About this Artist

American mezzo-soprano MARIETTA SIMPSON, well known for the rich beauty of her deeply expressive voice, has sung with all the major orchestras in the United States under many of the world’s great conductors, including Robert Shaw, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, Simon Rattle, Helmuth Rilling, Charles Dutoit, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Gunther Herbig. She has performed at Tanglewood, at the Oregon Bach Festival, at the BBC Proms, and at the Ojai Festival in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias under Sir Simon Rattle last spring. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody in 1988 with Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony and performed in Trevor Nunn’s production of Porgy and Bess at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, a production later filmed for British television. A native of Philadelphia, Simpson graduated from Temple University and earned her Master’s Degree in Music from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She first performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in November, 1988.