Judith Bettina is an American soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 particularly noted for her performances of contemporary classical music

Contemporary classical music

Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...

. Bettina was born in Manhattan to a violinist mother, Lilo Kantorowicz Glick. and a violist father, Jacob Glick, who was noted for his championship of new music. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from New York's Manhattan School of Music

Manhattan School of Music

The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...

 and initially began performing in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

She is married to pianist James Goldsworthy whom she met at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 where she was on the music faculty from 1986 until 1993. The two often perform together both in concerts and recordings. Many of the works they perform together were written specifically for them.

Amongst the noted composers who have written works for Bettina's voice are Charles Wuorinen

Charles Wuorinen

Charles Peter Wuorinen is a prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. His catalog of more than 250 compositions includes works for orchestra, opera, chamber music, as well as solo instrumental and vocal works...

, Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt

Milton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...

, Richard Danielpour

Richard Danielpour

Richard Danielpour is an American composer.-Biography:Danielpour is born of Persian/Jewish descent. He studied at Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory of Music, and later at the Juilliard School of Music, where he received a DMA in composition in 1986...

, and Tobias Picker

Tobias Picker

Tobias Picker is an American composer. Picker began composing at the age of eight and studied at the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School and Princeton University, where his principal teachers were Charles Wuorinen, Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt...

. Picker, who has described Judith Bettina as "his muse of many years”, wrote his first song for her, a setting of a poem by Goethe.

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