ABOUT
TIMUR, “extravagantly transgressive tenor” with “stratospheric voice” (Mark Swed, LA TIMES), is an Asian-American opera singer and performance artist based in Los Angeles.
Profiled in LA Weekly’s special edition of BEST OF LA PEOPLE 2011, Timur collaborated with many celebrated opera composers, including Thomas Adès (Powder Her Face), Evan Ziporyn (A House in Bali, Oedipus, F.A.Q.), Louis Andriessen (Theater of the World), David Lang (Anatomy Theater), Michael Gordon (Acquanetta), Anne LeBaron (Crescent City, LSD, Silent Steppe Cantata), David T. Little (Black Lodge), Mohammed Fairouz (Pierrot), Silvano Bussotti (Silvano Sylvano), Kate Moore (The Dam), Erling Wold (Uksus), Veronika Krausas (Hopscotch), John Kennedy (One Body), Tobias Picker (An American Tragedy), Dave Soldier (Naked Revolution) and film composers Nathan Barr, Charles Bernstein, Joel Goldsmith and Nick Urata.
He gave regional, US or world premieres in concert and recital of works by Peter Eötvös, Ellen Reid, Ricky Ian Gordon, David Rosenboom, Gloria Coates, Gil Shohat, Gregory Vajda, Hao Huang, David Lefkowitz, Ulrich Krieger, Libby Larsen, Isaac Schankler, Anthony Davis, Luca Lombardi, Adrienne Albert, Daniel Corral, Byron Adams, Luciano Chessa, the late Gian Carlo Menotti, Daren Aric Hagen, Sage Lewis, Lera Auerbach, Sergei Slonimsky, Katherine Murdock, Gerald Barry, Meyer Kupferman, Olga Neuwirth, Mark Lowenstein, Geoffrey Pope, Frederick Lesemann and Huang Ruo, among many others.
Solo operatic appearances include LA Philharmonic, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Hawaii Opera Theater, Operadagen Rotterdam, Sarasota Opera, Santa Cecilia Academy, PROTOTYPE Festival, BAM Next Wave, Palace of the Arts Budapest (MUPA), LA Opera, Bard SummerScape Festival, NOF in Switzerland and The Industry LA.
His theatrical glam-opera band Timur and the Dime Museum appeared on America’s Got Talent; REDCAT Gala with Jack Black; opening for Tiger Lilies and DeVotchKa; dozens of clubs and theaters around the US, and closely collaborated with the Klaus Nomi songwriter, Kristian Hoffman. The band was featured in the opera Zoophilic Follies by Daniel Corral at the NOW Festival; the Industry LA production of Crescent City; and as part of PROTOTYPE Festival 2013 and 2015 at Joe's Pub in NYC and HERE Arts Center. Recently, Timur and the Dime Museum performed a critically-acclaimed project COLLAPSE by Daniel Corral at LA’s Redcat Theater, Miami Light Project, Operadagen Rotterdam and BAM 2015 Next Wave Festival. Produced by his long-time collaborator Beth Morrison Projects with fashion designer Victor Wilde and video artist Jesse Gilbert, COLLAPSE told a story of environmental disasters, now available on an album, produced by DeVotchKa’s frontman, Nick Urata.
The highlights of the next season include Timur's new projects, The Great Soviet Bucket, based on the songs of Mercedes Sosa and Soviet propaganda; Klaus From Space, a musical homage to Klaus Nomi with new songs by Kristian Hoffman; the world premiere of rock-opera Black Lodge by David T. Little composed for Timur and the Dime Museum; Swiss premieres of Powder Her Face by Thomas Adès and The Golden Dragon by Peter Eötvös.
Originally from Kazakhstan, Timur collaborated with Anne LeBaron on a large-scale musical project Silent Steppe Cantata, which premiered at the Congress Hall in Astana in 2011. He regularly performs at the Brookledge Follies, the secret magic variety show in Los Angeles. As a grant recipient of the Center for Cultural Innovation and Foundation for Contemporary Art, Timur designed and directed a theatrical installation DO_SCREAM based on opera Dido and Aeneas, for Fisch Haus Museum in Kansas, and the California Institute of the Arts. He is a graduate of WSU, New England Conservatory, USC and CalArts.
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The Opera of Timur Productions is a combination of personal creative projects involving TIMUR and the worlds of opera, performance art and his band Timur and the Dime Museum. For any questions about films, please contact Timur via ACE Pictures Entertainment.
