Jessye Norman

Opera singer Jessye Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia, and raised in a house with four siblings and a lot of music. Both her mother and grandmother were amateur musicians who enjoyed playing the piano. Her father was a vocalist who sang with a choir in their community. Norman showed a vocal talent as a young child and sang in her local church when she was as young as 4 years old.

At the age of nine, Norman's parents gave her a radio for her birthday. The radio allowed her to tune into the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, which she listened to every Saturday while cleaning her room. Norman was fascinated at an early age with recordings of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price. In middle school Norman began receiving formal vocal training. Her middle school music teacher, Rosa Harris Sanders Creque gave her instruction in school, and began to give her private lessons after she left and had moved on to high school.

After performing in a vocal competition Norman was offered a full scholarship to Howard University in Washington, D.C. She attended the college where she sang in the university chorus and studied singing as part of her academic program. Norman moved to Europe after graduation, where she joined the Deutsche Oper Berlin. She performed with a number of German and Italian opera companies. Norman was known for uncommonly wide vocal range which encompassed all vocal registers in the female designation.

Norman would return to the United States but did not make her U.S. opera debut until she felt she had sufficiently established herself in Europe's opera scene. Norman performed all over the world, including at Tchaikovsky's 150th Birthday Gala in Leningrad, and in Paris's Notre-Dame. In the United States she resided primarily in Croton-on-Hudson, a suburb of New York City. Norman was active in the arts, curating exhibitions, volunteering at charitable organizations and maintaining a seat on the board at institutions like the New York Public Library, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Carnegie Hall.

She was considered by music critics to be a once in a generation talent, and was praised for her scholarship and technical expertise, as well as her creativity and artistic sensibility She founded the tuition-free Jessye Norman School of the Arts in Augusta, Georgia in 2003. Norman died in September of 2019 as the result of complications from a spinal cord injury she sustained in 2015.