The only artist ever to have won two Walter W. Naumburg Awards, as a chamber musician and a solo vocalist, internationally acclaimed soprano Lucy Shelton has premiered over 100 works, many of which were written expressly for her vocal talents. She has worked closely with composers such as Carter, Wuorinen, Del Tredici, Babbitt, Ran, Knussen, Saariaho, Kurtag, Schwantner, Grisey, Rands and Boulez; with ensembles including the Emerson String Quartet, eighth blackbird, Da Camera of Houston, 21st Century Consort, Da Capo Chamber Players, Schoenberg-Asko Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, Nash Ensemble and Ensemble InterContemporain; and as both faculty and soloist at Festivals including Aspen, Tanglewood, Santa Fe, Ojai, Banff, Yellow Barn, Chamber Music Northwest, BBC Proms, Aldeburgh, Kuhmo, and Salzburg. In 2023, she received Chamber Music America’s Bogomolny Lifetime Achievement Award to celebrate her achievements in chamber music. Shelton has taught at New England Conservatory and Cleveland Institute, and is currently a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music’s Contemporary Performance Program, for which she received the President’s Medal of Distinguished Service in 2026. Shelton will make her Metropolitan Opera and Paris Opera debuts in 2026 and 2027, respectively, as The Teacher in Kaija Saariaho's final opera “Innocence," a role written for her and first performed at Festival Aix-en-Provence in 2021.