inspiring faith. She produced world-class art in a way that I can only hope to emulate."

About Rachel Willis-Sørensen:

In 2021, Rachel signed a multi-record deal with Sony Classical. She released her debut album in April 2022, and her next album one year later. As a Sony Classical artist, she joins a catalog of preeminent musicians like Leonard Bernstein and Yo-Yo Ma. As a female artist operating in the highest-echelons of classical music she achieves a distinction that few others, particularly female singers, have achieved. Of the American soprano, Le Monde says, “...[She] has without a doubt one of the most impressive voices in the opera world.” Equally at home on the concert stage, Willis-Sørensen has performed Strauss’s Four Last Songs multiple times, most notably at Buckingham Palace for an HRH Prince Charles birthday celebration.

Though her Zankel Hall performance is Willis-Sørensen’s New York recital debut, she will return this fall to the Met to play Leonora in Il Trovatore. Like Willis-Sørensen, Bybee’s dynamic voice found a home with Met audiences, where she sang every season from 1977 to 1995 including fourteen different appearances in Il Trovatore. Bybee pioneered a path as a world-famous singer and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Neylan McBaine, Bybee’s daughter and chair of The Ariel Bybee Endowment at the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, is thrilled to hear Willis-Sørensen at Carnegie Hall. She says, “This is the kind of evening my mom relished most, elevating our people and the great beauty of the human voice.”