American opera soprano Barbara Hendricks performs at Zagreb's Kino SC on October 19, but not with an opera programme. She arrives with her blues band, as part of the seventeenth Zagreb Jazz Festival, starting at 8pm.

Hendricks was born in 1948 in Stephens, Arkansas. Before music she finished degrees in mathematics and chemistry at the University of Nebraska, and only then enrolled at Juilliard in New York, where she studied with the mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel. Her opera debuts came in 1974, at the San Francisco Opera and the Glyndebourne festival, after which she sang in every major opera house, from the Paris Opera and the Met to Covent Garden and La Scala. She holds over twenty roles in her active repertoire and more than a hundred classical studio recordings.

In 1986 she was the only non-French singer nominated for the French music awards, and she took the prize for best performer in the classical music category. Since 1987 she has been a UNHCR goodwill ambassador - work she has kept up for decades, and for a soprano with her career, not a decorative title.

The move toward blues and jazz in the later part of her career is a pull back toward the root, not a reach for a new audience. Tickets for the concert are available via entrio.hr.