J’Nai Bridges is a two time Grammy-Award winning American mezzo-soprano who has performed at many of the greatest opera houses and concert halls in the world. She is a winner of the Marian Anderson Award and has performed for the Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, and San Francisco Opera.
She attended the Manhattan School of Music and then the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia for graduate school. While participating in a young artists' program at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, she was mentored by Renée Fleming.
In the midst of the worldwide Covid 19 pandemic, she emerged as a leading figure in classical music’s shift toward conversations about inclusion and racial justice in the performing arts. In 2022 she was announced as one of the Kennedy Center’s NEXT50 cultural leaders. In 2023, she was profiled in an episode of the PBS series American Masters entitled “In the Making.”
J’Nai Bridges will perform at Tanglewood tonight in a prelude concert in Ozawa Hall, and this Sunday, August 20, she’ll join the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in The Shed for a performance of Michael Tippet’s “Five Spirituals from A Child of Our Time” and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
