Coming Home: Angel Blue in Concert

From: Los Angeles, California. LA Opera: Musetta in La Bohème (2007, student matinee); Suzy/A Singer in La Rondine (2008, mainstage debut); Sister Osmina in Suor Angelica (2008); the Digital Short let me come in (2021); title role in Tosca (2022). Upcoming: Angel Blue in Concert (2025). She is an alumna of the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program (2007-10) and a 2021 recipient of the Eva and Marc Stern Artist Award.

Angel Blue has emerged in recent seasons as one of the most influential sopranos before the public today. The two-time Grammy Award winner, 2020 Beverly Sills Award recipient and 2022 Richard Tucker Award winner is celebrated worldwide for her honeyed soprano and affecting deliveries of many of the most beloved roles in the operatic repertory, such as Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata, Bess in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Mimí in Puccini’s La Bohéme, and Destiny/Loneliness/Greta in Terrence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones.

The 2023/24 season introduced audiences to Angel Blue as Leonora in Il Trovatore at the San Francisco Opera, followed by a highly anticipated return to the Vienna State Opera as Tosca. She continued her season with performances as Micaëla in Carmen and a role debut as Magda in La Rondine at the Metropolitan Opera.

On September 23, 2019 she opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2019/20 season as Bess in a new production of Porgy and Bess. These performances followed her internationally praised French opera debut and role debut as Tosca at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July of 2019. She has also been recognized for performances in countless other theaters, such as the Vienna State Opera, Semperoper Dresden, Seattle Opera, Theater an der Wien, Teatro alla Scala, Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, Paris Opera, English National Opera and San Diego Opera.

Puccini’s La Bohéme has played an especially prominent role in the development of Angel Blue’s career. She made her United States operatic debut as Musetta at LA Opera in 2007 while a member of the company’s Young Artist Program and subsequently made her debut at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in the same role in 2015. As Mimí, she has earned exceptional international acclaim. Angel first sang the role at the English National Opera in London in 2014 and has since performed Mimí for her house debuts at the Palau de Les Arts in Valencia, the Vienna State Opera, and the Canadian Opera Company, the Semperoper Dresden, Hamburg State Opera and of course, the Metropolitan Opera.

Equally active on the concert platform, Angel has appeared in recital and in concert in over 40 countries including Hungary, Kazakhstan, India, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, South Korea, China, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Brazil and Mexico. In 2011, Angel opened the Royal Opera House, in Muscat, Oman. Orchestral engagements have included concert versions of Porgy and Bess at the Berliner Philharmoniker under Sir Simon Rattle and with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Marin Alsop, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Münchener Philharmoniker under the baton of Zubin Mehta, and Verdi’s Requiem in Sydney, Australia with Oleg Caetani. She has also sung Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Peri in Schumann’s Das Paradis und die Peri with the Accademia Santa Cecilla in Rome, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Cincinnati Symphony under Louis Langree.

During the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, Angel dedicated her time to encourage younger singers to stay motivated to finish their studies and continue in opera, through an online talk show called Faithful Friday where she interviewed people whom she found to be inspiring. The online talk show received much acclaim from its viewers, many called the show, "Uplifting, and exactly what is needed right now." Angel has since shifted her focus back to her family life and her singing engagements. However, she still maintains that encouraging and uplifting younger singers in the opera world is at the forefront of her platform.

Angel Blue was raised in California and completed her musical studies at UCLA. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and son.

Learn more at AngelJoyBlue.com.

From: Cali, Colombia. LA Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor (2022, debut); The Rape of Lucretia (2023); The Last Dream of Frida and Diego (2023); Fire and Blue Sky (2025); Dracula: The Spanish Version (2024); Romeo and Juliet (2024); Angel Blue concert (2025); Ainadamar (2025). She became Resident Conductor in 2022.

Praised for her “rich, heartfelt orchestral sound” (Chicago Sun-Times), “rhythmic vitality” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “raw power” (Los Angeles Times), Colombian-American Lina González-Granados has distinguished herself nationally and internationally as a singularly-talented young conductor. Her powerful interpretations of the symphonic and operatic repertoire, as well as her dedication to highlighting new and unknown works by Latin-American composers, have earned her international recognition, most recently being named part of Bloomberg Línea’s 100 Influential Latinos of 2022. She is also the recipient of the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the Third Prize and ECHO Special Award (European Concert Hall Organization) of La Maestra Competition, as well as the 2020 and 2021 Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award.

After winning the Fourth Chicago Symphony Orchestra Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition, Lina was named the Solti Conducting Apprentice, and served as the assistant to Maestro Riccardo Muti, from February 2020 through June 2023. In 2022, she was appointed Resident Conductor by the LA Opera, a post she will hold through June 2025. She has also previously held positions as the Inaugural Conducting Fellow of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Conducting fellow of the Seattle Symphony.

Lina’s 2023/24 season had her leading performances across the globe, including debuts with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Puerto Rico, I Musici de Montreal, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, New World Symphony, Euskadio Orkestra, and the San Antonio Philharmonic. She also returned to LA Opera to conduct several performances, including El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, by Grammy Award-winning composer Gabriela Lena Frank and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, as well as the world premiere of Joel Thompson's orchestral song cycle Fire and Blue Sky. Lina also returned to Chicago to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Learn more at LinaGonzalezGranados.com.

Read a feature article about her here.

Read the LA Times review of her 2022 LA Philharmonic debut here.

From: San Diego, California. LA Opera: guest artist appearing in concert with Angel Blue (2025).

Recognized by music critics, peers, celebrities, and musical legends, Sacha Vera Boutros is one of the top jazz artists today. Introduced by the great American entertainer Frankie Laine as his “ingénue,” and as the protégé of the Legendary Red Holloway and James Moody Sacha has opened for and performed with Julio Iglesias, Marvin Hamlisch, Chubby Checker, Ann Hampton Callaway, Patti Austin, James Moody, Karrin Allyson and countless jazz greats throughout her 20-year career.

An innovative and creative entrepreneur, solo artist, musician, producer  designer, composer, artist and humanitarian. Sacha has gone from a few U.S. festivals to touring the world and back, to having her recordings hit the top 10 charts in Japan, iTunes, e-music, to even receiving several Grammy nods for best jazz and Latin jazz albums in 2008 and 2013 and designing a peace mural at the US-Mexico border.

Growing up in San Diego, Boutros had music coursing through her veins. Her grandparents instilled a love of music and a facility for composition and harmonies at an early age. Her mother once marveled, “She has been singing from the time she was two.” At four, she’d sit on a pillow for her first piano lessons. She sang in church with her grandfather, who taught her how to play with melodies and harmonies. And, she learned fast, adding songwriting to her piano and vocal skills.

Unbelievably, she didn’t pursue singing as a career until the last year of her studies at the University of San Diego, there on a sports and academic scholarship, playing soccer and tennis. “I finished my business and marketing degree and flipped over to music,” she explained. “I figured you have to try everything once in your life and as Joseph Campbell says follow your bliss, so I did.”

By age 20, Boutros jumped headlong into singing professionally, and watched her burgeoning, ingénue career flourish like a seasoned established veteran in short order. She honed that amazing voice at clubs and festivals around town, including one of her first testing grounds—the Red Fox Room, while taking the local jazz community by storm with her sensual, Latin-kissed vocals. Soon, she would attract the attention of larger crowds outside of San Diego, with a voice that called to mind the glamorous, golden age of Hollywood starlets and tropical Brazilian beaches, an intuitive ability to make any song and any style uniquely her own, perfect pitch, whether scatting or belting, and an amazing, four-octave range. By the time 2006 almost rolled out, Modern Luxury Magazine editors crowned her one of “the hottest music artists to come out of San Diego.”

A major part of Boutros’ appeal is her natural charm, sensual beauty, and an effortless versatility with standards, covers, and originals, opera, jazz, crossing generations. She can sing just about anything, make it a work of art, and reach audiences of all ages.  

She sings in 13 languages, speaking five of these languages fluently and a few more proficiently. Trained in classical music and bel canto opera, yet at ease in the world of pop, jazz and Latin jazz, her voice is at once innocent and otherworldly, capable of wrapping itself around the heart of any tune and lingering well after a show has wrapped. She has an effortless, bountiful energy that’s especially fetching with the younger generation, who’ve discovered and embraced jazz through her engaging, fresh, crossover renditions.

The year 2007 brought Boutros to Brussels, Belgium, for the Young Jazz Singers competition, as a U.S. representative. She was a finalist in the top 10 of this worldwide competition. Her September 2008 breakthrough album, Simply Sacha — a mix of standards and originals touching on jazz, Latin jazz, bossa nova, swing, and pop, and sung in five languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and French) — showcased the singer’s incredible musical and linguistic range, as well as compositional skills. Bruce Lundevall, the late impresario of Blue Note Records, called her the “The Latin Norah Jones,” saying her own compositions of bossa novas in Spanish were “Outstanding and beautiful.” She wrote half of the songs on this debut album, including one with four-time Grammy winner, Afro-Cuban pianist Chuchito Valdés. In addition to Valdés, the album featured plenty of other top-notch musicians, including Geoffrey Keezer, Red Holloway, Bob Magnusson, Mike Wofford – Sarah Vaughan’s pianist, Peter Sprague and was honored to have Concord Recording Artist and five-time Grammy nominee Karrin Allyson providing the liner notes. Boutros would return the favor for Holloway by appearing as a special guest on the saxophonist’s album, Something Old Something New: Introducing Sacha Boutros, in 2009, which resulted in a 2009 tour of Japan, winning even more fans. Simply Sacha would become the vocalist’s calling card to the world. It was the most downloaded Latin jazz release on emusic.com, was nominated for two Los Angeles Music Awards as “Best Latin Vocal” for her original song, “Amor Imposible,” and “Best Vocal,” hit number seven on the Japanese music charts, enjoyed heavy airplay at Japanese Airlines, and earned a Grammy nod as best new jazz album. To this day, the album’s considered among the top 10 jazz and Latin jazz albums of 2008 in the U.S. and Japan.

While visiting Hawaii two years later, Boutros recorded her first live album, Sacha: Live In Hawaii in 2010 at the Waikiki Hawaii Public Radio Atherton Studio. She would release the live album in 2011, in the midst of a major international tour from Bruxelles back to the islands. In 2013, Sacha: NY After Dark, her long awaited third album, was released. Recorded in New York and at Capitol Records in Los Angeles with jazz greats Lewis Nash, Peter Washington, Terell Stafford and John di Martino and mixed by the legendary 23-time Grammy Award winner Al Schmitt at Capitol Records and mastered by Grammy Award winner Ron McMaster.

In her spare time, Sacha loves working with the community, donating her time since the age of 14 to Father Joe Caroll at St. Vincent de Paul Village and various orphanages in Baja California, following in the footsteps of her grandmother, Lupe Cazares, who founded the San Ysidro Health Centers. “Giving back is second nature to me, like the air that I breath. I grew up rich in love, laughter and joy, my grandparents taught us to share and help the community everyday. Everyone was a friend, a comadre or a compadre and we always lent a hand to everyone in need. Kindness is free, pass it on.”

In 2017 Sacha joined the Border Public Art Committee to lead a project with President Chris Sanchez and Artist Manu Faves and a team of local artists and architects as well as the consulate of Mexico and the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce. She designed a mural at the border of San Ysidro and Tijuana at the main pickup and dropoff point where 26,000 people cross each day. It was an homage to her family and the work they did to build up the border town and her grandmother who founded the legacy of one of the largest free healthcare clinics in California. The mural was entitled “The place where Soles Meet,” and the footprints of people that had crossed the border were traced and painted on the peace mural as a bridge to bring together both sides of the border. “Definitely the place where soles cross and soles meet,” said Boutros, “all 26,000 each day.”

When she’s not writing, performing, or recording, is heavily involved in philanthropic projects close to her heart. Sacha resides in Paris, France.

Learn more at LaReineDuJazz.com.

LA Opera: guest artists appearing in concert with Angel Blue (2025).

The Los Angeles County High School for the Arts Gospel choir, under the direction of renowned singer and educator Pat Bass, is an award-winning vocal organization which has emerged as one of the top gospel choirs in the country.