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In May 2010 Kathleen Battle performed two concerts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Morgan State Choir. Of one of the concerts, Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun wrote:

[ She] retains... the purity and accuracy of the tone, the clarity of articulation (many a singer could learn from her distinct consonants), the ability to connect with a text and make a listener feel the same connection...There's just something magical about that sweet sound. 

A highlight of the evening was "Balm in Gilead," which inspired exquisite phrasing from Battle, a sweet blend from women in the chorus, and silken support from the BSO. In such moments -- and there were many -- the full emotional depth and melodic appeal of Spirituals came through with affecting grace. (Full Review)

Throughout her career, Kathleen Battle has collaborated with the world's most talented artists, including her recent partnerings with Jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut for an all-Spirituals concert at Carnegie Hall and several Holiday concerts, with harpist Nancy Allen when they performed for Pope Benedict XVI, and with Pop artists Sting and Alicia Keys to raise money for charity.

In February 2010, Kathleen Battle continued this tradition when Olga Kern, Gold Medal winner of the 2001 Van Clibern International Piano Competition, joined her for two special performances at Carnegie Hall in New York and Segestrom Concert Hall in Southern California. They performed the works of Rachmaninoff, Liszt, and Schubert. They also performed Spirituals.

In his review of the Segestrom Concert, Timothy Mangan of the Orange County Register wrote:

Battle sang songs by Schubert, Liszt and Rachmaninoff. Exquisitely. She unfurled long, flowing phrases that caught the light as they twisted and turned. She warmed to the emotions in a song without pushing it, getting there by incremental natural steps, breathing with the music. The pauses were dramatic and pregnant. Kern proved a gorgeous supporter, bringing a large range of a soloist's color and touch to bear, without overdoing it...

[The recital] ended with three spirituals --"Way Up in Heaven," "This Little Light of Mine," and "Ev'rytime I Feel the Spirit -- which displayed Battle's special talent with this repertoire, a balance of magic and precision, tone and feeling. There were three encores -- two more spirituals, "Witness" and "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" (the biggest wow of the night) and "O mio babbino caro" from Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi.". (Full Review)

In October 2007, at a fundraiser for the Keep a Child Alive Charity, Kathleen Battle and Alicia Keys performed the song Miss Sarajevo written by U2 & Brian Eno.

Miss Sarajevo from keepachildalive on Vimeo.

Of the performance, Fox News columnist Roger Friedman wrote:

And what they heard may go down in contemporary music history as the night Keys sang a Bono song — Ms. Sarajevo — with opera star Kathleen Battle in English and Italian… nothing could prepare the audience for this moment...The result was so disarming and captivating that one day it will have to be released in some form. Keys’ voice is husky but often finds gorgeous notes. Battle’s voice last night, as always, was crystal perfection. It could not have been a better idea.

(Read the entire review here. Be sure to read Kathleen Battle's account of this special collaboration by going to her official website and clicking on the "KB Recollections" link.)

American conductor Thomas Schippers was instrumental in launching Kathleen Battle's career. In a May 2008 interview, she recounts their meeting:

I received a phone call from a girlfriend who sang in the church choir with me. She was Thomas Schippers' secretary and told me that he was holding auditions for local singers. I was about to leave my apartment and go back home.

At the audition Schippers told my friend, Barbara, that he would like to hear me sing the Ein Deutsches Requiem by Brahms, but he wasn't sure that I knew it. Barbara said that I had sung the Requiem recently in church and would be able to do it. When I started, Schippers got up, took the place of the pianist and played for me. At the end, he asked me, ‘Wanna go to Italy?’ It was very coincidental and by chance. It was God.

(Read the entire article here. For the original article in Portuguese, click here.)

As part of the events surrounding the historic first visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the US and on the occassion of his 81st birthday, Kathleen Battle is selected to perform "The Lord's Prayer" during the arrival ceremony held April 16, 2008.

Kathleen Battle shares a fond memory she has of one of her most beloved and esteemed colleagues, the late Tenor Luciano Pavarotti in a March 2008 interview with Larry Fuchsberg of the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

For the first meal in my apartment, he brought over the pots -- I didn't have any yet -- and made pasta.

In the same interview, she speaks of a project for the coming years:

There's one project that's been in me since the womb. It involves the music of my own culture: a solo spirituals project with small musical forces -- just a single instrument here and there. In the current climate, it would have to be a multimedia project with a video component.

In a December 1999 interview with the CBC, Kathleen Battle shared her thoughts on spirituals, their oral tradition background and lyrics:

The spirituals are so great…some of the lyrics of spirituals are so special that they almost don’t need a musical setting, because the lilt, the intonation, the incantation of the language itself gives all the music that’s necessary.

In fact the spiritual comes from an oral tradition. That’s why I think we have so many different versions… if you ask a person, “How do you remember a particular spiritual, how did you learn it?” you will get a different response when you ask another person; you will hear that the melody is somewhat altered and so is the rhythm. But it’s only because the spiritual follows the speech so directly – speech as it relates to each person. And since [music from] an oral tradition is not strictly written down, there’s no one version. And I think that’s what also makes them so exciting.

In the same interview, she shared her thoughts on the spiritual, Were You There?

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

It’s a very deep, probing spiritual. With each verse I put myself in different roles, sometimes as the narrator, sometimes as a spectator at the crucifixion, and sometimes…as the mother of Jesus, Mary, from her vantage point, from her perspective – what the words would have felt like coming from her. So I sort of go around in the crowd at the actual crucifixion…It is quite a challenge the way I think of it.

Jacqueline Hairston, a cousin of the late composer and conductor Jester Hairston, is a pianist, composer, and vocal coach who began arranging spirituals for Kathleen Battle in 1993. She recounts her first meeting Kathleen Battle here

In November 2008, as the rousing finale to the 2008 American Music Awards, Kathleen Battle reunited with Alicia Keys to perform Superwoman, a song written by Keys. They are also joined by Queen Latifah. See and hear the performance.