NICHOLAS PHAN
TENOR
Described by the Boston Globe as “one of the world’s most remarkable singers,” American tenor Nicholas Phan is increasingly recognized as an artist of distinction. Praised for his keen intelligence, captivating stage presence and natural musicianship, he performs regularly with the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies. Also an avid recitalist, in 2010 he co-founded the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago (CAIC) to promote art song and vocal chamber music, where he serves as artistic director.
A celebrated recording artist, Phan won the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for his recording of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony. A five-time Grammy nominee, Phan’s most recent album, A Change Is Gonna Come, was nominated for the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. His previous albums, Stranger: Works for Tenor by Nico Muhly, Clairières, and Gods and Monsters, were nominated for the same award in 2023, 2020, and 2017. He is the first singer of Asian descent to be nominated in the history of the category, which has been awarded by the Recording Academy since 1959. His other solo albums Illuminations, A Painted Tale, Still Fall the Rain, and Winter Words, made many “best of” lists, including those of the New York Times, New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, WQXR, and the Boston Globe. Phan’s continually growing discography also includes Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony, as well as recordings of Berlioz’ Roméo et Juliette and Stravinsky’s Canticum Sacrum with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, Scarlatti’s La gloria di primavera and Handel’s Joseph and his Brethren with Philharmonia Baroque and Nicholas McGegan, an album of Bach’s secular cantatas with Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan, Bach’s St. John Passion (in which he sings both the Evangelist and the tenor arias) with Apollo’s Fire, and the world premiere recordings of two orchestral song cycles: The Old Burying Ground by Evan Chambers and Elliott Carter’s A Sunbeam’s Architecture.
A prolific concert artist, Phan regularly appears with many of the leading orchestras in the world, including the Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, London Symphony, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, New World Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Boston Baroque, Bach Collegium Japan, Les Violons du Roy, Orchestre de la Suisse-Romande, BBC Symphony, English Chamber Orchestra, Strasbourg Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra of London, Israel Philharmonic and the Lucerne Symphony. He has toured extensively throughout the major concert halls of Europe and has appeared with the Oregon Bach, Ravinia, Marlboro, Edinburgh, Rheingau, Saint-Denis, Music @ Menlo, and Tanglewood festivals, as well as the BBC Proms. Among the conductors he has worked with are Marin Alsop, Harry Bicket, Herbert Blomstedt, Pierre Boulez, Karina Canellakis, Jonathan Cohen, James Conlon, Alan Curtis, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Charles Dutoit, James Gaffigan, Grant Gershon, Alan Gilbert, Jane Glover, Giancarlo Guerrero, Matthew Halls, Manfred Honeck, Bernard Labadie, Louis Langrée, Cristian Măcelaru, Nicholas McGegan, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, John Nelson, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, George Petrou, Helmuth Rilling, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Masaaki Suzuki, Michael Tilson Thomas, Bramwell Tovey, Jaap Van Zweden and Franz Welser-Möst.
A passionate proponent of vocal chamber music, he has collaborated with many chamber musicians, including pianists Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Jeremy Denk, Graham Johnson, Roger Vignoles, Inon Barnatan, Myra Huang, Gabriel Kahane, and Alessio Bax; violinists James Ehnes and Tai Murray; cellist Paul Watkins; the Brooklyn Rider, Jasper and Spektral string quartets; guitarist Eliot Fisk; harpists Bridget Kibbey and Sivan Magen; and horn players Jennifer Montone, Radovan Vlatkovic and Gail Williams. In both recital and chamber concerts, he has been presented by Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, San Francisco Performances, Cal Performances, the Aspen Music Festival, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Atlanta’s Spivey Hall, Boston’s Celebrity Series, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Often working to build the vocal chamber repertoire, numerous new song cycles have been composed for him by many of today’s pre-eminent composers, including Lembit Beecher, Jake Heggie, Gabriel Kahane, Aaron Jay Kernis, Missy Mazzoli, Joel Puckett, Errollyn Wallen, and Nico Muhly.
In addition to his work as artistic director of CAIC, he also has served as guest curator for projects with the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, Laguna Beach Music Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Merola Opera program, WQXR, and San Francisco Performances, where he served as the vocal artist-in-residence from 2014-2018.
Phan’s many opera credits include appearances with the Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, Chicago Opera Theater, Seattle Opera, Portland Opera, Glyndebourne Opera, Maggio Musicale in Florence, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, and Frankfurt Opera. His growing repertoire includes the title roles in Bernstein’s Candide, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, Fenton in Falstaff, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, and Lurcanio in Ariodante.
A graduate of the University of Michigan, Phan is the 2012 recipient of the Paul C Boylan Distinguished Alumni Award and the 2018 Christopher Kendall Award. He also studied at the Manhattan School of Music and the Aspen Music Festival and School, and is an alumnus of the Houston Grand Opera Studio. He was the recipient of a 2006 Sullivan Foundation Award and 2004 Richard F. Gold Career Grant from the Shoshana Foundation.
“An artist who must be heard”
-NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
“One of the world’s most remarkable singers”
- BOSTON GLOBE
"One of the most beautiful young lyric voices around”
- OPERA NEWS
“A star in the making…exquisitely artful”
- THE SUNDAY TIMES (LONDON)
"One of the most eloquently communicative tenors on the scene today"
-THE BALTIMORE SUN
"The tenor Nicholas Phan, with his sweet, clear voice is on a career roll”
-THE NEW YORK TIMES
EDUCATOR
Committed to education of audiences and musicians alike, Nicholas Phan served on the voice faculty of the DePaul University School of Music from 2018-2020. In addition to his time at DePaul, he has guest taught (working as both a voice teacher and a coach) at the Eastman School of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Merola Opera Program, University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance, and the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera. He currently serves as a coach on the faculty of the San Francisco Opera Center, where he works with the Adler Fellows.
In demand as a master class clinician, he has taught master classes for Carnegie Hall’s SongStudio, Tanglewood Music Center, University of Michigan, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Emmanuel Music’s Bach Institute, Oberlin Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, DePaul University, University of Chicago, University of Houston, Longy School of Music, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, Oregon Bach Festival, Kansas City Symphony, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco State University, Portland State University, Emory & Henry College, Sun Valley Music Festival, San Francisco Girl’s Chorus, and the Bay Area Vocal Academy. He has curated recital projects for the Merola Opera program and San Francisco Opera Center, also working intensively with the singers and pianists as they prepared for the performances. He has also led professional development sessions for Tanglewood Music Center, Eastman School of Music, University of Michigan, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Oberlin Conservatory. In the 2023-24 season, he will be the Artist-In-Residence at New York’s Kaufman Music Center, and in the fall of 2020, he was Virtual Artist-in-Residence at University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music.
Devoted to promoting the art of song and the vocal recital, he has given numerous talks on the relationship between text and music for both student and adult audiences through his work as the vocal artist-in-residence with San Francisco Performances from 2014-2018, as well as with the Laguna Beach Music Festival and Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago.
CURATOR
In addition to programming seven critically-acclaimed albums, tenor Nicholas Phan co-founded the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago (CAIC) in 2010 to promote art song and vocal chamber music, where he continues to serve as artistic director. As artistic director of CAIC, he has overseen the programming of the organization’s Lieder Lounge vocal recital series and the Collaborative Works Festival, CAIC’s critically-acclaimed annual vocal chamber music festival held in venues throughout Chicago each Autumn.
In addition to his work as artistic director of CAIC, Phan is the host and creator of BACH 52, a web series examining the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He has created programs for broadcast on WFMT and WQXR and has also served as guest curator for projects with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Bravo! Vail Music Festival, Merola Opera, San Francisco Opera Center, Laguna Beach Music Festival, Apollo’s Fire, and San Francisco Performances, where he served as the vocal artist-in-residence from 2014-2018.
Praised by the Chicago Classical Review as “the kind of thoughtful, intelligent programming that should be a model,” Phan’s programs often examine themes of identity, highlight unfairly underrepresented voices from history, and strive to underline the relevance of music from all periods to the currents of the present day.
2015 Collaborative Works Festival with pianist Michael Brown
FESTIVAL PROGRAMS
& SPECIAL PROJECTS
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“This is the kind of thoughtful, intelligent programming that should be the model in a city like Chicago”
– Chicago Classical Review
“This tour de force by Phan and the PCMS provides a shot of adrenaline to the Philadelphia chamber music scene, attracting a more diverse audience to discover art songs and the picture they paint of history and social change.”
– Broad Street Review
“With the Collaborative Works Festivals the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago are presenting annually, Chicago is doing its bit to rescue art song performance from the endangered species list.”
– Chicago Tribune
“Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago has established itself as one of Windy City’s primary musical treasures since the organization’s inception six years ago. Dedicated to the performance of art song, CAIC is known for its annual song festival.”
– Opera News
“The connoisseurs’ genre of art song singing will never lack a forum in the city’s musical life as long as the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago is there to affirm its importance and promote its growth.”
– Chicago Tribune
Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago’s 11th annual Collaborative Works Festival explores Chicago’s rich musical history through song.
The Festival’s opening program, Chicago's Own, features songs of composers who were born in Chicago as well as those who studied and taught at many of Chicago's universities and institutions. The second program, Music and Poetry, features the music of some of Chicago’s Black American composers who blazed new trails for Black American composers and musicians both in Chicago and nationwide. The closing program examines Chicago poet, journalist, and urban folk singer Carl Sandburg’s seminal anthology of American Folk songs, The American Songbag.