Susan Narucki
American soprano Susan Narucki is among her country's leading specialists in contemporary music, having performed in more than 100 world premieres in the fields of opera and concerto. She has worked with some of the world's top composers and has also been active in small-ensemble works.
Narucki was born in 1957 in Bellville, New Jersey. Her father, a Polish immigrant, was a silversmith for the Tiffany jewelry firm in New York. Narucki attended Syracuse University, majoring in film and photography, but she decided to switch to singing and enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory. The career decision proved a correct one. Narucki went on to perform with most of the major American symphony orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony. She has appeared at festivals at home and abroad, including the Aspen and Ojai Festivals and the Cabrillo Festival of New American Music. Narucki tended to work with conductors inclined toward contemporary music, and as her career developed, she began to specialize in contemporary music herself. Narucki's reputation in the field extends beyond the U.S.; she has appeared with the London Sinfonietta, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and the Nieuw Ensemble in the Netherlands. In that country, she sang at the Netherlands Opera in the world premiere of Louis Andriessen's opera Writing to Vermeer, and she returned to Los Angeles to appear in the same composer's De Materie. Among the new works for which she has received special acclaim is Elliott Carter's What Next?, in which she played the role of Mama; she has also sung the role at the Opéra Montpellier in France.
Narucki has recorded for Decca, Innova, Bridge, and many other labels, mostly those specializing in contemporary music. In art song performances, she has often collaborated with pianist Reinbert de Leeuw. In 2000, she appeared on a recording of George Crumb's Star-Child that won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Recording, and she later earned a Grammy nomination for her performance on a recording of Carter's Tempo e Tempi. She not only sang in but also served as artistic director for Cuatro Corridos, a multi-composer opera concerned with the U.S.-Mexican border; she recorded the opera on Innova in 2016. In 2019, she released The Edge of Silence: Works for Voice by György Kurtág on the Avie label; this album was nominated for a Grammy Award. She appeared in 2020 on a recording of Lei Liang's opera Inheritance on the Albany label and returned in 2023 on Avie with the recital This Island. By that time, her recording catalog comprised more than 15 items. Narucki is professor of music at the University of California, San Diego.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Discography
15 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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George Crumb: Orchestral Music
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Susan Narucki, Warsaw Philharmonic Choir, Thomas Conlin, Joseph Alessi, Warsaw Boys Choir
Classical - Released by Bridge Records on 1 Jan 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Light That is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives
Classical - Released by New World Records on 1 Jan 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
This Island
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released by AVIE Records on 10 Feb 2023
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Ives: When The Moon - Songs & Sets For Orchestra
Sanford Sylvan, Susan Narucki, Alan Feinberg, Richard Bernas, Music Projects
Classical - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 13 Mar 2000
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dillon: Philomela
Anu Komsi, Susan Narucki, Lionel Peintre, Remix Ensemble
Classical - Released by AEON on 1 Jan 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Aaron Helgeson: Poems of Sheer Nothingness
Susan Narucki, Talea Ensemble, James Baker
Classical - Released by Innova on 29 Jan 2016
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mario Davidovsky: Shulamit's Dream, Scenes from Shir ha-shirim & Biblical Songs
Classical - Released by Bridge Records on 1 Jan 2002
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Tussen Bomen / Spinsel / Four Songs on poems by Ezra Pound
Wout Oosterkamp, Susan Narucki, Ed Spanjaard, Tonie Ehlen, Sepp Grotenhuis
Classical - Released by Donemus Composers' Voice on 21 Jun 2005
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Sebastian Currier: Vocalissmus
Classical - Released by New World Records on 1 Jul 1997
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Extraordinary Vistas - Words & Music of the MacDowell Colony
Susan Narucki, Alan Feinberg, Nathan Randall
Classical - Released by Americus Records, Inc. on 6 Sep 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hindemith: Melancholie / Vaughan Williams: On Wenlock Edge / Kim, E.: 3 Poems in French / Part: Ein Wallfahrtslied
Classical - Released by Albany on 1 Nov 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lei Liang: Inheritance
Opera - Released by Albany on 30 Jun 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Cuatro Corridos: A Chamber Opera
Jorge Volpi, Susan Narucki, Pablo Gómez, Aleck Karis, Ayano Kataoka
Opera - Released by Bridge Records on 11 Oct 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wiemann, B.: Songs
Classical - Released by Albany on 1 Jun 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Music of James Bolle
Monadnock Festival Orchestra, Susan Narucki, James Bolle, Curtis Macomber
Classical - Released by Albany on 1 Sep 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo