Press Quotes & Acclaim

“Lucky the composers (rather many by now) who have had Lucy Shelton on their side. Her technique (and personality and imagination) can have a listener warming even to music that’s hell-bent on avoiding warmth. Yes, she sings ‘normal’ music, too.”
—Richard Buell, The Boston Globe

“A favorite of modernist composers and of critics….everybody’s first choice for Schoenberg or Messiaen.”
—Mark Swed, The Los Angeles Times

“So pure and expressive is Shelton’s voice that she could create magic merely by reciting from the phonebook.”
—Pamela Summers, The Washington Post

“Shelton dazzles continuously from the heights.”
—Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times

“Shelton, one of this country’s most interesting singers, has not relied on opera to make her career, but has ventured forth in nearly every important style and period of song. She is a notable exponent of contemporary music, but her pliant and expressive soprano is equally vivid in Beethoven’s Folk Songs of Many Lands.”
—The Seattle Times

“Lucy Shelton sang beautifully.”
—The New Yorker

“An absolutely wonderful musician with a deep understanding and affinity for contemporary music.”
—Michael Manning, The Boston Globe

“The estimable Lucy Shelton knows her way around modern music, and this arrangement allows for all her skills.”
—Boston Herald

“Many of these cheers with reason went to Lucy Shelton, a singer deeply experienced in putting across ‘impossible’ modern music. Shelton also has a voice. To which it should be added that she knows languages, can act, and is always aware of the larger musical context. In other words, she doesn’t just take the money and run.”
—The Boston Globe

“Shelton sang eloquently.”
—The New York Times

“Great skill, always balancing declamatory power against emotional intensity.”
—Andrew Clements, The Guardian

“Soprano Lucy Shelton sang with tonal glow, secure musicianship, and feeling.”
—The Boston Globe

“When the voice belongs to a phenomenal singer like soprano Lucy Shelton, the music becomes a gift, message or poem sent from the composer via the performer to the audience.”
—The Washington Post

“One of those rare sopranos with near-perfect pitch and the ability to negotiate jagged intervals, switch to sprechgesang and then soar over the orchestra with golden tone.”
—Jeff Bradley, The Denver Post

“Shelton’s elegant, warm singing made every gesture tell….Shelton’s singing was a marvel of graceful eloquence.”
—Joshua Kosman, The San Francisco Chronicle

“Abundant reserves of steely accuracy and expressive power…”
—Antony Bye, The London Times

“The soprano here was Lucy Shelton, characteristically strong and generous…”
—Paul Griffiths, The New York Times

“Shelton is a musical, scrupulous, imaginative and uninhibited singer.”
—Richard Dyer, The Boston Globe

“…vivid vocalism…expressive use of the demands the music is placing on her essentially lyric instrument…”
—John Story, Fanfare

“In addition to technical accomplishment, Shelton embodies those traits that make interpreters of 20th century music stand out—a range of emotional, even theatrical expression that never steps out of the bounds of musicality; a palette of colors that is never artificially vivid or self-consciously subdued; the ability to sing as though speaking, and to speak as though singing.”
—Michael Manning, The Boston Globe

“Shelton’s is a voice and music personality that does not call attention to itself but is so utterly secure that the song is expressed directly, a rare transcendence.”
—The Buffalo News

"Shelton is able to connect the dots, both literally on the page and musically between fundamentally different sound-worlds. Contemporary vocal fireworks from a specialist in the field.”
—Gramophone Magazine