Tenor Timur and the Isaura Quartet with percussionists Yuri Inoo and Sidney Hopson
Join us for a pre-concert talk starting at 7:15pm.
A semi-staged one-man chamber cantata composed and conducted by John Kennedy based on the texts of Walt Whitman and St. Augustine.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Timur, “the extravagantly transgressive tenor, dangerously seductive” (LA Times), has made solo appearances with LA Philharmonic, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Sarasota Opera, PROTOTYPE Festival, Utah Opera, Santa Cecilia Academy, among others. He has collaborated with many composers, including Thomas Adès, Evan Ziporyn, David Lang, Silvano Bussotti, David T. Little, Mohammed Fairouz, Louis Andriessen, Anne LeBaron, the late Gian-Carlo Menotti, and many more. His band Timur and the Dime Museum, described by NPR’s Here & Now as “post-punk screaming opera”, has appeared on America’s Got Talent, opened for Tiger Lilies, DeVotchKa, and collaborated with the Klaus Nomi songwriter, Kristian Hoffman.
Timur is a co-creator of “Silent Steppe Cantata” by Anne LeBaron, a large-scale composition about Kazakhstan. His voice is featured on the Hollywood soundtrack of “Ruby Sparks” and he appears on many recordings, released by Naxos USA, Milan Records, Nonesuch, Deutsche Grammophon and ANTI-. His current projects include “Klaus From Space,” with Klaus Nomi’s songwriter Kristian Hoffman; “Love, Honor, Obey,’’ with text by comedian Margaret Cho; “One Body,” by John Kennedy; “Permanent Revolution of Frida & Trotsky” by Ori Barel; and two projects produced by Beth Morrison Projects – “Nueva Cancion: Protest and Resistance” and “Artaud in the Black Lodge” by David T. Little. In 2017, he became a creative executive of ACE Pictures Entertainment, a Malaysian film investment company, overseeing a slate of over ten films. More info: theoperaoftimur.com and timurandthedimemuseum.com
The Isaura String Quartet is a L.A.-based ensemble dedicated to the promotion of contemporary chamber music through live performance, workshops, and collaborative projects with composers and interdisciplinary artists. ISQ has worked with composers including David T. Little, Anne LeBaron, Gloria Coates, Ulrich Krieger, Julia Wolfe, Sean Griffin, and Charles Gaines. Recent projects include Machines and Strings, a 2-part concert series curated by ISQ for CalArts and REDCAT; a workshop performance of Artaud in the Black Lodge with Beth Morrison Productions at REDCAT’s NOW Festival; the world premiere of Gloria Coates’ chamber opera Stolen Identity; a concert of microtonal string quartets for MicroFest LA; and Love, Honor, Obey with Timur and Margaret Cho. ISQ is featured on Refractions, Daniel Corral’s concert-length work for string quartet, processed music box, and guitar, released in 2017 on Populist Records. In addition to ISQ’s work in new music, they are the house band for Emo Nite LA under the alias String String Quartet, and have performed with artists including All-American Rejects and Demi Lovato. They have also performed and recorded for artists such as Baths, Emily Wells, and Jherek Bischoff. ISQ is violinists Emily Call and Madeline Falcone, cellist Betsy Rettig, and for One Body they are joined by guest violist Jonathan Morgan. More information at isaurastringquartet.com.
Dr. Yuri Inoo, a native of Kanagawa, Japan, is musician and educator in the Los Angeles area. She has studied percussion under David Rosenthal at San Francisco State University, where she received her Bachelor of Music degree, graduating summa cum laude, and receiving the Most Outstanding Senior Award. Yuri has received her Master of Music and Doctorate in Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance at the University of Southern California, studying under Erik Forrester.
Yuri is currently the Principal Percussionist with the Redlands Symphony in Redlands, California, and remains as an active freelance musician in Southern California. She also is a founding member of percussion ensemble bloom in Tokyo, Japan, and the Varied Trio in Los Angeles. She is the percussion instructor at Occidental College, University of Redlands, Mount Saint Mary’s University, and Idyllwild Arts Academy, while keeping a private studio.
Sidney Hopson is an active orchestral percussionist and composer from Lakewood, CA. He celebrates a diverse career spanning the music industry and public policy.
Hopson has performed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Jacaranda Chamber Ensemble, Southeast Symphony, Ensemble FIRE (NYC), the Los Angeles, Los Robles, and Pasadena Master Chorales, Opera Santa Barbara, members of the Echo Society, and musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra. He has performed annually in the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra (Charleston, SC) since 2011. In 2014, his composition Color Reels II was featured in Spoleto’s Intermezzi Chamber Music Series. In 2016, he made his Lincoln Center Debut in the opera Paradise Interrupted by Huang Ruo. He can be heard on over 100 film/tv soundtracks, from the cult horror film The Caretaker to Illumination’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2018).
Hopson attended Long Beach City College before transferring to the University of Southern California where he became a 3-time alumnus (B.M., G.C., M.M.). He is an alumnus of the American Youth Symphony and Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra. In fall 2015, he joined the faculty of Long Beach City College. Formerly, he served as the director of percussion at the California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA), and the Harvard-Westlake School. He has taught masterclasses at colleges and high schools nationwide. Students from his private studio have been accepted to the orchestral and jazz percussion programs at USC, UCLA, NYU, CalArts, Berkeley College of Music, Westmont College, UC Riverside, CSU Northridge, and San Diego State University.
John Kennedy is a composer with wide-ranging work that has been performed worldwide. He has been a featured composer of San Francisco’s Other Minds Festival, and has been commissioned by the Sarasota Opera and Santa Fe Opera. Numerous choreographers have worked with Mr. Kennedy’s music, including Albert Evans in a solo ballet for Peter Boal, and Mr. Boal in a work for Pacific Northwest Ballet.
As an artistic leader, Kennedy has a legacy of artistic leadership fueled by creativity and experimentalism. Since 2011 he has served as the Resident Conductor and Director of Orchestral Activities for Spoleto Festival USA, distinguishing the festival’s opera programming with a succession of critically acclaimed American Premiere productions of new operas by composers including Pascal Dusapin, Philip Glass, Toshio Hosokawa, Kaija Saariaho, Helmut Lachenmann, Luca Francesconi, Liza Lim, Huang Ruo, and others. Kennedy has conducted a wide range of ensembles across genres, serving as a guest with numerous organizations from the Lincoln Center Festival and New York City Ballet, to West Edge Opera, the Singapore Symphony and Daejeon Philharmonic.
