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About Me

Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman has garnered international attention as a sophisticated and versatile artist, praised for his “lucid, velvety tenor and pop-star charisma” (BBC Music Magazine). The 2019 Best Classical Solo Vocal GRAMMY® Award winner, he continues to earn acclaim for his original and innovative programming and recording projects, while regularly performing on the world’s stages in opera, orchestral concerts, recital and chamber music.

Recently Mr. Sulayman was presented by Carnegie Hall for a sold out solo recital debut followed immediately by the world premiere of his own multidisciplinary production, Unholy Wars, a baroque pasticcio centered around the Crusades and the Middle East, at Spoleto Festival USA.  He’s also made recent debuts at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Stockholm’s Drottningholms Slottsteater, Houston Grand Opera, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and the Chicago, National and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras.  He debuted at Wigmore Hall in concerts of French chamber music with his frequent collaborators, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, which The Arts Desk named to its “Best Performances of 2022.”  

This season he reprises his celebrated portrayal of Monteverdi’s ��’O���ڱ�� in Houston, he returns to Boston Baroque, and debuts with Boston’s A Far Cry for a world premiere cycle written for him by renowned composer Karim Al-Zand. Last season’s engagements included the protagonist in the world premiere of David T. Little’s highly anticipated monodrama What Belongs to You (based on Garth Greenwell’s acclaimed novel), written for Sulayman and Alarm Will Sound and directed by Mark Morris, his role debut as Pelléas in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at Longborough Festival Opera, and concerts at Park Avenue Armory, Wigmore Hall and Hong Kong’s Premiere Performances. Other recent engagements include performances of his acclaimed program with guitarist Sean Shibe, Broken Branches, at Ravinia Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, CAP-UCLA, Boston Celebrity Series and the Phillips Collection, and debuts at Opera Philadelphia (Unholy Wars) and New World Symphony (Britten’s Nocturne). He made his role debut as Grimoaldo in Handel’s Rodelinda (Hudson Hall), created the role of Crow in the world premiere of Layale Chaker/Lisa Schlesinger’s Ruinous Gods (Spoleto Festival USA), and debuted at the Royal Opera House, reprising the title role of Sarah Angliss/Ross Sutherland’s Giant, a role he created the previous year for the Aldeburgh Festival.  In the future he is slated to debut at Théâtre de la Monnaie, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and he will return to Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall.

A dedicated chamber musician, Sulayman was a frequent participant at the Marlboro Music Festival in collaboration with co-directors and pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode.. He has since been presented by many of the world’s leading chamber music festivals, collaborating frequently with groups like Eighth Blackbird and as a core member of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective. His concerts and recordings have been broadcast nationally and internationally on NPR, American Public Media, BBC Radio 3 and WDR 3.

Mr. Sulayman’s thought provoking and innovative programming is highlighted in his growing discography.  He won the 2019 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for his debut solo album, Songs of Orpheus (Avie Records), his original program of early Italian Baroque songs and arias. His second solo album, Where Only Stars Can Hear Us (Avie Records), an album of Schubert Lieder with fortepianist Yi-heng Yang was released in 2020 and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart and has received widespread critical acclaim, including being named as “Critic’s Choice” by Opera News, and included on the New York Times’ “Best Classical Music of 2020.”  His third album, Broken Branches (Pentatone) with Sean Shibe, debuted at #1 on the UK Classical Chart, and was named one of the Best Classical Music Albums of 2023 by the New York Times, Editor’s Choice by Gramophone Magazine, and was nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal album.

In November 2016, Karim created a social experiment/performance art piece called I Trust You, designed to build bridges in a divided political climate. A of this experiment went “viral” on the internet, and was honored as a prize winner in the My Hero Film Festival. He has been invited to give talks and hold open forums with student and adult groups about inclusion, empathy, healing from racism, and activism through the arts.

In other visual media, he is featured in the ARTE documentary Leonard Bernstein – A Genius Divided, which premiered throughout Europe in the summer of 2018 and was subsequently released on DVD. His performance of Bernstein’s Mass with the CSO was broadcast on PBS Great Performances in the spring of 2020, and in the fall of 2020 Karim appeared on the second season of the acclaimed series Dickinson on Apple TV+.

A native of Chicago, Karim’s musical education began with violin studies at age 3 which he continued through high school.  He also spent years as a boy alto the Chicago Children’s Choir and was hand selected by Sir Georg Solti and Leonard Slatkin as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony.  He graduated with highest honors from the Eastman School of Music where he worked in the Collegium Musicum under the tutelage of Paul O’Dette, and earned a Masters degree from Rice University.  He later moved to Paris, France where he studied with renowned tenor/haute-contre, Howard Crook.  He also studied improvisation at the Second City Training Center in Chicago.

Karim is passionate about his place in the Arts industry as someone who challenges audiences to think outside the box in a quest to maintain classical music’s relevance in a modern world, smashing the practice of treating old works as museum pieces. He enjoys educating the next generation of music students, encouraging them to think in this way while helping them cultivate their own unique voices. He hopes to make positive changes through thoughtful performance, arts advocacy and social justice that will impact generations to come.