Equally at home in the worlds of opera, lieder, and chamber music, mezzo-soprano JENNIFER JOHNSON CANO returns to the Metropolitan Opera this season as Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Sandman in Hansel and Gretel, and Wellgunde in Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung. She also returns to the New York Philharmonic with Alan Gilbert after debuting with the Philharmonic in Mendelssohn’s Elijah last season. As soloist she performs in 2011/12 with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, among others. She gives recitals at Carnegie Hall’s Neighborhood Concert Series, with the Buffalo Chamber Music Society, at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, and elsewhere across the U.S.

Finishing her third residency at the Marlboro Music Festival, Johnson Cano performed in the Metropolitan Opera Summer Recital Series at Central Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park, and will finish summer 2011 with her Los Angeles Philharmonic debut and a performance at the Bard Music Festival. In recent seasons she has toured with Musicians from Marlboro, performed at the St. Petersburg Palaces Music Festival in Russia, and participated in the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute for Young Artists.

Johnson Cano was selected for the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera in 2008, the same year she won the coveted Metropolitan National Council Auditions. She made her Met debut in the 2009/10 season singing a Bridesmaid in Le nozze di Figaro and Sandman in Hansel and Gretel. Last season, she appeared as Ludmilla in the Metropolitan Opera and the Juilliard School’s joint production of The Bartered Bride and returned to sing Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben at the Chicago Opera Theater, where she debuted as Kate Julian in Benjamin Britten’s Owen Wingrave in 2009. After two seasons as a Gerdine Young Artist with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Johnson Cano made her principal artist debut there in 2008 as The Muse/Nicklausse in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann.

As First Prize-winner in the 2009 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, where she was also awarded the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival Prize and the Princeton University Concerts Prize, Jennifer Johnson Cano made recital debuts on the Young Concert Artist Series at both Merkin Hall in New York, sponsored by the Peter Marino Prize, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Other accolades include a 2011 Sarah Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation and a 2009 Sullivan Foundation Award.

Johnson Cano hails from St. Louis, Missouri, and obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Music from Webster University in St. Louis; she received her Master’s degree from Rice University in Houston, Texas.