By Sebastián Spreng, Visual Artist and Classical Music Writer

Grammy Award winner Christine Brewer epitomizes the quintessential American soprano. When in 2007, BBC Music Magazine asked 20 critics to name the top 10 sopranos of the recorded era, Brewer not only made the list; she was one of the four alive and one of only three Americans on the list.

On Saturday, Oct. 29, Brewer will sing the Wesendonck-Lieder by Richard Wagner, one of her signature composers, at the Knight Concert Hall with the New World Symphony under the leadership of Michael Tilson Thomas.  In the musical setting of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner created five gems that seem composed for Brewer’s voice. Infatuated with Mathilde (the wife of his patron Otto Wesendonck) two of the songs are studies for Wagner’s next musical drama Tristan and Isolde, another of Brewer’s specialties.

Born and raised in Illinois, where she still lives with husband Ross and daughter Elizabeth, Brewer is the anti-diva par excellence. In conversation she reveals a compassionate and intelligent woman fiercely committed to her art and the world. Her story resembles her – at once normal and exceptional – a typically American combination.

When asked if she is one of the very few dramatic sopranos of our time capable of singing Isolde, she candidly replies: “I don’t call myself a dramatic soprano. I call myself a lyric soprano with a big voice.” And, yes, the voice is huge and sumptuous with a middle range boasting a rare opulence enriched by her perfect diction in German and English, two of the many languages in which she usually sings.

In fact, Brewer feels more at home singing Wagner, Richard Strauss, Gluck and Britten than the Italian repertoire. Yet she recorded a superb rendition of Verdi’s Requiem with Sir Colin Davis. In the vocal arch of the final Libera me, Brewer brings to mind the great Martina Arroyo, another American soprano whose voice hers sometimes resembles. Apart from Britten’s War Requiem, two mainstays of Brewer’s repertoire are Gloriana, which she will repeat in the Santa Fe Opera in 2014, and the hilarious Lady Billows from Albert Herring, which she repeat in Los Angeles Opera next February.

A rara avis, Brewer belongs to the great tradition of singing. She recently recorded a CD of encores (Echoes of Nightingales, Hyperion) paying tribute to her most illustrious predecessors like Kirsten Flagstad, Eleanor Steber, Helen Traubel and Eileen Farrell, whom she reminds in more than one way. Like Farrell, Brewer can sing opera and popular songs with equal ease. Like Farrell, she prefers the peace and quiet of home and family life to the demands of fame and stardom.

Brewer grew up singing gospel and blue grass in choirs and as a soloist, one in a family of singers. She doesn’t remember whether she spoke or sang first; she just remembers that she liked funerals because they gave her more opportunities to sing. Her first career was as a teacher, one that she embraced with fervor, first in Marissa, an Illinois coal mining town, and later in her own town, Lebanon. She taught music and K-12 for eight years, also serving as a substitute director in a high school band where she even learned how to fix her students’ instruments, she says: “Being a professional sometimes means just “Go with the flow.”

As singing became more important in her life, it was her husband (a junior high teacher and “The rock of the family”) who suggested focusing 100% on her career. It was a turning point, Brewer says: “Having a four-year-old and living on one salary wasn’t easy. What was exciting was the support I got from my family and my community. They provided everything from a concert gown to plane tickets to auditions. I am forever grateful, because their effort bore fruit.”

She made her professional debut as Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes  (Britten has been one of her best allies since the beginning) at the St. Louis Opera after the auditions at the Metropolitan Opera launched her career. A pivotal event occurred prior to winning the 1989 auditions at the Met. She didn’t win on her first try, but Evelyn Lear, a distinguished soprano member of the jury, advised her to attend the master classes that Birgit Nilsson would be teaching in a few months. The class was full, but Brewer was so insistent, she was placed on the waiting list. Not only did she finally get in; she was the only one selected by the legendary Swedish soprano. An invitation to train with Nilsson for six weeks in Germany followed, and Christine flew there with her mother (“my first great singing teacher”).

The great Swedish was a wise adviser. Nilsson did not let the young soprano accept a contract in Germany that would have subjected her voice to the rigors of a typical opera-house repertoire too early in life, and when Brewer debuted as Isolde – a role literally “owned by” Nilsson – the diva sent her a huge card that read “Frau Isolde!” In a tribute to her mentor, Brewer will sing the same program that Nilsson opened the Sydney Opera with in 1963 in Sydney 2013.

Whether directed by Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Simon Rattle or Donald Runnicles –“with whom the chemistry is always perfect” – or as the Dyer’s Wife in Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten, Ariadne in Ariadne auf Naxos or anything from Mozart and Schubert to Harold Arlen and Leonard Bernstein, perhaps Brewer’s best kept secret is that she developed away from the stress of agents, auditions and excessive vocal strain, a circumstance that most likely allowed her voice to mature naturally.

In her community, she is a tireless advocate of musical education and regularly visits nursing homes and schools: “If we were here only to become famous and make money, it would be too shallow an existence.” To the kids she is just “The Opera Lady.” Brewer summarizes her recipe for success: “Never underestimate young audiences. Music has the power to touch their lives in a real way.” Explore more in a fascinating article she wrote on that topic.

Every summer, for the last 25 years the Brewers have hosted a back yard “hootenanny” around Labor Day, an informal folk music session so titled when Ross discovered that Webster’s Dictionary was about to drop the old-fashioned word because it had fallen into disuse. The Brewers’ hootenanny has grown year by year and taken on the appearance of a sort of international festival, with people flocking to it from around the world. This year, more than 200 friends, family members (“It’s a must to sing with my daughter and brothers… and I can play violin and harmonica too!”) and musicians shared a daylong session of jazz, gospel, blue grass, flamenco and even Middle Eastern music, exemplifying the American melting pot of which Brewer is so proud.

Whenever she sings abroad whether is the UK (the Brits have made her a favorite adopted daughter), Sao Pablo, Madrid, Berlin or Rome, Brewer likes to be seen as a musical ambassador showing America’s best face. A natural messenger of hope, she adds: “I feel the obligation to give priority to my mother’s teaching: Leave the world a little better than you found it. If not, everything I do would have no meaning.”  In every sense, Christine Brewer belongs to a grand tradition of singers and teachers.

Christine Brewer at Knight Concert Hall: Saturday October 29, 8pm, purchase tickets at www.nws.edu