Dawn Upshaw performing Dec. 15 in Mandel Hall

Concert is soprano's only Chicago-area appearance of year Dawn Upshaw, one of America's most revered sopranos, will perform with pianist Margo Garrett at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15, in Mandel Hall. The concert, which will be Upshaw's only appearance in Chicago this season, will feature songs by Aaron Copland, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Samuel Barber, Claude Debussy and Modest Mussorgsky.

A native of south suburban Park Forest, Ill., Upshaw "has risen faster and further than any other American singer of her generation," according to Time magazine. Equally at home in the world's major opera houses, in front of symphony orchestras, on the recital stage or in the recording studio, Upshaw has proved herself to be as versatile as she is virtuosic. The 1995-96 season will find her playing the role of Anne Truelove in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at the Salzburg Festival and performing in concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In addition to her Chicago recital, she will appear in Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. I Wish It So, her recent recording of theater songs by Weill, Blitzstein, Bernstein and Sondheim, was just named Best Music Theatre Recording by Gramophone magazine.

Upshaw has two Grammy Awards and more than two dozen recordings to her credit. She was a soloist on the wildly popular recording of Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 and has recently released an all-Copland recording with baritone Thomas Hampson and a recording of Songs of the Auvergne with Kent Nagano and the Orchestre de l'Opera de Lyon.

Tickets for the concert are $20, $8 for students; to order tickets by phone (Visa and Mastercard accepted), call 702-8068.