Julianne Baird

Julianne Baird (born 1952) is an American soubrette and early music soprano. She has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Theatre de la Monnaie, Bach Festival Leipzig amongst many. She has recorded with Christopher Hogwood, John Eliot Gardiner, Joshua Rifkin and sung on five of the world’s continents in both opera and Sacred Music. She has more than 100 recordings to her credit and is a well-traveled recitalist and soloist with major symphony orchestras. She is also a noted teacher of voice.

Biography
Baird grew up in Kent, Ohio, graduating from Kent's Theodore Roosevelt High School in 1970. She studied voice and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music, earned a Diploma in Performance Practice from the Salzburg Mozarteum, and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Musicology from Stanford University.

Baird has been a Distinguished professor at Rutgers University since 2000. She directs a Madrigal Ensemble and teaches a wide array of classes such as History of Opera, Renaissance and Baroque Music. She frequently teaches master classes and workshops throughout the United States. She published an annotated translation of the 18th-century treatise, Introduction to the Art of Singing by Johann Friedrich Agricola (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

As a performer, she is best known for her extensive discography and for performances of music by Johann Sebastian Bach (especially the B-minor Mass, the Magnificat, and a number of cantatas) and George Frideric Handel (especially Messiah). She has made premiere recordings of a number of Handel operas (including Deidamia, Siroe, Muzio Scevola, Sosarme, and Berenice). She has also sung works by Henry Purcell, John Dowland, Claudio Monteverdi, and Georg Philipp Telemann. Modern American composers whose music she has recorded include Lukas Foss and Steve Reich.