Renée Fleming with Béla Fleck: The Fiddle and the Drum

From: Rochester, New York. LA Opera: Violetta in La Traviata (2006); Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (2014); Margaret Johnson in The Light in the Piazza (2019); numerous recitals and concerts, including the West Coast premieres of The Brightness of Light by Kevin Puts (2022) and Penelope by André Previn (2023). She is LA Opera's Advisor for Special Projects. Upcoming: The Fiddle and the Drum concert with Béla Fleck (September 22, 2026, at Walt Disney Concert Hall).

Renée Fleming is one of the most highly acclaimed singers of our time, performing on the stages of the world’s great opera houses and concert halls. A 2023 Kennedy Center Honoree, winner of five Grammy Awards and the U.S. National Medal of Arts, she has sung for momentous occasions from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to the Diamond Jubilee for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. A groundbreaking distinction came in 2008 when she became the first woman in the 125-year history of the Metropolitan Opera to solo headline an opening night gala, and in 2014 she became the first classical artist ever to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. In 2023, the World Health Organization appointed her as a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health.

Renée’s 2023/24 concert calendar included appearances in London, Vienna, Milan, Los Angeles, and at Carnegie Hall. In May at the Metropolitan Opera, she reprised her role in The Hours, a 2022 opera by Kevin Puts based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and award-winning film. In 2023, she portrayed Pat Nixon in a new production of Nixon in China at the Opéra de Paris.

Renée’s new anthology, Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, was published in April. A prominent advocate for research at the intersection of arts, health and neuroscience, as Artistic Advisor to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Renée launched the first ongoing collaboration between America’s national cultural center and its largest health research institute, the National Institutes of Health. She created her own program called Music and Mind, which she has presented in more than 50 cities around the world, earning Research!America’s Rosenfeld Award for Impact on Public Opinion. In 2020, Renée launched Music and Mind LIVE, a weekly web show exploring the connections between arts, human health, and the brain, amassing nearly 700,000 views, from 70 countries. She is now an advisor for major initiatives in this field, including the Sound Health Network at the University of California San Francisco and the NeuroArts Blueprint at Johns Hopkins University.

Renée has recorded everything from complete operas and song recitals to indie rock and jazz. In January, Decca released a special double-length album of live recordings from Renée’s greatest performances at the Metropolitan Opera. In February, Renée received the Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo for her album Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, with Yannick Nézet-Seguin as pianist. Known for bringing new audiences to classical music and opera, Renée has sung not only with Luciano Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli, but also with Elton John, Paul Simon, Sting, Josh Groban and Joan Baez. Renée’s voice is featured on the soundtracks of Best Picture Oscar winners The Shape of Water and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Co-Artistic Director of the Aspen Opera Center and VocalArts at the Aspen Music Festival, Renée is also Advisor for Special Projects at LA Opera, and she leads SongStudio at Carnegie Hall. Renée’s other awards include the 2023 Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize, France’s Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and honorary doctorates from eight major universities.

Learn more at ReneeFleming.com.

From: New York City, New York. LA Opera: The Fiddle and the Drum concert with Renée Fleming (September 22, 2026, at Walt Disney Concert Hall).

Over the past half-century, Béla Fleck has exploded the parameters of the banjo, taking his staggering musicality to inspired blends of bluegrass, fusion, folk, jazz, classical, global music and more. In the process he’s won 19 Grammy Awards and rightfully earned a reputation as one of our most brilliant instrumentalists.

The genre-blurring virtuoso  has done more to expand the possibilities of the banjo than any other player in the instrument’s history. To wit: in 2025, he released a collaboration with his new all-star trio with harpist Edmar Castañeda and drummer Antonio Sánchez, instrumentation that might safely be called uncommon. The year prior, it was his inspired reimagining of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Fleck has also been the banjo’s most thoughtful advocate and ambassador, and his acclaimed 2008 documentary Throw Down Your Heart and its accompanying soundtrack celebrated the instrument’s unsung African roots. Still, many fans would argue that Fleck’s greatest achievement is The Flecktones, another band of brilliant improvising musicians with an unusual format. (To start, their percussionist, Roy “Future Man” Wooten, plays an original invention called the Drumitar.) 

Fleck has the virtuosic, jazz-to-classical ingenuity of an iconic instrumentalist and composer with bluegrass roots. For over 30 years, he has led Béla Fleck and The Flecktones, the groundbreaking quartet inspired by jazz, funk, bluegrass and beyond. From writing three banjo concertos for full symphony orchestra to collaborations with Dave Matthews, Chick Corea, Zakir Hussain and beyond, many tout that Béla Fleck is the world’s premier banjo player. As Jon Pareles wrote for The New York Times, “That’s a lot of territory for five strings.”

Learn more at BelaFleck.com.

From: Newton, Massachusetts. LA Opera: The Fiddle and the Drum concert with Renée Fleming and Béla Fleck (September 22, 2026, at Walt Disney Concert Hall).

Aoife (pronounced EEF-ah) O'Donovan is an Irish American singer and songwriter. As well as solo work, she is known for being the lead singer for the progressive bluegrass/string band Crooked Still and a member of the female folk-noir trio Sometymes Why.

O'Donovan grew up in a musical family, immersed in folk music. She went on to study contemporary improvisation at the New England Conservatory of Music. Since her first professional engagement singing lead for the folk group The Wayfaring Strangers, she has maintained a wide variety of side projects and collaborations. She has recently performed and recorded with Ollabelle, Sometymes Why, Karan Casey and Seamus Egan, Jerry Douglas, Jim Lauderdale, Darol Anger, Sarah Jarosz, Sara Watkins, Christina Courtin, Noam Pikelny and Chris Thile (The Punch Brothers).

For the past decade, she has fronted the alt-bluegrass/string band Crooked Still, which she formed when she was 18. She has toured in ten different countries, performed with the Boston Pops and the Utah Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared on countless radio and television programs.

Her natural talent for songwriting recently came to the attention of Alison Krauss, who recorded Aoife's song "Lay My Burdon Down," which is included on Allison's album Paper Airplane (2011, Rounder Records) and can also be heart in the film Get Low (2010, Sony Pictures). Aoife's crystalline voice has also been heard on True Blood (HBO) and Private Practice (ABC). In June 2010, she released her first solo recording in the form of a limited edition 7" vinyl. Featuring two original tracks, it garnered rave reviews from audiophiles worldwide. Her project with Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer and Stuart Duncan titled The Goat Rodeo Sessions was released in 2011 (Sony Masterworks).

She makes her home in the musical hotbed of Brooklyn.

Learn more at aiofeodonovan.com.