Grammy Award winning soprano Hila Plitmann said when she performs on stage, time is different, as if it is nonexistent.

“There is an allowance to give my love in its entirety through music, singing, moving, acting, storytelling, expressing. And I find that it is returned ten-fold by the audience,” the soprano said.

Projects and accolades

Hila first stepped on the professional stage when she premiered Pulitzer Prize-winner David Del Tredici's The Spider and the Fly with The New York Philharmonic. Ever since, the artist specializes in premiering and performing new works.

She is best known for her 2009 the Naxos world premiere recording of John Corigliano's Mr. Tambourine Man with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of conductor JoAnn Falletta.

Though classically trained, she has worked on many contemporary pieces and recent movies, including, The Da Vinci Code (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).

Hila has also performed on the opera stage, including the most recent role of Mrs. Clayton in the 2009 Opera Santa Barbara production of Stephen Schwartz's opera Séance on a Wet Afternoon, and the role of Yan in Mark Adamo's Becoming Santa Claus in 2015.

If these accomplishments and crossovers aren’t enough, Hila is working on a cross-over album of original songs with many wonderful collaborators.

Meanwhile, she is still continuing with what she began her career: classical premieres. Some phenomenal composers on these projects include Richard Danielpour and Jeff Beal. Before the end of 2018, she completed a week-long UCLA residency with renowned composer and professor Richard Danielpour, offering insight and approaches to new music and how composers and performers collaborate in the process. During this week, she also performed twice: Grammy Award-winning composer Michael Daugherty’s Labyrinth of Love with the UCLA Wind Ensemble, and Danielpour’s oratorio The Passion of Yeshua as one of the solo roles (Miryam Magdala), with the UCLA Philharmonia and 120 voices from across the UCLA Choral ensembles.

At the end of February, she worked with the LSU Wind Ensemble to premiere a new composition, “Songs From A Silent Land,” in collaboration with Daugherty, at the College Band Directors National Association's national convention at Arizona State University.

Silence and comfort zones

Hila thinks that expanding comfort zones and taking risks with the audience, which shows trust, will help sustain success in the classical music genre.

“Shed off some of the rigid rules and confinement’s under which we sometimes operate. I find that many artists are doing exactly that these days, and it is exciting!” Hila said.

 When she isn’t working, Hila likes to keep it simple.

“Practice and simplicity are what usually amounts to a beautiful day. Exercise and meditation have been enormously centering factors in my life. Life keeps reminding me to look into what makes me feel grateful. Ups and downs, rejections and achievements are all part of a vast beauty toward which I can choose to open up or not,” she said.

To learn more about Hila, visit her website.