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The German soprano Ingrid Schmithüsen has had a long career as a lieder singer, in a stable creative partnership with pianist Thomas Palm. She has also been a versatile performer who has sung music in a wide range of genres and from various periods.

Schmithüsen was born in Aachen, in what was then West Germany, in 1960. She started voice lessons early and gave her debut recital when she was 18, even before beginning serious studies at the Cologne University of Music. Among her teachers was the dean of German lieder singers at the time, baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and her career has always emphasized art song. She began a long creative partnership with Palm in 1982 but has also performed with other pianists including Brigitte Poulin and with several harpsichordists in Baroque repertory; her repertory ranges from Monteverdi to Messiaen and contemporary music, and she is one of the few non-Anglophone singers to specialize in the music of Charles Ives. Schmithüsen has been widely heard in oratorio and in orchestral-vocal music generally, appearing with, among other ensembles, the Dresden Philharmonic, La Petite Bande, and the Bach Collegium Japan. With the latter group, she appeared on several installments of conductor Masaaki Suzuki's complete cycle of Bach cantatas on the BIS label.

Schmithüsen has had a varied recording career that has included German Romantic composer Johanna Kinkel's An Imaginary Voyage Through Europe and, in 2018, Italian Baroque composer Pietro Torri's La Vanità del Mundo. She has recorded for multiple labels including Wergo, Harmonia Mundi, and Canada's Analekta. Schmithüsen is the organizer of the Cologne concert series Im Zentrum LIED, which since its founding in 2006 has featured a different thematic subject each year. She has been a frequent guest at European festivals including the Wiener Festwochen, Ars Musica Brussels, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. ~ James Manheim