Soprano Sherezade Panthaki has forged ongoing musical collaborations with many of the world’s leading conductors including Nicholas McGegan, Masaaki Suzuki, Martin Haselböck, Stephen Stubbs, and Nicholas Kraemer. Combining “her full, luxuriously toned upper range” (The Los Angeles Times) and “astonishing coloratura, radiant top notes” (Calgary Herald) with exquisite creativity and historically informed performance practice, she is internationally renowned for her interpretations of Bach, Handel, and dozens of early music oratorios, operas, and cantatas. Her performances as Dalila in Handel’s Samson in Germany, elicited the review “With her exuberant virtuosity, with her elegance and powerful radiance, Panthaki is a new, trailblazing type among the female singers of old music – she is a highly dramatic soprano of the Baroque, an “Isolde” in one of Handel’s oratorios. When she sings, it is not simply an aria; it is an event.” (Hannoversche Allgemeine).
Recent seasons have included performances with the New York Philharmonic, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Bach Collegium Japan, Wiener Akademie (Austria), NDR Hannover Radiophilharmonie (Germany), the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Boston Early Music Festival, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (Canada), Toronto Symphony (Canada), Houston Symphony, The Choir and Orchestra of Trinity Wall Street, and Voices of Music (San Francisco). No stranger to classical and modern concert repertoire, she is in high demand for her interpretations of Mozart, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Poulenc, as well as world premieres by Reena Esmail, Martin Bresnick, and Trevor Weston. Her discography includes Handel oratorios with Nicholas McGegan and Philharmonia Baroque, Bach’s Mass in B Minor and solo cantatas with the Cantata Collective, works by Bach and Trevor Weston with the Washington Bach Consort, and operas with the Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF). Acclaimed for “bringing comic flair to a mischievous spitfire role” (Backtrack Magazine) in BEMF’s 2025 triumphant production of Keiser’s Octavia, Opera Wire lauded her singing as “especially beautiful – flexible and capable of expressing tragedy, sensuality, or sacredness.”
Born and raised in India, Ms. Panthaki holds graduate degrees with top honors from the Yale School of Music and the University of Illinois. She is a founding member and artistic advisor of the Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble - an octet of internationally renowned singers creating performances and educational programs of early and new music. Ms. Panthaki is highly sought after as a guest clinician and masterclass leader across the United States. She has taught voice to graduate music students at Yale, and currently heads the Vocal program at Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts.
August 2025
Please note: Biographies are based on information provided to the CSO by the artists or their representatives. More current information may be available on websites of the artists or their management.
