Timur Bekbosunov | tenor (Walter Spies)
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TIMUR Bekbosunov, noted as “young emerging treasure”, with “vocal color totally his own” and “program’s promise fulfilled” by the Los Angeles Times, De Trouw and the Wall Street Journal, is becoming a recognized interpreter of the contemporary opera in the United States. He premiered the tenor part in Oedipus composed by Evan Ziporyn for the American Repertory Theatre, directed by Robert Woodruff, and Jeffrey Brody’s Jabberwocky with the Salem Philharmonic. He portrayed the role of Electrician in the Los Angeles premiere of Powder Her Face by Thomas Ades, conducted by the composer, and produced by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He appeared in Midwest premieres of The Death of Orpheus by Gian-Carlo Menotti and Meyer Kupferman’s In a Garden, working closely with both of the composers at the Kansas Contemporary Music Festival. He sung Tom Rakewell in The Rake’s Progress, directed by Ken Cazan and played the role of Macheath in Threepenny Opera at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival. Recently, he premiered a role of Walter Spies in a new opera by Evan Ziporyn, A House in Bali, with the Bang on a Can All-Stars group in Bali, Indonesia, with future performances scheduled in USA.
In May 2007, he made his debut at the prestigious Walt Disney Concert Hall singing in Schnittke’s Symphony # 4 with LA Philharmonic. He returned to Disney Hall again to collaborate along side the band DeVotchka of the film “Little Miss Sunshine” and in summer 2007, debuted at the legendary Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome, premiering a tenor role in the opera “Silvano Sylvano” by Bussotti. He performed the role of Father Missail in the Hollywood Bowl production of “Boris Godunov”, conducted by Esa Pekka-Salonen, and the role of Ghost Cop in a critically acclaimed opera Crescent City by Anne LeBaron in The Hague, Netherlands with the LOOS ensemble. Timur was a featured soloist in a workshop of “Revolution of Forms” by Anthony Davis for the Los Angeles Opera and Placido Domingo. In March 2008, he took part in international master-classes with the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv. He performed as a singer in the dance project Tov, created by choreographer and visual artist Rosanna Gamson, presented in Redcat (Los Angeles) and JCC of Manhattan (New York). In 2009, he debuted with Long Beach Opera in “Emperor of Atlantis” as Soldier and “Die Kluge” as First Vagabond and covered the role of Shepherd in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, staged by Peter Sellars for LA Philharmonic.
Most recently, he appeared in a recital presented and produced by the Jewish Music Commission of Los Angeles, premiering a voice cycle by Israeli composer Gil Shohat. In December 2009, he will appear in Kennedy Center as part of the concert, celebrating the independence of Kazakhstan. In 2010, he will sing n the ALOUD Series, sponsored by the LA Library Foundation, presenting the Diary of the One Who Vanished by Janacek in the new English translation by Seamus Heaney with Mark Robson at the piano. Most recently, he began to collaborate on the large-scale work about Kazakhstan, The Silent Steppe Cantata, with by composer Anne LeBaron, film projections by Sandra Powers, and support from the City of Los Angeles and the CEC ArtsLink Foundation.
His voice was featured on Hawaii Public Radio, Radio NS, Kol Israel, Reka Radio broadcasts and on the most recent CD release of the band DeVotchKa. He collaborated on a theme song for an independent feature film Mostly Unfabulous Life of Ethan Green (summer 2006), co-directed a short film about Kozin and an exhibition PURE (Boston, Harvard University), as part of the video-installation about plastic surgery.
As a founder of The Chamber Opera of USC, Timur directed the world premiere of Broken Pieces by Daron Aric Hagen, now published by the prominent Carl Fischer Company. In the past three years, he was immersed in developing and producing the following works: The Szymanowski Project, a multimedia collaboration with the celebrated abstract painter Mara Devereux, Dido and Aeneas Project at CalArts and the music film “Autumn” about Vadim Kozin, a collaboration with Peruvian filmmaker Sandra Powers, which was recently acquired a distribution by the Movieola and showcased at the EXiS Festival (South Korea), Images Contre Nature Festival (France), Wimbledon Short Films Festival (England) and NEH’s sponsored symposium on Russian Modernism. His latest multimedia project DO_SCREAM, based on the opera Dido and Aeneas and the writings of Marlowe, Bosch and Perl, will be exhibited at the Fisch Haus Gallery in Wichita, Kansas in October 2009.
He is a recipient of the Samuel Ramey Development, Puffin Foundation, Anna Sosenko Foundation, Opera Buffs, Delora Donovan Trust, Kansas Cultural Trust and USC Creative Arts awards. In 2007, Timur created and taught a course at California Institute of the Arts on performance career, Operatic Synergy: Acting and Singing as Citizens of the Universe. He is currently working on his debut album, City Without Name, with songs written specifically for him by Sondre Lerche (Dan in Real Life), Nick Urata (I love you, Phillip Morris, DeVotchka), Kristian Hoffman (Klaus Nomi) and Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls). Timur is a creative director of the Art of Opera, a non-profit organization, committed to the development of contemporary opera, and a screenwriter of Masque Films, an unconventional music video and film production company. He lives in Los Angeles, California. For more information, please visit www.theoperaoftimur.com
