ABOUT THE ARTISTS

JESSICA ASZODI Actor / Singer

Jessica Aszodi’s career could best be described as genrebending and label-defying. The Australian-born vocalist has premiered dozens of new works and performed others long neglected, devised pieces, projects and festivals, sung roles from musicals and standard operatic repertoire, while collaborating with a constellation of artists from the far reaches of the cultural spectrum.

Praised for its ‘utmost security and power’ (Chicago Tribune), Jessica’s voice has an unusual range, both in terms of colour and pitch, making it possible to perform repertoire across genres (from experimental to Baroque, music theatre to opera) and voice types, from contralto works such as Boulez’ Le Marteau sans maître to soprano gems like Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil

Jessica has performed as soloist with ensembles as diverse as ICE (NY), the Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide

Symphony Orchestras, the New National Theatre Tokyo, Wiener Wolksoper, Nederlands Reisoper, Ensemble Muiskfabrik, Ensemble Remix Casa da Musica, Pinchgut Opera, the Tirolean Symphony Orchestra, Victorian Opera, Sydney Chamber Opera, Chamber Made, and in the chamber series of the San Diego and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. Her operatic roles include Eve (Stockhausen’s Dienstag aus Licht), Socrates (Satie’s Socrates), Aminta (Mozart’s Il re pastore), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Sesto (Guilio Cesare), Popova (Walton’s The Bear), Rose (Elliot Carter’s What Next?) and Echo ( Ariadne auf Naxos). She was awarded ‘Performance of the Year’ by the 2019 Australian Art Music Awards for Liza Lim’s epic Atlas of the Sky with Speak Percussion, and in 2020 she sang a main role in the world premiere of Dai Fujikura’s A Dream of Armageddon in Tokyo.

She has sung in festivals around the world, including Klangspuren, Beethoven Festival Bonn, Resonant Bodies, Vivid Sydney, Aspen Music Festival, BIFEM, the Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide Festivals, Brisbane Music Festival, Darmstadt, Aldeburgh, Tectonics and Tanglewood. Aszodi has twice been nominated for the Australian

Greenroom Awards as ‘best female operatic performer’ – in both the leading and supporting categories.

Jessica is on the steering committee of the online politics and cultural magazine Shred and is a co-founder (with composer Jessie Marino) of Worst Behaviour, a series for experimental music and performance at KM28 in her adopted city of Berlin.