Karim Sulayman, tenor
Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman has garnered international attention as a sophisticated and versatile artist, praised for his “lucid, velvety tenor and pop-star charisma” (BBC Music Magazine). The 2019 Best Classical Solo Vocal GRAMMY® Award winner, he continues to earn acclaim for his original and innovative programming and recording projects, while regularly performing on the world’s stages in opera, orchestral concerts, recital and chamber music.
Recently Mr. Sulayman was presented by Carnegie Hall for a sold out solo recital debut followed immediately by the world premiere of his own multidisciplinary production, Unholy Wars, a baroque pasticcio centered around the Crusades and the Middle East, at Spoleto Festival USA. He’s also made recent debuts Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Stockholm’s Drottningholms Slottsteater, Houston Grand Opera, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and the Chicago, National and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras. He debuted at Wigmore Hall in concerts of French chamber music with his frequent collaborators, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, which The Arts Desk named to its “Best Performances of 2022.”
Last season saw performances of his acclaimed program with guitarist Sean Shibe, Broken Branches, at Ravinia Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, CAP-UCLA, Boston Celebrity Series and the Phillips Collection, and debuts at Opera Philadelphia (Unholy Wars) and New World Symphony (Britten’s Nocturne). He made his role debut as Grimoaldo in Handel’s Rodelinda (Hudson Hall), created the role of Crow in the world premiere of Layale Chaker/Lisa Schlesinger’s Ruinous Gods (Spoleto Festival USA), and debuted at the Royal Opera House, reprising the title role of Giant, a role he created the previous year for the Aldeburgh Festival. This season and future engagements include the central role in the world premiere of David T. Little’s highly anticipated monodrama What Belongs to You (based on Garth Greenwell’s acclaimed novel), written for Sulayman and Alarm Will Sound and directed by Mark Morris, his role debut as Pelléas in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, and concerts at Park Avenue Armory, Wigmore Hall and Hong Kong’s Premiere Performances.
Mr. Sulayman won the 2019 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for his debut solo album, Songs of Orpheus (Avie Records), his original program of early Italian Baroque songs and arias. His second solo album, Where Only Stars Can Hear Us (Avie Records), a program of Schubert Lieder with fortepianist Yi-heng Yang, debuted at #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart and has received international critical acclaim, including being named “Critic’s Choice” by Opera News and included in the New York Times’ Best Classical Music of 2020. His third album, Broken Branches (Pentatone), was named one of the Best Classical Music Albums of 2023 by the New York Times, and was nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal album.
Mr. Sulayman has been featured on PBS Great Performances, and he appeared on the second season of Dickinson on Apple TV+. In November 2016, Karim created a social experiment/performance art piece called I Trust You, designed to build bridges in a divided political climate. A video version of this experiment went “viral” on the internet, and was honored as a prize winner at the My Hero Film Festival.
