DashonBurton

Dashon Burton is a three-time GRAMMY Award-winning bass-baritone and founding member of Roomful of Teeth. His work encompasses Baroque music, orchestral repertoire, contemporary music, spirituals, and art song. He performs internationally as a concert soloist and recitalist and is Assistant Professor of Voice at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

Three-time GRAMMY Award-winning bass-baritone Dashon Burton performs across the United States and Europe in orchestral, Baroque, contemporary, and recital repertoire. A founding member of Roomful of Teeth, he shares the ensemble’s GRAMMY-winning recordings Roomful of Teeth and Rough Magic. His recording of Ethel Smyth’s The Prison, with Sarah Brailey, the Experiential Chorus and Orchestra, and conductor James Blachly, received the 2021 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

Burton has appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra. As the Milwaukee Symphony’s Artist-in-Residence, he performed music by Bach, Mahler, Mendelssohn, and Orff. His recordings include Songs of Struggle & Redemption: We Shall Overcome with pianist Nathaniel Gumbs and Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road.

A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music, Burton is Assistant Professor of Voice at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

Dashon Burton is a three-time GRAMMY Award-winning bass-baritone whose work encompasses Baroque and early music, orchestral repertoire, art song, spirituals, and contemporary music. He appears regularly across the United States and Europe as a concert soloist, recitalist, and collaborative musician.

His concert repertoire includes Bach’s St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, and Mass in B minor; Handel’s Messiah; Mozart’s Requiem; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem; and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. He has performed Messiah with the Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. His orchestral appearances also include The Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony.

As Artist-in-Residence with the Milwaukee Symphony, Burton performed Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Bach’s Ich habe genug, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and Orff’s Carmina Burana. His collaborations with Michael Tilson Thomas included Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Copland’s Old American Songs, and Tilson Thomas’s Walt Whitman Songs. Operatic engagements have included Sarastro in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Jupiter in Rameau’s Castor et Pollux with Les Talens Lyriques, and Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus in Peter Sellars’s production.

Burton is a founding member of Roomful of Teeth. The ensemble’s debut album won the 2014 GRAMMY Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance; Rough Magic received the same award in 2024. He sings The Prisoner in the recording of Ethel Smyth’s The Prison with Sarah Brailey, the Experiential Chorus and Orchestra, and conductor James Blachly, which won the 2021 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

His discography includes Songs of Struggle & Redemption: We Shall Overcome with pianist Nathaniel Gumbs; Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road; Lori Laitman’s Holocaust 1944 with double bassist Logan Coale; and Caroline Shaw’s The Listeners with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. He also arranged Alev Lenz’s Fall Into Me for Roomful of Teeth, recorded at The Tank in Rangely, Colorado.

Burton holds a Bachelor of Music from Oberlin College and Conservatory and a Master of Music from Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music. He is Assistant Professor of Voice at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.