One Body, by New York-based composer John Kennedy was performed February 15, 2019 at Boston Court in Pasadena as part of their Winter Music Series. This five movement cantata combines texts by Walt Whitman, St. Augustine, Native Americans and several contemporary poets with the formidable vocal skills of Timur, the masterful playing of the Isaura String Quartet and multi-talented percussionists Yuri Inoo and Sidney Hopson. Conducted by the composer, this five-part work explores the spiritual implications of the earth as a living entity, divisions by species, the limitations of race and stereotypes of gender. The composer writes that One Body seeks to create “a modern liturgy of secular human
Ah, l’amour! In what could be called a perfect DC description of, and introduction for, a perfect Valentine’s Day concert, Russian Chamber Art Society president Mary Kruger welcomed the sizable and enthusiastic audience with the observation that the music we were about to hear—a departure from the RCAS’s usual, strictly classical fare, featuring a celebrated crossover vocalist as at home in rock and pop as he is in Puccini—would be “the perfect emotional release after weeks of government stand-offs and shutdown.” And the Kazakh-American tenor Timur, deftly accompanied by Anna Kusner on guitar and Genadi Zagor on piano, both of whom matched him in skill and passion, delivered a full bouquet.