World Premieres & New Music Highlights
Katarzyna Sadej is an avid performer of 20th and 21st music. Highlights of her new music career include the honor of singing the world premiere of Pulitzer-prize winning composer John Harbison’s new song cycle “The Right to Pleasure” at Harvard University, alongside pianist Mark McNeill. She was a featured solo performer on the Metier Records world premiere recording release of Rising at Dawn: Chamber Music with Brass by Carson Cooman, about which her performance was hailed by James Altena of Fanfare Magazine as “nothing short of enthralling.“
In 2019 Katarzyna released a two-volume recording of the rarely heard Witold Lutosławski Derwid songs, with pianist Barbara Bochenek in Los Angeles. In 2022, Katarzyna made her debut with Los Angeles’ Jacaranda Music, a much-acclaimed new music concert series, performing the mezzo-soprano solo in Veronika Krausas’ Le Théâtre du Soleil. She is the featured artist for Jacaranda’s opening concert of the 2023 fall season, singing Schoenberg’s Opus 15: The Book of the Hanging Gardens, with pianist Steven Vanhauwaert.
Katarzyna sang the mezzo-soprano solo in the world premiere of The Garden, an oratorio by Elissar Hanna at Ottawa’s Music and Beyond Festival. She sang the mezzo-soprano solo in the world premiere of composer Sharbel Dalal’s oratorio A Call For Peace in Jerusalem, Israel. Katarzyna also sang the world premiere of composer Michael Pepa’s Lilliane, with the philharmonic orchestras of Lviv, Ukraine and Timisoara, Romania. Additionally, she sang the world premiere of Pepa’s Isomorphe at Toronto’s Glenn Gould Studio, performing the work with the Cantus Ensemble of Zagreb orchestra, one of the world’s premiere new music orchestras. She reprised Isomorphe with the Cantus Ensemble in Croatia, making her debut at the Music Biennale Zagreb, one of the foremost international festivals that showcases new music.
Some newly composed operatic roles Katarzyna has performed include her Carnegie Hall debut, creating the role of the Virgin in the world premiere of Paola Prestini’s opera Oceanic Verses. She also created the lead role of Isabelle Eberhart in Song from the Uproar (world premiere), an opera composed by Missy Mazzoli. Katarzyna performed with The Industry, Los Angeles, as River Voice in the world premiere of HOPSCOTCH. She reprised this role on the recording of HOPSCOTCH, produced by The Industry.
