Valdine Anderson
An established international artist with over two decades of solo performances and recordings, Canadian soprano Valdine Anderson currently serves on the voice staff at the Desautels Faculty of Music, University of Manitoba.
During her performance career as a soloist, Valdine Anderson sang throughout the world in a wide range of operatic and concert repertoire from the baroque to the contemporary.
Ms. Anderson made her European operatic debut as the Maid in the extremely successful world première of Almeida Opera’s production of Powder Her Face (Thomas Adès) at the Cheltenham Festival and Almeida Theatre. She recreated this role with great success for Opera de Nantes in their 2001/2 season. In October 2007, she performed the role at the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, as part of The Jewel of Russia Festival and again in 2008 for a concert performance of the piece in St. Petersburg’s White Nights Festival.
In 1998, Ms. Anderson made her English National Opera debut in Gavin Bryar’s Dr Ox’s Experiment. In 2000, she appeared in concert performances of Elliott Carter’s opera, What Next? at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. In the 2004/5 season, she appeared in a concert production of Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers (Elizabeth Zimmer) with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.
Her regular concert appearances in the UK have included performances at the Edinburgh Festival and the BBC Proms in 1998 (with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Sir Mark Elder), in 1999 (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jukka-Pekka Saraste) and 2002 (with the London Sinfonietta). She has also worked with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Nash Ensemble, Gavin Bryar’s Ensemble and Hilliard Ensemble.
Elsewhere, Ms. Anderson appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, New York Philharmonic, L’Orchestre National de France, L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre de Paris and Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. She has also appeared with the Asko Ensemble, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Modern and Ensemble Intercontemporain.
Ms. Anderson has collaborated with many of the great composers of our time including George Benjamin, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Gavin Bryars and Gérard Grisey. She has worked with such eminent conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Philippe Herreweghe, Sir Colin Davis, Edo de Waart and David Zinman. In celebration of Pierre Boulez’s 75th birthday, she toured Europe with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Boulez himself in performances of Pli selon pli. In November 2003 she toured the US in a new work by Dutilleux, Correspondences, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle.
Other engagements have included a world premiere by Brett Dean with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, concert performances of Powder her Face with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican and with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie in Bremen, performances of Boulez Trois Improvisations sur Mallarmé with the Orchestre de Paris and Christoph Eschenbach, a concert performing Five Eliot Landscapes by Adès at Carnegie Hall and a commission by Hans Knox for the Netherlands Radio.
Ms. Anderson has appeared at many international festivals worldwide including Aspen, Holland and Edinburgh and given a recital at the Wigmore Hall.
In Canada, she has appeared with Edmonton Opera, Manitoba Opera and Vancouver Opera where roles have included Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Micaela (Carmen) and Papagena (The Magic Flute). Other roles have included Gretel (Hansel and Gretel) for Edmonton Opera, the title role in a production of Floyd’s Susannah for Calgary Opera and a concert performance of the opera The Scarlet Princess for the Canadian Opera Company. She sang Sibelius’ Luonnotar with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the Canadian premiere of Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as well as premiering many works with the Winnipeg Symphony’s New Music Concerts. Other Canadian appearances have included Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Bramwell Tovey in 2013.
Ms. Anderson’s many recordings include Maxwell-Davies’ Job (Collins), Freedman’s Spirit Song, Adès’ Five Eliot Landscapes (EMI), Lutoslawski’s Chantefleurs et Chantefables (BIS) (Naxos), Bryars’ Adnan’s Songbook (Point Music), Torke Book of Proverbs (Decca) and a CD of the BBC Proms performance of Szymanowski’s Songs of a Fairy Princess (BBC Music), Adès Powder Her Face (EMI), nominated for a Grammy Award, Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with the BBC Scottish Symphony (BBC Music) which won a Prairie Music Award, Carter’s What Next? (ECM), and more.
Valdine Anderson is a frequent juror for the Canada Council for the Arts, and in demand as an adjudicator across Canada. Locally, Valdine founded the women’s choral ensemble, Esprit Singers in 2012 and in 2017 was appointed artistic director of Pembina Trails Voices, an award-winning Winnipeg youth choir organization. Her choirs have performed nationally and internationally and regularly record and commission new works for choral ensembles.
