Sarah Maria Sun

Sarah Maria Sun is known as one of the foremost and most extraordinary performers in the contemporary music scene. In addition to numerous songs, operas and oratorios, her repertoire currently includes more than 2000 compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries, among these more than 400 world premieres. North German Radio (NDR) has dedicated portrait concerts to her in 2012, 2016 and 2018.

Her tremendous adaptability is demonstrated on a regular basis on the music-theater stage. She has appeared at the opera houses in Zurich, Basel, Dresden, Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Leipzig, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Zagreb, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Opéra Bastille and the Opéra Comique in Paris. In summer 2021, she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in Luigi Nono’s Intolleranza 1960 with the Wiener Philharmoniker and Ingo Metzmacher in a new staging by Jan Lauwers. She shows her skill for haunting theatrical and musical interpretation time and again in the depiction of complex female figures. In particular, the monodramas Yes I Will Yes by Dieter Schnebel (Elbphilharmonie Hamburg), Lohengrin by Salvatore Sciarrino (Salzburg Easter Festival), and Kolik and Queen of Hearts by Jannik Giger, Leo Hoffmann and Benjamin von Bebber (Gare du Nord Basel) are especially noteworthy. She was nominated as singer of the year by Opernwelt Magazine for the role of Elsa in Sciarrino's Lohengrin in 2017 and for the role of Gwen in Philip Venables’ 4.48 Psychose (Semperoper Dresden) in 2019. She presented the outstanding production AMOPERA together with Holger Falk, the Klangforum Wien and the Need Company at the Festspielhaus Erl, the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, in South Korea, at the Transart Festival Bolzano and at the concert hall NOSPR in Katowice (Poland).

She regularly performs as a soloist in concert halls and festivals such as the Suntory Hall Tokyo, the Muziekgebow Amsterdam, the Philharmonie Luxembourg, the Tonhalle Zurich, the KKL Lucerne, the Auditorio National Madrid, the Casa da Música Porto, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Berlin and Cologne Philharmonie, the Biennale Venice, the Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna and the festivals in Witten, Donaueschingen, Lucerne, Grafenegg and Herrenhausen.

Sarah Maria Sun has performed with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Thomas Hengelbrock, Susanna Mälkki, Peter Rundel, Heinz Holliger, Iván Fischer, Sylvain Cambreling as well as with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the WDR, NDR, BR, SWR, SR Radio Symphony Orchestras, the Konzerthausorchester, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Antwerp and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras and ensembles such as musikFabrik Köln, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain as well as the string quartets Diotima, Arditti, Minguet and Signum.

In the season 2026/27, Sarah Maria Sun will make her debut as Papagena in W.A. Mozart’s Zauberflöte with the Budapest Festival Orchestra in the direction of Iván Fischer at the Müpa Budapest, Vincenza Opera Festival/Teatro Olimpico and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. She will also sing recitals at the Oxford International Song Festival and the Alte Oper Frankfurt and perform concerts with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Collegium Novum Zürich, the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre (British premiere of Rebecca Saunder’s Lash) and the Basel Sinfonietta.

Sarah Maria Sun's discography includes more than 30 CDs, some of which have been awarded prizes. In 2017, four of her six new releases were nominated for the German Record Critics' Award. Recently, her latest and most contrasting CDs Harawi with songs by Olivier Messiaen and Killer Instincts presenting works by Tom Waits, Kurt Weill, Leonard Bernstein, Randy Newman, John Kander, Stephen Sondheim i.a. have been released on the label Mode Records. The recording „Les Espaces Électroaqoustiques“ (Col Legno) received the German Record Critics' Award.

From 2007-2014, Sarah Maria Sun was the first soprano of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, a chamber ensemble of seven singers that has been one of the world's leading pioneers of contemporary music for 30 years. She studied singing in Cologne and Stuttgart and most importantly worked with Darinka Segota and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner. She regularly gives masterclasses for vocal music from the 20th and 21st centuries; for instance, at universities and conservatoires in Oslo, Harvard, Chicago, Stockholm, Zurich, Rostock, Moscow, Dresden, and Berlin. Between 2018-2022, she worked as a guest professor, tutor and lecturer at the music universities of Hannover, Graz and Lucerne. She is a professor for Contemporary Music and Open Creation at the Basel Academy of Music, Switzerland.