RADIATING LIGHT AND HEALING

  • Why do we do what we do? This is a question that many of us ask our whole life, but for artists it usually includes the phrase “because I can’t imagine doing anything else.” It’s not worth the heartache included in daily life of an artist if you could be happy doing anything else. And now with sound meditation and breathwork as part of my life as well, music has a new meaning. It must mean something more than a “gig” to be worth it. I think if I have learned one thing from the pandemic, it’s that. Can I give my whole voice, can I give my whole essence, BECAUSE IT MEANS SOMETHING. To heal our pain, to uplift, that’s why music is important to me. That’s why it’s worth the struggle, and probably what got me into holistic healing to begin with. Going deeper into healing and uplifting through sound, without consciously knowing.

ROOTS

  • Born in Norwich, Vermont to chamber musician parents who now teach at Rice University in Houston, Texas

  • Spent every summer since she was 4 at Tanglewood Music Festival and Greenwood Music Camp

  • A graduate of Vassar College (BA), where she studied Urban Studies, Philosophy, and Music, and Eastman School of Music (MM), where she studied voice and played baroque cello

  • A trained cellist in contemporary music, chamber music, and continuo playing

BIOGRAPHY

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"With her dramatic tumble of red hair and cello-mello voice, Ms. Fischer sings with a passionate restraint that has no equal in her generation. You didn't want her to stop.” So said Zachary Woolfe from the New York Times after Abigail Fischer's performance of George Benjamin with St. Luke's Orchestra at the New York Philharmonic Bienniel in 2014.
 

Versatile soprano Abigail Fischer has made a vibrant career soloing with ensembles such as the Kansas City Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Rhode Island Symphony, Virginia Symphony, Boston Baroque, and Mercury Orchestra Houston. With the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Fischer performed semi-staged versions of Strauss' Salome and Midsummer Night's Dream.
 

Missy Mazzoli's first opera, Song from the Uproar, written for her and the NOW Ensemble, is a one-woman show that was premiered at the Kitchen with Beth Morrison Projects, and since then at Los Angeles Opera, Chautauqua Opera, and at Cincinnati Opera.


Ms. Fischer sings the main role of Mrs. X. E. in Du Yun/Royce Vavrek's Angel's Bone, which has garnered great success, from the premiere at the Prototype Festival, winning the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Musical Composition, to performances at the Hong Kong New Vision Festival and Beijing Music Festival, to the ultimately cancelled performance (due to covid 19) at LA Opera in 2020. Another Prototype premiere was the Mother in Stefan Weisman/David Cote's Scarlet Ibis. With Gotham Chamber Opera, Ms. Fischer performed Testo in Monteverdi's Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and Eva in Martinu's Comedy on the Bridge.

Known for her “serenely captivating” work in opera, “and disarming intimacy,” (NY Times) Ms. Fischer performed two daring alternative productions of Carmen in Boulder, Colorado and Rockport, Maine. In the 2016-2017 season, Ms. Fischer reprised the one-woman show Toshio Hosakawa's The Raven in Bolzano, Italy for her Italian stage debut. She returns to Trento, Italy to sing another Hosakawa opera, Hanjo, in 2021.
 

Ms. Fischer has sung the title role in Rape of Lucretia with Opera Memphis, has premiered Lee Hoiby's This is the Rill Speaking with American Opera Projects, has sung Cenerentola with Union Avenue (in Italian) and Salt Marsh Opera (in English), and Angels in America with LA Philharmonic. One of her favorite pieces of music is Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs, which she performed with the Columbus Symphony under the baton of Jean-Marie Zeitouni.

In early music, she has worked with American Bach Soloists in programs of Vivaldi Gloria, Handel La Resurrezione, Porpora De Profundis, and Bach Magnificat; Rebel Baroque Orchestra with Mozart Mass in C and Handel Messiah; Duke Chapel Choir with Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Handel Messiah; and Early Music New York and Mercury Houston's programs of Vivaldi motets. At Carnegie Hall with the New York Choral Society in February 2017, Ms. Fischer reprised her role as soloist in Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, which she first performed and recorded with Boston Baroque. She looks forward to singing Dido for the third time in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Ars Lyrica Houston in 2021.

Originally trained as a cellist, Ms. Fischer has worked often as a chamber musician, from Musicians of Marlboro Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, to St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, performing works such as John Harbison's Crossroads and Respigghi's Il Tramonto. She has premiered Elliot Carter's Mad Regales and Bernard Rand's Walcott Songs at Tanglewood Music Festival, numerous John Zorn chamber works all over the world, including Lincoln Center Festival, and Nico Muhly's Elements of Style, also at Lincoln Center. Creating multi-media work through the chamber music lens has also been a theme, from her work with Da Camera, staging Schoenberg’s Book of Hanging Gardens in Sarah Rothenberg’s project Vienna 1900 and the many stagings of Lee Hoiby’s Bon Appetite to her projects with her husband Jason Slayden, multi-media experiences created around Berg’s Sieben frühe Lieder and Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, titled the beloved and Wesendonck Meditations: Into the Light, respectively.
 

Recordings of Ms. Fischer's includes the operas Song from the Uproar (Missy Mazzoli), Angel’s Bone (Du Yun), The Judgement of Midas (Kamran Ince); the oratorios Haydn Lord Nelson Mass (Boston Baroque), Katrina Ballads (Ted Hearne); and the chamber works Variations on a Summer Day (Harold Meltzer), Mothertongue (Nico Muhly), The Quality of Mercy (Patrick Castillo), and numerous works of John Zorn.
 

A graduate of Eastman School of Music (MM), and Vassar College (BA), Lorenzo di Medici in Florence, Italy (Certificate in Italian language and literature), Ms. Fischer also traversed the summer scenes of Tanglewood Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, Songfest, and the Chautauqua Voice Program, among others. Ms. Fischer is a sound meditation practitioner, and teaches mindfulness through sound and movement as a way to heal and elevate the mindbody.