Faylotte Joy Crayton, Soprano
Soprano Faylotte Joy Crayton has performed at such festivals as the Marlboro Music Festival, Bard Music Festival, Bard Summerscape and the Aspen Music Festival. She played the role of Masha in the world premiere of Elana Langer’s Four Sisters at the Richard B. Fisher Center, and made her American Symphony Orchestra debut singing the soprano solo in Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, conducted by Leon Botstein. She has premiered many works, including pieces by Yunzhuo Gan at Carnegie’s Weill Hall, and pieces by Conor Brown, John Boggs and Matthew Schickele, at the Morgan Library.
With a strong sense of community activism and empowerment, since 2007 Ms. Crayton has worked worldwide with the non-profit Artists Striving to End Poverty. She has taught music to underprivileged youth with the Ubuntu Education Fund in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, at the Shanti Bhavan School in Tamil Nadu, India, and with Teach for India in Pune, India. As an artist-activist, Faylotte produces and stars in productions focused on social justice. Upcoming productions include “Occupy Music: Power to the People,” a theatrical recital about human needs in times of revolution and “An Emigrant’s Daughter,” a piece about the female immigrant experience in America.
The granddaughter of both an award-winning Arkansan yodeler and a Filipina-Pacific Islander traditional singer, Ms. Crayton has loved to sing since childhood. She began performing in musical theater at the age of five as the Munchkin Mayor in The Wiz, and later played the title role in Kiss Me Kate. At sixteen, she was awarded a Rotary Youth Exchange Scholarship to Geneva, Switzerland, where, with the false notion that opera was Europe’s musical theater, she attended her first opera. Upon recommendation by a schoolteacher, the Geneva Rotary Club funded her lessons in Classical voice and Swiss yodeling. She returned from Switzerland with a strong interest in European languages, history, Classical and folk music, and humanitarianism.
At the University of California, Santa Barbara she dedicated herself to studying Classical singing and found that this was a way her interests could be united. She then transferred to the Juilliard School, where she subsequently received her Bachelor of Music degree. At Juilliard, Ms. Crayton performed the role of Tytania in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Lucia II in Paul Hindemith’s A Long Christmas Dinner. She also studied international song literature under the guidance of such coaches as Margo Garrett and J.J. Penna.
Faylotte completed the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music. Under the tutelage of Dawn Upshaw and Kayo Iwama, she more closely explored song repertoire, including the folk traditions she has long loved, and contemporary music.
Ms. Crayton performs at CCCMF 2023 on October 13, 15, and 16
