Upshaw tours regularly with pianist Gilbert Kalish. Richard Goode and Margo Garrett are also long-standing partners. She has worked with director Peter Sellars many times, including on his staging of Händel's "Theodora" at Glyndebourne, his Paris production of Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" (as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen's month-long residency at the Théâtre du Châtelet, 1996), a staging of Bach's cantata "Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut", BWV 199, presented in the 1995–96 season at New York's 92nd Street Y, and the Salzburg Festival production of Olivier Messiaen's "Saint François d'Assise" (1998). Upshaw has often performed as a soloist at the annual Ojai Music Festival in California; most recently in 2006, 2008, and 2009. In 2011, she was the music director of the festival, where she performed the world premiere of the Peter Sellers-staged production of George Crumb's work "Winds of Destiny". She joined the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra as artistic partner beginning with the 2007–08 season, and she is artistic director of the Graduate Program in Vocal Arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, which accepted its first students in the 2006–07 academic year. She also is a faculty member at the Tanglewood Music Center.