About

About PREformances™️

PREFORMANCES™ is the Executive Producer of the newly GRAMMY®-nominated album, ALIKE – My Mother’s Dream, featuring soprano Allison Charney and pianist/conductor Benjamin Loeb, both of whom are nominees for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

The innovative classical concert series PREFORMANCES™ with Allison Charney pivoted to a virtual format – after 11 live seasons – in March of 2020, presented by the PREFORMANCES™️ Chamber Music Collaborative, whose mission is to honor Henry David Thoreau’s belief that “if we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.”

During the pandemic we created a new 7-part concert and conversation series – SEASON OF HOPE – where acclaimed opera singer Allison Charney hosts a behind-the-scenes glimpse into top-level artists’ practices and performances, deliberately blurring the traditional barriers which exist between classical musicians and their audiences. Ms. Charney not only showcases each of her renowned guests’ exquisite performances but also sings on each episode. As with her in-person series, Ms. Charney promises a unique experience that provides entertainment performed at the highest level along with unique insights, providing audience members with classical music knowledge that she promises “is simply not Google-able.” In addition, we partnered with New York City’s historic TOWN HALL to present OPERA AT HOME – the first installment in our new OPERAS IN SHORT series.

PREFORMANCES™ has presented over 100 of the preeminent musicians of our time. Notable appearances include those by New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert, Metropolitan Opera stars William Burden and Maria Zifchak, “Queen of the Flute,” Carol Wincenc, violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins of Broadway’s “Fiddler on the Roof” fame, and concert pianists Joel Fan and Navah Perlman, just to name a few. In addition, we have presented new classical works by composers such as Michael Ching, Moshe Knoll, Mary Ellen Childs, Russell Platt and Kim D. Sherman.

PREFORMANCES™ is supported in part through the generosity of its patron group – Friends of  PREFORMANCES™ –  donors who believe in the series’ mission and vision.  This support enables the development of new works and helps provide educational community outreach efforts, offering free tickets to aspiring young professional musicians as well as students without regular access to high-quality classical music programming.

Ms. Charney’s career has brought her to opera companies across the United States, including the:

Recent years have included several notable debuts for Ms. Charney. She appeared with the acclaimed Dallas Symphony Orchestra in the spring of 2025 to a sold-out audience as the soprano soloist in the Verdi Requiem, as part of the stirring Defiant Requiem. She also made a debut with the Lviv National Philharmonic in the middle of the war in the spring of 2024, premiering two new pieces by Kim D. Sherman and Moshe Knoll. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in the spring of 2022 as a featured soloist in the new composite song cycle, Forgotten Voices. Other concert highlights have included performances at Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, as a featured soloist with the esteemed Philadelphia Orchestra and with the Boston Pops under the baton of Alan Gilbert. Continuing her commitment to performing music of our times, Ms. Charney premiered Mr. Knoll’s Psalm 133 with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Barbara Day Turner, in a concert that also featured Ms. Sherman’s oratorio (composed for Ms. Charney) Songbird and the Eagle. Recent performances have included further premieres of pieces by Nilo Alcala, Michael Ching, Ms. Sherman and Mr. Knoll, whose Psalm 133 she sang in concert at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, where she was also the soprano soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. 

Ms. Charney’s GRAMMY® Nominated Studio Se7en album: ALIKE – My Mother’s Dream, of which she is also a producer, debuted at #11 on the Billboard Classical Chart and at #2 on both the US and Global iTunes Classical Charts. It includes 4 contemporary classical compositions – one composed by a Russian, one by a Ukrainian, one by an Iranian and one by an Israeli – along with the first ever English-language recording of Amy Beach’s long-lost scene for soprano and orchestra – Jephthah’s Daughter- and Kim D. Sherman’s evocative Invocation, which sets one line of text – “Make peace on all your lands” – in 15 different world languages. In anticipation of this full-length album, Ms. Charney released the award-winning, iTunes chart-topping single: BRIDGE TO PEACE: Invocation, that she recorded in war-torn Ukraine. Ms. Charney also sings the featured single on AVIE Records newly-released recording of Kelly Hall-Tompkins’ FORGOTTEN VOICES, and can be heard on Navona Records’ARK RESOUNDING, the ARK Trio’s debut album that has repeatedly reached #1 on the Amazon charts. A proud voting member of the Recording Academy, Ms. Charney  is also featured in the Navona Records recording of the Pulitzer Prize nominated oratorio Choose Life, by composer Mona Lyn Reese and can be heard in a CD of American songs with pianist, Benjamin Loeb, which is set for a 2026 re-release. In addition to serving as a producer on her own albums, Ms. Charney was also a choral producer on the GRAMMY® Nominated album, SEVEN SEASONS, and is a producer on the upcoming debut recording of the STRING SYMPHONY.

Ms. Charney is a co-creator of the series – Her/Music; Her/Story – which was launched at Steinway Hall in 2019 and is currently showcased in a four-part radio series on WQXR.  Ms. Charney is an active recitalist and master teacher and is the artistic and executive director of the long-running concert series,  PREFORMANCES™️ WITH ALLISON CHARNEY most recently presented in-person at Merkin Hall in New York City.

During the pandemic, Charney pivoted to the virtual stage where her concert and conversation series: SEASON OF HOPE launched the centennial year of New York City’s historic Town Hall who then presented her OPERA AT HOME adaptation of Verdi’s Otello – the first installment in her OPERAS IN SHORT series. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude with highest honors, in Special Concentrations from Harvard University, she went on to earn two graduate degrees in music from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Charney now lives in New York with her husband and their two sons.

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Photograph: Ms. Charney appears on the Red Carpet at the 2026 GRAMMY® Awards. Her original, handpainted gown by Iranian-American designer, Shahla Dorriz, highlights selections from the texts sung on the Grammy® nominated ALIKE: My Mother’s Dream in both Hebrew and Farsi.