Birthday profile

Dawn Upshaw

Dawn Upshaw, American soprano

Born
July 17, 1960
Age in 2026
66
Zodiac sign
Cancer
Birth year
1960

About Dawn Upshaw

Dawn Upshaw is an American soprano. She is the recipient of several Grammy Awards and has released a number of Edison Award-winning discs; she performs both opera and art song, and her repertoire spans Baroque to contemporary. Many composers, including Henri Dutilleux, Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Bruce, John Adams, and Kaija Saariaho, have written for her. In 2007, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2006, she founded the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College Conservatory in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, serving as artistic director until 2019. She currently serves as head of the Vocal Arts Program at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Upshaw came to international fame with her performance on the 1992 million-selling recording, with David Zinman, of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No 3, known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych). In addition to her operatic recordings, she has also sung the title role in the first complete recording of the score of Gershwin's Oh, Kay!.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Dawn Upshaw timeline

  1. Upshaw came to international fame with her performance on the 1992 million-selling recording, with David Zinman, of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No 3, known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych).
  2. In 2006, she founded the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College Conservatory in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, serving as artistic director until 2019.
  3. In 2007, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

The world when Dawn Upshaw was born

Dawn Upshaw was born in 1960. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1960

  • #1 song"The Twist" – Chubby Checker
  • Top movieThe Apartment
  • Top TV showGunsmoke
  • Best-selling bookTo Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentCassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) wins Olympic gold in boxing
  • Top headlineJFK elected as youngest US president
  • Technology milestoneFirst working laser demonstrated
  • Defining fadThe Twist dance craze
  • Notable inventionLaser
  • World population3.03 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderDwight D. Eisenhower
  • Sports championPittsburgh Pirates (World Series)
  • Also wonBoston Celtics (NBA)
  • U.S. population180.7M

1960 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Dawn Upshaw's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19602026
Gas$0.31$3.45/gal
Average home$12,700$435,000
Average income$7,400$67,500
Minimum wage$1.00$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.69$11.95
Postage stamp$0.04$0.73
Population180.7M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, MusicBrainz. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.