2022 Lifetime Achievement Award

Kurt R. Hansen

Kurt R. Hansen’s long and distinguished performance career spanned over 40 years, on four continents. His repertoire ranges from the Early Baroque to the Twenty-First Century, in concert,opera, and recital venues.

Mr. Hansen sang with renowned conductors Sir George Solti, Claudio Abbado, Margaret Hillis, Robert Shaw, Thomas Wikman, and Edo de Waart to name just a few. He has also been soloist with such prestigious ensembles as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, the Omaha Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Florida Orchestra, Music of the Baroque, Chicago Master Singers, Tampa Masterworks Chorale, the Colorado Mahlerfest, the Hong Kong Early Music Fortnight Festival, and Orquestra Nacional de Colombia in Bogota.

The press has consistently praised Mr. Hansen with such reviews as:

“Kurt R. Hansen was the standout. His ability to deliver Bach’s high ‘tessitura’ without strain [and] his exciting timbre are things we should hear more often in New York.” So said The New York Times of Mr. Hansen’s Lincoln Center debut as the Evangelist in Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium with Chicago’s Music of the Baroque.

Mr. Hansen was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, and presently makes his home in Glenview, Illinois with his wife Theresa Brancaccio and their two sons Kristofer and Alex. Both he and his wife are members of the Voice and Opera Program Faculty at the Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. Mr. Hansen is also Coordinator of the Voice and Opera Program.

Kurt has taught almost as long as he has sung professionally. He is retiring in 2022 after 30 years on the faculty at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. Previously, he taught at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and North Park University, in addition to his private studio. His students have graced stages in music theater including Broadway, many Chicago and regional companies and also opera, from Chicago productions, European houses and the Met.. An interesting sidelight is that Mr. Hansen has also prepared and taught three Miss Americas. Teaching has been his life’s blood.

Major influences in his teaching were his own voice teachers, Norman Gulbrandsen, Diane Forlano, Walter Carringer; his beloved coaches Lola Rand, Tom Wikman, and Michael Cullen; his mentor Grigg Fountain; and performing partner and coach Karina Kontorovitch; and finally a family background of a Mom and Dad who both sang and his maternal grandfather, John Mahard Rosborough, Northwestern grad, choral conductor and Dean of the School of Music at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. His Mom and Dad met and fell in love in his college choir.

In addition, Kurt is in his 32nd year as Music Director at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. His work with his church choir is where he has been able to add his knowledge of the voice as both a singer and performer to inform him as a conductor.