Johanna Vargas

The Colombian coloratura soprano Johanna Vargas is one of today’s most sought-after singers of contemporary music. Her comprehensive training and her experiences in a broad repertory covering a wide range of musical styles and genres — from bel canto to Latin jazz, pop and improvisation — combine in her performances with a profound understanding of drama and choreography.

Since 2019 she has been a permanent member of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, and appears regularly at renowned festivals for new music. She has also performed as a soloist with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, with Dennis Russell Davies and the MDR Symphony Orchestra, with Peter Rundel and the Ensemble Musikfabrik and with the Arditti Quartet. She made her debut at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg with Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments and has appeared at the Wittener Tagen für neue Kammermusik (Witten Days for New Chamber Music), Radio France’s Festival Présences, the Tongyeong International Music Festival and with Ensemble Modern at the ECLAT Festival.

She has participated in numerous premieres of works by leading contemporary composers, among them Georges Aperghis, Carola Bauckholt, Chaya Czernowin, Beat Furrer, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Johannes Kreidler, Bernhard Lang, Wolfgang Rihm, Lucia Ronchetti and Vito Žuraj, and has been involved in many CD productions and radio recordings and broadcasts.

In 2025/26 she performed Czernowin’s Immaterial with the Neue Vocalsolisten at Wien Modern, gave the world premiere of Francesca Verunelli’s La nuda voce I with Klangforum Wien at the Donaueschingen Festival and appeared with Ensemble intercontemporain at the Philharmonie de Paris.

From 2021 to 2024 she was artist in residence at the Fondation Royaumont. In 2022 she received a residency scholarship at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris with her duo LAB51, founded in 2015. Her awards include the Hanns Eisler Performance Award (2015), the John Cage Award in Halberstadt (2018), and a scholarship from the NUNC!3 festival at the Northwestern University New Music Conference.

Johanna Vargas studied in Bogotá, Bremen, Karlsruhe and Stuttgart with renowned vocal pedagogues such as Hartmut Höll, Angelika Luz, Georg Nigl and Mitsuko Shirai. Since 2018 she has taught contemporary music and performance at the University of Music in Karlsruhe.