Following Courtenay Budd’s March 2012 concert with Pulitzer-winning composer and pianist David Del Tredici, the New York Times raved, “Ms. Budd brought gleaming sound, complete involvement and impressive stamina to both cycles, which she sang from memory. The audience gave a standing ovation to Ms. Budd and Mr. Del Tredici.” Ms. Budd, “a champion of Del Tredici’s work” recently recorded his Field Manual for Koch Records, following a performance at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge with Fireworks Ensemble and conductor Steven Mercurio. A First Prize Winner of Young Concert Artists Auditions, Ms. Budd has been heard with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the National Symphony, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and repeatedly at Carnegie Hall, Spoleto USA, and the Grand Teton and Bard Music Festivals.
A Metropolitan Opera National Finalist, Ms. Budd’s operatic performances include Ilia in Idomeneo at Alice Tully Hall, Baby Doe, Zerbinetta, Zerlina, Pamina, Amy in Little Women, Laurie in The Tender Land, and Marie in La fille du régiment, with such companies as Central City Opera, Opera Omaha, Atlanta Opera, Sugar Creek Festival, and the Colorado and Charleston Symphonies.
Ms. Budd is an avid recitalist and chamber musician. Metropolitan Museum of Art audiences enjoyed her performances of Rachmaninoff songs on Ruth Laredo’s Concerts with Commentary series. She has appeared seven seasons in Spoleto Festival USA’s Dock Street Chamber Music Series, alongside her mentor and frequent collaborator, pianist Charles Wadsworth. Her recital performances with Del Tredici at Bargemusic, were praised by New Music Connoisseur as “not only beautifully expressive but impeccable in her delivery of every word and note.”
She has collaborated with symphony orchestras across the United States in the Requiems of Brahms and Mozart, Barber's Knoxville, Summer of 1915, Mozart's Mass in C Minor, Orff's Carmina Burana, Poulenc’s Gloria, Honegger’s King David, Respighi's Laud to the Nativity, Rachmaninoff's The Bells, Strauss's Brentanolieder, Villa Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras, Handel’s Samson, Beethoven's Symphony No.9, Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bach’s Cantatas 51, 201 and 199, and Haydn's Creation; with the Bard Festival String Quartet in Schönberg’s String Quartet #2 and Del Tredici’s I Hear an Army, and with the Saint Lawrence String Quartet in the world premier of Osvaldo Golijov’s Tenebrae. Her most recent appearances include opera concerts with the Symphony of the Americas (after which her performance of Verdi’s Caro nome was reviewed as “replete with bel canto gleam”); recitals for the Artists Series of Sarasota; Del Tredici’s music at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, 92nd Street Y, Zankel Hall, and Symphony Space, as well as Brahms’s Requiem and recital appearances with Miriam Charney and Thomas Sauer at Vassar College, and the inaugural concert of Solaris Voices at Beacon, NY’s Howland Center, benefiting the Center for Prevention of Child Abuse.
Budd’s CD Sleep is Behind the Door was named “Lullaby Album of the year” by CDBaby.com, and has raised thousands in aid for victims of natural disasters. The recording was the generous collaboration of numerous artists including soprano Sylvia McNair and cellist Alisa Weilerstein. Additionally, Budd appears on the VMS recording Korngold’s Hollywood Songbook with pianist Dalton Baldwin. This season she returns to south Florida for opera concerts with Symphony of the Americas, then heads to her hometown of Newnan, Georgia for her third year as Artistic Director, Host, and also performer in the annual Friends of Wadsworth Chamber Music Concert. She will next appear with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project for David Del Tredici's demanding work for soprano and orchestra Child Alice, to be recorded for commercial release.