Bass-baritone Dashon Burton has established a vibrant career in opera, in recitals and with orchestras. In key elements of his repertoire — Bach’s Passions and the B Minor Mass, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the Brahms Requiem, Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem — Burton is a frequent guest with the major orchestras of the United States, Europe and Japan.
In the 2019-20 season, he performed these works and others with the Minnesota and National Arts Centre Orchestras, the St. Louis Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. A frequent guest of the Cleveland Orchestra, he sang Michael Tilson Thomas’ Rilke Songs there, led by the composer. In fall 2019, Burton sang the world premiere of Caroline Shaw’s The Listeners (a part written specifically for him), with the Philharmonia Baroque and Nicholas McGegan.
Opera engagements have included Sarastro in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte in Dijon and Paris, and Jupiter in Rameau’s Castor et Pollux with Les Talens Lyriques; Strauss’ Salome at the Salzburg Festival (led by Franz Welser-Möst in a production by Romeo Castellucci) and Peter Sellars’ production of Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus, un ritual de mort at Paris’ Théatre de la Ville.
Burton continued as a resident artist in the 2019-20 season with San Francisco Performances and sang recitals throughout the United States, including a program based on works from his album “Songs and Struggles of Redemption: We Shall Overcome,” singled out by the New York Times as “profoundly moving ... a beautiful and lovable disc.”
Burton is an original member of the groundbreaking vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, with which he won a Grammy for a recording of Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Partita for 8 Voices. In March 2021, Burton won his second Grammy, this time for best classical solo vocal album for Dame Ethyl Smyth’s The Prison (Chandos) with the Experiential Orchestra.
March 2021
