biography
PC: Jessica Osber Photography
Soprano Rachel Doehring Jackson has been praised for her “absolutely loveable, endearing...remarkable” performances (Seen and Heard Intl.). She opens the 2023-24 season with a concert of American song entitled Love After 1950 at Chamberfest Brown County, and she is a 2024 Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellow. Recently, Jackson sang in Experiments in Opera’s world premiere podcast opera Aquanet & Funyuns, featuring five mini-operas by composers Kamala Sankaram, Michi Wianko and others. Excerpts from her latest self-produced recital, “Songs of Devotion: Music for the New Year,” aired on WCNY Radio’s Fresh Ink.
On the concert stage, Jackson made her Albany Symphony debut as Susanna in scenes from Le Nozze di Figaro conducted by David Alan Miller in 2017, later returning for the symphony’s American Music Festival. While at Bard Conservatory, she was the soloist in a concert of Mozart songs with world-renowned pianist Peter Serkin, and sang in Steve Reich’s Drumming with Sō Percussion. She was the soprano soloist in Poulenc’s Gloria at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Music Hall, and in Finzi’s In Terra Pax, with the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra. In 2017, she sang NY premieres by Shawn Jaeger and Alex Wieser at The Morgan Library and Museum in conjunction with the exhibit ”I’m Nobody! Who are you? The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson.”
Jackson has been praised by Opera News for giving a “tender fragility” to her performances, ranging from Flaminia in Haydn's Il mondo della luna, to Milica in Anna Sokolovic’s Svadba, a Serbian opera for six women, a capella.
Jackson is passionate about programming and producing. Working with Founder Lucy Dhegrae, she was previously the Producer of Resonant Bodies Festival, a festival of contemporary vocal music in Brooklyn, NY. The festival’s legacy album, featuring artists such as Julia Bullock, Caroline Shaw, Arooj Aftab, and Lucy Shelton, received critical acclaim from the New York Times.
Rachel Doehring Jackson graduated from Carnegie Mellon University (BFA 16’) and the Bard College Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, where she was mentored by the famed soprano Dawn Upshaw (MM 18’). She lives in New York City with her husband.
PC: Karl Rabe
