J'Nai Bridges

Two-time Grammy Award-winning American mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, known for her “plush-voiced mezzo-soprano” (New York Times) and “calmly commanding stage presence” (New Yorker) has been “marked out at an early stage as a singer headed for top flight” (Financial Times), gracing the world’s leading operatic and concert stages.

In the 2025–26 season, Ms. Bridges makes her house debut in the title role of Carmen at Teatro Real in Madrid, reprising the role later in the season at both Seattle Opera and Cincinnati Opera. She sings Maddalena in Rigoletto in her debut at San Francisco Opera, conducted by Eun Sun Kim, and returns to Washington National Opera as Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible, directed by Francesca Zambello and conducted by Robert Spano. In concert, she reprises Maddalena in Rigoletto with Baltimore Symphony conducted by Jonathon Heyward and joins Nashville Symphony for Brian Field’s Hymn for the Hurting, with text by Amanda Gorman and Julia Perry’s Stabat Mater. She also presents Damien Geter’s COTTON alongside Justin Austin and Laura Ward at La Jolla Music Society, and a program of Coleridge-Taylor, Libby Larsen, Elgar, and others with Terrence Wilson and the Catalyst Quartet at the Library of Congress and Emory University.

Ms. Bridges has emerged as a leading figure in classical music’s shift toward conversations of inclusion and racial justice in the performing arts. In 2022, she was announced as one of the Kennedy Center’s NEXT50 cultural leaders and appeared with the National Philharmonic in the world premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s A Knee on the Neck. Bridges led a panel on race and inequality in opera with the Los Angeles Opera that drew international acclaim. Ms. Bridges was also featured in the Converse shoe brand’s All Stars Campaign for its Breaking Down Barriers collection and performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel for two episodes of the digital SOUND/STAGE series.

Bridges is a recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, a Richard Tucker Career Grant, the Sullivan Foundation Award, the Marian Anderson Award, and a Sara Tucker Study Grant. She has also won first prize at the 2015 Gerda Lissner Competition and won the 2008 Leontyne Price Foundation Competition, among others.