KAREN SLACK
Management for Europe & various project
Susanna Stefani Caetani
susanna@onlystage.co.uk
Chrisni Mendis
chrisni@onlystage.co.uk
biography
Praised as "one of opera’s strongest voices at present – both as a singer and a shaper of its culture” (The Washington Post), soprano Karen Slack is a recipient of the 2022 Sphinx Medal of Excellence and a 2025 MPower Artist Grant. She is a sought-after curator and artistic advisor known for her fiery charisma and groundbreaking approach to engagement. Her debut album, Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price on Azica Records, won the 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.
Slack’s 2025-2026 season sees the continuation of nationwide touring for her critically-acclaimed African Queens, including Portland Opera’s season-opening performance and a season-concluding performance with Piedmont Opera. Slack will perform world premieres of Tamar-kali’s new work with the Miró Quartet for the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; Kathryn Bostic’s Drag, which celebrates the life of Gladys Bentley at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; and Brittany J. Green’s Letters to America for Soprano and Orchestra, part of the American Composers Orchestra’s program Hello, America: Letters to Us, from Us at Carnegie Hall. Slack has her debut with the Iris Collective, and also appears with the Orlando Philharmonic, Chamber Music Cincinnati, and Spivey Hall, and in works from her GRAMMY®-winning album Beyond the Years at Yale School of Music’s Oneppo Chamber Music Series and Amherst College.
In July 2024, Slack released an ambitious new recording project, Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, with pianist Michelle Cann in collaboration with ONEcomposer. The album comprises the unpublished songs of Florence Price, and won the 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, which was the first time an album of the work of a Black composer received the award. In 2025, Slack was featured on Shawn Okpebholo’s album Songs in Flight, released with Cedille Records.
When the pandemic limited live performances during the 2020-2021 season, Slack made premiere digital performances with Houston Grand Opera, Madison Opera, and Minnesota Opera. She starred in a new production of the opera Driving While Black, presented by UrbanArias, and launched a digital talk show, #kikikonversations, drawing acclaim from Opera News and The New York Times.
Karen Slack has performed on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, Scottish Opera, San Francisco Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Austin Opera, New Orleans Opera, Minnesota Opera, Vancouver Opera, Edmonton Opera, Sacramento Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Madison Opera and Arizona Opera, among others. Abroad, she has appeared with the Melbourne Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestras, and St. Petersburg Philharmonic.
press
"The orchestra provided sensitive accompaniment for the soprano Karen Slack. Making her Philharmonic debut, she inhabited the piece’s shifting moods, from anger at a treacherous lover to vulnerability to proud resolution, with strikingly clear high notes by the end."
The New York Times
"Slack carried herself with the right mix of grace and fire befitting one of opera’s great diva roles."
Schmopera
"One of opera’s strongest voices at present — both as a singer and a shaper of its culture."
The Washington Post
"As Alice, Karen Slack sang with poise and radiant sound. Slack’s amply blooming high notes were especially brilliant. She and Heather Phillips, who sang Nanetta, stole the show as far as the women were concerned. . . These two women produced some of the sweetest notes and most finely shaped phrases of the evening."
Opera Today
social media & website
video
Tosca, Vissi d’arte
Un bel di, Madama Butterfly
Kids Who Die (2016) (New York Premiere – Scott Gendel)
2025 GRAMMYs interview
G. Puccini, “Tosca”
“You Can Tell the World,” arr. by Margaret Bonds
discography
