Lotte Lehmann Foundation

The Lotte Lehmann Foundation, named for the German soprano Lotte Lehmann, was founded in 1999, and served to preserve and perpetuate her legacy, and to honor her dream of bringing art song into the lives of as many people as possible. The organization was founded by Gary Hickling, a musician and expert on Lehmann. Hickling was also the founder of the Lotte Lehmann League, which currently exists as a website.

Founder Gary Hickling had met Lotte Lehmann in the early 1960s when he was a double bass player at university, observing the private voice lessons Lehmann gave at Orplid, her home in Santa Barbara. He later observed her master classes at the Music Academy of the West, which she had helped found in 1947.

Hickling became a noted expert on Lehmann’s career and work, compiling a Lehmann discography in 1987. He continued to compile and collect material and memorabilia relating to her career, which now forms a significant part of the Lotte Lehmann Archive in Santa Barbara. The foundation’s precursor, the Lotte Lehmann League, published a newsletter from 1989 to 1994; the league was later re-established as a website in 2011.

Hickling founded the Lotte Lehmann Foundation in 1999. In the early years of its existence, he was solely responsible for maintaining it.

Operations of the foundation were transferred from Hawaii, where Hickling lived, to New York City in 2003. The composer Daron Hagen was chosen as the newly configured foundation’s president, and an entirely new board of directors was chosen at that time. Mezzo soprano Linn Maxwell was elected president in 2007. Larry Smith was president beginning in 2010. Hickling retired from the foundation in 2005 and became an emeritus member of the Board of Directors.

As of 2016, the foundation is in hiatus. Since 1988, Hickling has hosted a weekly program on art songs on Hawaii Public Radio, initially titled Great Songs, and from 2011 titled Singing and Other Sins. Information and listenable archives of the program are hosted on the Lotte Lehmann League website.

The Lehmann Foundation was a respected non-profit musical foundation in the United States. Its activities included two competitions, the first of which, the internet-based CyberSing vocal competition occurred every two years and solicited recordings from singers the world over. Entrants submitted recordings of appropriate literature, including a song written expressly for the competition by a distinguished composer. These songs were commissioned from composers such as Ned Rorem, Libby Larsen and Dan Welcher. Winners were chosen solely on the basis of their recorded submissions. Laureates of the 2006 competition included sopranos Debra Stanley and Danielle Talamantes and baritone Andrew Garland.

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