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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 inventive programming and recording projects, while regularly performing on the world’s stages in opera, orchestral concerts, recitals, and chamber music.
This season’s engagements include Mr. Sulayman’s debut with the Cape Town Philharmonic in the world premiere of Iain Bell’s orchestral song cycle How May I Call My Love? He is presented in recital by Carnegie Hall, Yale Schwarzman Center, and La Motte Classical Music in South Africa. He reunites with his frequent collaborators of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective for chamber music concerts at Kammermuziek Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and is presented in concert by Houston Early Music. The season also marks the New York City premiere of David T. Little’s opera What Belongs to You, directed by Mark Morris at the NYU Skirball Center. He also performs the tenor solo in Britten’s War Requiem at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall.
Last season, Mr. Sulayman made his role debut as Pelléas in a new production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at Longborough Festival Opera to great critical acclaim. He also reprised his celebrated portrayal of the title role of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in a new production with Ars Lyrica Houston. He made his first appearance at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in a solo recital and was presented by Wigmore Hall in three programs, including Broken Branches, his original program with guitarist Sean Shibe.
Career highlights include a sold-out solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 2022, 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 has also made recent appearances at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Stockholm’s Drottningholms Slottsteater, Royal Opera House, Opera Philadelphia, Houston Grand Opera, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Park Avenue Armory, Ravinia Festival, Premiere Performances in Hong Kong, Aldeburgh Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Phillips Collection, and San Francisco Performances. His debut at Wigmore Hall in concerts of French chamber music was named to The Arts Desk’s “Best Performances of 2022.”
Mr. Sulayman is a sought-after partner for many of the world’s leading orchestral and chamber ensembles. He has appeared as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. A dedicated chamber musician, Mr. Sulayman was a frequent participant at the Marlboro Music Festival. He has since been presented by many of the world’s leading chamber music festivals, collaborating frequently with groups like Eighth Blackbird and A Far Cry 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 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), an original program of early Italian Baroque songs and arias. His second solo album, Where Only Stars Can Hear Us (Avie Records), a collection of Schubert Lieder with fortepianist Yi-heng Yang, was released in 2020; it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart and received widespread critical acclaim, including being named “Critic’s Choice” by Opera News and “Best Classical Music of 2020” by The New York Times. His third album, Broken Branches (Pentatone), with guitarist Sean Shibe, debuted at No. 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, and one of the best albums of the 21st century by BBC Radio 3. It was nominated for the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. His third GRAMMY® nomination came in 2026, for Best Opera Recording, for Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Adoration.
In November 2016, Mr. Sulayman created a social experiment/performance art piece called I Trust You, designed to build bridges in a divided political climate. A video version of this experiment went viral 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 film and television, 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 Chicago Symphony Orchestra was broadcast on PBS Great Performances in the spring of 2020, and in the fall of 2020 he appeared on the second season of the acclaimed series Dickinson on Apple TV+.
A native of Chicago, Mr. Sulayman began his musical education with violin studies at age 3, continuing through high school. He also spent years as a boy alto with 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 master’s degree from Rice University. He later moved to Paris, where he studied with renowned tenor/haute-contre Howard Crook. He also studied improvisation at the Second City Training Center in Chicago.
Mr. Sulayman 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 original ways and cultivate their unique voices. He hopes to make positive changes through thoughtful performance, arts advocacy, and social justice that will impact generations to come. Mr. Sulayman has recently joined the artist faculty at Roosevelt University’s College of the Performing Arts in Chicago.
