The guest artist at this year’s Mizzou New Music Summer Festival will be the talented soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird. Bird (pictured) will perform with Alarm Will Sound as part of the concert on Thursday, July 26, helping to bring to life the first part of Donnacha Dennehy’s new work-in-progress, The Hunger.

Known primarily as an operatic singer, Bird got her undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia, then earned a Masters Degree cum laude from New England Conservatory, where she was a student of acclaimed mezzo-soprano D’Anna Fortunato. She has been a recipient of grants and awards from many organizations, and has twice been a Young Artist with the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program for Singers and twice a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center.

Bird first made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the 2006-2007 Season, singing two roles in a new production of Il Trittico, and has since returned as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro, Najade in Ariadne auf Naxos, in Boris Godunov, and Don Carlo, among other productions. This year, she has appeared in Kepler and Pierrot Lunaire at the famed Spoleto Festival USA, and in the fall, she will return to the Met to sing Giannetta in the opening night gala production of Bartlett Sher’s new L’elisir d’amore.

Bird also is known in classical music circles for her blog The Concert, which for several years regularly chronicled her efforts to build her musical career. For more about Anne-Carolyn Bird, read this interview she did last year for the NYC Opera’s website. You also can learn more about her and hear some audio samples at her page on the site of her management firm.

In the embedded video window below, you can hear Bird singing an excerpt from Prima Donna, singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright’s recent venture in opera.