Rachel Willis-Sørensen Brings a World Premiere to Stanford Live

Soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen performs for the first time at Stanford Live's Bing Concert Hall on November 18, and her recital will include the world premiere of a song cycle by Emmy-winning composer Jeff Beal, written for her voice.

The premiere is the centerpiece of a program the singer describes as "something old, something new." It pairs Beal's cycle with familiar repertoire, including Rachmaninoff's Opus 38 songs, which she will perform from memory for the first time.

Willis-Sørensen rose to prominence after winning the 2010 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, followed by the Operalia competition in Los Angeles four years later. She has since sung at the world's leading opera houses, with a San Francisco Opera debut as Eva in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 2015 and a turn as Rusalka in Dvořák's opera of the same name in 2019. In 2021 she signed a multi-record deal with Sony Classical, and last year she received the Beverly Sills Artist Award.

Her 2026-2027 season includes returns to Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Mimì in La Bohème and Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, plus a role debut as Floria Tosca at San Francisco Opera.

How did the Beal cycle come about?

The collaboration began by chance at the Met, where a friend on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Opera introduced her to Beal, whose music for the television series Monk she had long admired. "We started talking, and we just seemed to have similar ideas about what the world is," she said. When she mentioned the recital, Beal replied: "I'll do it. I want to write for your voice."

Beal set poems by a friend, and the idea grew out of a shared conversation about the decline of public discourse. "It's like people will resort to any cruelty in their speech. These corrupt speech patterns are so common now," Willis-Sørensen said. "The office of the president, for example, used to be so sacred and people had respect. Now it's like WWF wrestling."

One text is Carol Lynn Pearson's feminist poem "Power," with the lines: "When she learned that she / Was a windmill and had only / To raise her arms... and turn, turn, turn / she moved. / Oh, she moved / And her dance was a marvel." The singer also contributed a poem of her own, written after a visit to Richard Strauss's villa in the Bavarian mountains, grappling with beauty and suffering in the same world.

What does the Stanford date change for her?

It marks her first recital at the venue, and she embraces the intimacy of the format. "Song repertoire is so intimate. You can really think about the meaning of the texts, how they interweave, how the pieces flow together," she said. "I'm kind of nervous, but I have big opinions, and I'm pleased with what we've prepared."

Willis-Sørensen, 42, studied for her BFA and MFA in Music at Brigham Young University after a childhood of musicals and jazz choir; a recording of Lucia Popp singing "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka first made her sob at opera's beauty. Decades on, she says the deepest lesson is psychological: "It's not what you're eating; it's what's eating you." A college pianist once told her, before a televised performance, to "Center yourself" — advice she now calls a life lesson.

She rejects pressure to specialize. "I have a hungry brain. I love the diversity. I love to sing anything they'll let me sing," she said, citing Verdi's "glorious, generous music for the soprano voice."

The Beverly Sills Award carries personal weight. Quoting Sills — "I'm not a happy woman, but I am a cheerful woman" — Willis-Sørensen aligns herself with an American tradition: "a diva with profundity and humor. It's a great exemplar for me."