Rufus Wainwright

Rufus Wainwright is a Juno-winning, Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter whose lush, theatrical pop harks back to the traditions of Tin Pan Alley, cabaret, and even opera. He emerged with his acclaimed self-titled debut in 1998. Quickly rising from club residencies to international headliner status, his fifth studio album, 2007's Release the Stars, became his most commercially successful to date, with a reach that included the Top 30 of the Billboard 200 and as high as the Top Five in the U.K. and Norway. Demonstrating his appreciation for the vocal era as well as for her standing as a gay icon, he delivered the Judy Garland tribute Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall -- his first live album -- that same year. Challenging his composing and arranging skills, he premiered his first opera, Prima Donna, in 2009 (a recording followed in 2015), and 2016's Take All My Loves: 9 Shakespeare Sonnets set select poems to Wainwright's music. It included such esteemed guests as Helena Bonham Carter, Carrie Fisher, and Florence + the Machine's Florence Welch. He returned with his first pop album in eight years, Unfollow the Rules, in 2020. Underscoring his broad artistry, Wainwright embraced his family's folk roots on 2023's star-studded Folkocracy, before fusing Verdi's "Requiem" and Byron's poem "Darkness" on his ambitious classical work Dream Requiem, which found him joined by Meryl Streep, Anna Prohaska, and the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Mikko Franck.

From 🇨🇦 Canada