Described by the Washington Post as “silvery of voice” and “a showstopper” for performances with Washington National Opera as The Rose in The Little Prince and The Flamingo in the world premiere of Jeanine Tesori’s The Lion, the Unicorn and Me, Lisa Williamson is a versatile soprano who has forged a career that has taken her around the world from Muscat, Oman to the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall to the Indianapolis Brickyard.
This season, she joins the Connecticut Symphony Orchestra for H. Leslie Adams' Nightsongs, and returns to the New Haven Symphony for Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9. In the 2023-24 season, she appeared as a featured soloist in Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the Hartt School of Music Foot in the Door Ensemble and with the WVU Wind Symphony in John Mackey and A.E. Jacques’s Songs from the End of the World. She returned to the New Haven Symphony Orchestra to sing spirituals by Margaret Bonds in “Harlem Renaissance: Orchestral Voices” and returns to Brief Cameo Productions at the Ivoryton Playhouse as Sharon in Terrence McNally’s Master Class having previously sung Sarah in their inaugural production of Ragtime in Concert and the Nurse in Sunday in the Park With George. In recent seasons she took the stage with the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra in “Ella & Gershwin by the Shore,” with the Missoula Symphony Orchestra for Mozart’s Requiem, and joined the Hartford Symphony Orchestra for Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Carmina Burana. On the opera stage she premiered the role of Bessie Coleman, based on the first black American female pilot, in the world-premiere production of Douglas Buchanan and Caitlin Vincent's Prize-Winning opera Bessie and Ma. She was featured in Portland Opera’s double bill of The Difficulty of Crossing a Field and the little match girl passion, singing Virginia Creeper and the soprano soloist, as Laurie in The Tender Land with Hartford Opera Theater in partnership with the American School for the Deaf, in which she not only sang but also communicated using American Sign Language, as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and as a soloist in An Evening of Rodgers and Hammerstein with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra Pops, L’Elisir d’amore, Die Fledermaus, and La Bohème with Opera Theater of Connecticut, Le nozze di Figaro with Salt Marsh Opera, the little match girl passion with The Glimmerglass Festival, The Music Man at the Royal Opera House, Muscat in Oman, and Wonderful Town with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, Italy.
Ms. Williamson is a dedicated recitalist with a passion for American repertoire, from Songbook to art song, with a special emphasis on works by women and Black American composers. She was a Marc and Eva Stern Fellow at the United States’ premiere art song festival, Songfest, where she presented the world premiere of James Primosh’s song “Shadow Memory,” and in 2017 she curated and presented a solo recital of art song with text by Harlem Renaissance writers at The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale in collaboration with the special exhibit, Gather Out of Star-Dust.
From 2005-2010, Ms. Williamson was the vocal soloist with The United States Coast Guard Band. In her more than two hundred performances with the Coast Guard Band she performed in thirty-four states in the U.S. and throughout Japan singing a variety of repertoire from opera arias to the American Songbook, and twice performing the National Anthem at the Indianapolis 500 for live audiences of over 400,000 and millions on television worldwide.
Ms. Williamson is an Assistant Professor of Voice at Ithaca College beginning in the Fall of 2024 and currently teaches voice at the University of Connecticut. She has previously taught at Eastern Connecticut State and Southern Connecticut State Universities and has served as a music director for musicals presented by Trinity College Department of Theater and Dance. She was an inaugural fellow of the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Future of Music Faculty Fellowship and is a 2024 Teaching Intern with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Connecticut, a Master of Music in voice from the Yale School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music in voice performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University. The daughter of premiere military band musicians, Lisa is a native of Alexandria, Virginia and now divides her time between the Fingers Lakes and Eastern Connecticut, with her husband, Commander Adam Williamson, the director of the United States Coast Guard Band, and their son, Jack.