Media

DISCOGRAPHY
the labor of forgetting (False Azure Records, 2022) – Katherine Balch’s estrangement with pianist Ryan McCullough, alongside works for solo piano by Dante De Silva. Release 11/4.
Beauty Intolerable (Albany Records, 2021) – Works for voice and piano by Sheila Silver, also featuring artists including Dawn Upshaw, Stephanie Blythe, Gilbert Kalish, and others. With Ryan McCullough, selections from Beauty Intolerable as well as Chariessa.
Descent/Return (Albany Records, 2020) – Works for voice and piano by John Harbison and James Primosch with pianist Ryan McCullough. Includes Harbison’s Simple Daylight and selected songs by Primosch alongside major piano works by both composers.
​A Ceremony of Carols (Naxos, 2011) – Works for treble ensemble and harp with the eight-voice Etherea Vocal Ensemble and Grace Cloutier, including Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols and Rutter’s Dancing Day. 

TV/RADIO
Now Hear This: The Schubert Generation, PBS Great Performances (2020)                                
Becoming a Lied Singer: Thomas Quasthoff and the Art of German Song, BBC 4 (2017)
NPR’s Science Friday: “Finding the Notes Among Us” (2010)

PRESS
“The first half of the concert closed with a stunning performance of Kate Soper’s bravura, Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say.The piece is a setting of three texts by Lydia Davis (one work of flash fiction and two poems) for soprano and flute. Each text is delivered with a mixture of spoken recitation and singing, with the occasional wordless tangent. It is a veritable feast of extended techniques: the flutist has to speak, blow, and twitter into his instrument; and the soprano has to do nearly everything a voice is humanly capable of.
Were this music entirely in earnest, it would echo the worst excesses of the Cold War-era academic avant-garde. But Soper aptly describes this piece as going “from screwball comedy to paired musical gymnastics.”
Fitz Gibbon’s performance was fearless and utterly committed, both dramatically and musically, whether she was landing a high note, declaiming, growling, whooping, or beat-boxing.
Of course, timing is everything in comedy; and Fitz Gibbon’s and Camuglia’s was faultless. Throughout the piece, voice and flute are generally performing the exact rhythm. Camuglia shadowed Fitz Gibbon seamlessly, as if they were different facets of the same person. The piece ends with the performers remaining frozen for long stretches, bursting into sound, and freezing again. They were in perfect coordination here and throughout.” (Chicago Classical Review, March 2020)

“Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon gave an animated and colorful performance of the songs. She was most engaging in the humorous third song, Svatba (Wedding). Sung from the perspective of an older, jaded woman (probably the mother of the bride) attending the event, the woman points out that she herself gets to go home while Anca, the bride, now must stay there and live with her new family. Fitz Gibbon was also strongly appealing in Ukoliebavka (Lullaby), sung lovingly and wistfully by Anca to her young son, begging him to love her always.” (Opera News, May 2020)

“Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon was a fireball in the Bartók songs, creating vivid characters and images with her sparkling voice, facial expressions and outstretched arms. In ‘Wedding’, [Fitz] Gibbon’s wild shrieks punctuated an envious woman’s description of another girl’s wedding day, but the other songs brought out a more subtle display of emotions. Especially dreamy and poignant was a lullaby sung by a mother to her young son, who promises to stay with his mother always or until he marries, while her hope is that the cold earth does not claim him.” (Seen and Heard International, February 2020)

“Lucy Fitz Gibbon, who has sung in the WA Concerts in the past, is well on her way to being the Lucy Shelton of her generation. She not only masters the difficulties of the musical writing and understands the texts and expresses their meaning, she has great fun conquering the challenge and projected the essence of the music. Few singers are nearly as comfortable in this demanding repertory, which often gives the singer less than a minute to make a complete statement.” (New York Arts, January 2020)

“Webern’s Sechs Lieder nach Gedichten von Georg Trakl, Op. 14 (1917/21), set to six darkly expressionistic poems by fellow Austrian Georg Trakl, who died of a cocaine overdose three years before, feature Webern’s signature widely disjunct vocal lines that make text comprehension difficult. On that subject, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon gave a compelling performance, her voice even from top to bottom despite the wild demands placed on it.” “After intermission, Ms. Fitz Gibbon returned with Webern’s own counterpoints, Fünf Canons, Op. 16 (1923/24), to Roman Catholic liturgical lines…Three of Webern’s canons concern the crucifixion, and the two instrumental strands and one vocal strand crisscross each other in symbolic fashion, with every possible permutation and breathtaking efficiency: different pitch levels, inversion, and retrograde. The lullaby for the infant Jesus was tender, though in Webern’s severe way. This was the finest performance of this rarity that one is likely ever to hear live.” (New York Concert Review, December 2019)

“… but watch out New York, there’s a “new Lucy” in town. Lucy Fitz Gibbon was the excellent soprano on this occasion, beginning with Babbitt’s Quatrains (1993, words by John Hollander). She handled the challenging writing with ease.” “Then Ms. Fitz Gibbon returned with her regular recital partner Ryan McCullough for Wuorinen’s A Song to the Lute in Musicke (1970, text attributed to pre-Elizabethan poet Richard Edwards). The duo is splendidly matched, and Mr. McCullough’s piano handling of the disparate lines is extremely sensitive. They continued with Babbitt’s Du (1951, text by August Stramm, who died at age 41, killed in action in WWI). This is the “oldest” music on the program. Stramm’s terse, darkly expressionist poems were fully inhabited by Ms. Fitz Gibbon, and here the musical language matched the sentiments well.” (New York Concert Review, December 2018)

“Harbison’s vocal line [in the world premiere of If with Boston Musica Viva] is more dramatic than lyrical—this isn’t Shepherd on the Rock; a listener is unlikely to leave a performance humming the tune—and Fitz Gibbon conveyed it with admirable flair, moving from woe to bitterness to irony with perfect conviction and plausibility.” (Boston Musical Intelligencer, October 2018)

“Reena Esmail conceived a beautiful amalgamation in “My Sister’s Voice” with the Hindustani singer Saili Oak and the always impressive soprano Fitz Gibbon. The work’s marvelous lyricism, its superb string writing and equally perfect balances allowed Oak’s rough-edged but earthy voice and Fitz Gibbon’s lush tones to blend and soar. The audience jumped to its feet, cheering and applauding loudly.” (The Daily Gazette, June 2018)

“The Dogs [of Desire] added the skills of the remarkable soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon and mezzo-soprano Lucy Deghrae, who plucked tones out of the air over exceedingly wide ranges with an edgy versatility.” (The Daily Gazette, June 2017)

“On April 12 at the Morgan Library’s Gilder Lehrman Hall, the Bard College Conservatory of Music Graduate Vocal Arts Program presented First Songs, an array of little known or recently commissioned works by contemporary composers. Artistic Director Dawn Upshaw was to have been the headliner, giving the world premiere of Pablo Ortiz’s Garden Songs, but was felled by a stomach virus the night before. Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon fearlessly stepped in and delivered a thoughtful, earnest reading of the cycle, accompanied by violin, viola and cello. It wasn’t clear how familiar she was with the work before the early morning SOS [not at all! I got the music the morning of the performance!], but she was remarkably focused and confident, singing with a gleaming soprano.” (Opera News, July 2015)

“Lerdahl’s 1968 “Wake,” a long James Joyce setting conducted by Daniel Cohen, featured dazzling, virtuoso singing by soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon” (Boston Globe, July 2014)

“… agile and beautifully focused soprano of exceedingly wide range, uniform timbre, and great flexibility that seemed made for this piece, a remarkable performer who stood out among many other remarkable musicians in this festival.” (Berkshire Review for the Arts, July 2014)

“Also invariably impressive were mezzo Maria Zifchak, who lent rich fullness to each line as the haunted manor’s housekeeper, and soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, who stepped into the role of the boy, Miles, on short notice and created a very memorable character, one both vulnerable and intimidating. ” (Twin Cities Pioneer Press, May 2014)