We were lucky to catch up with Timur Bekbosunov recently and have shared our conversation below.
Timur, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
As an immigrant to this country from Kazakhstan, I was always encouraged to pursue singing by my American mom from Kansas. She was always my cheerleader and attended every single performance, no matter how near or far. I started out in music theater, but as my voice grew, I focused on classical opera and then gravitated to contemporary, modern opera. It was very exciting yet scary, since the career path as an opera singer is not really clear, and it requires a lot of factors to be successful. Once I discovered that I was good at interpreting new music and enjoyed collaborating with living composers, I simply started to pursue new projects, and not really doing much of classical opera repertoire. Along the way I met several contemporary music singers, including Anne Harley and the legendary bass Nicholas Isherwood, who were extremely generous in recommending me to other composers. I was not very good at auditions, but would really open up on stage, and once I accepted that about myself, I started to develop a unique vocal color. My first solo professional gigs were with Santa Cecilia Academy, Bang on a Can All-Stars and LA Philharmonic, and that set the course of my career. Eventually, I settled in LA after attending USC and CalArts, where I reconfigured my artistic pursuits, and started to develop my own solo artistic projects. If I hadn’t fallen in love with LA, I would have moved to NYC, which is better suited for performance art and opera projects. However, LA introduced me to a menagerie of wildly creative individuals, including Yuval Sharon, and my long-time collaborator and inspiration, opera producer Beth Morrison. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to spend more time focusing on creating independent projects, instead of spending long hours learning a difficult aria by Mozart.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Being an opera singer in the US today means you pursue everything – acting, commercials, voice-overs, opera contracts, corporate gigs, solo projects, stand up. I think at this point, only a very small number of opera singers can build a career solely on their opera repertoire singing in the opera houses and festivals, primarily in Europe and in the US. As my opera singer identity became more specific – post-punk opera singer, who loves the dark, weird and strange – it became apparent that while it was not for everyone, there was a group of people that did enjoy the macabre side of life. I began to turn down gigs in classical opera, which were not suited for my brand, even though it meant losing some income, and pursued only contemporary opera projects with a gritty, wild edge, like a recent industrial metal opera Black Lodge by David T. Little. It was very encouraging to have friends and fans who enjoyed my curated artistry. Sometimes as an artist you feel like you create in vacuum, without any resonance, and so the biggest surprise usually comes from someone who you’d thought would never like your work, but then they tell you how much it touched them. When strangers tell you that, it is very inspiring and gives an extra fuel to keep on going and serve your audience meals of your phantasmagoric fantasies. Finally, as an artist, I decided to incorporate a few years back, and that shifted the whole perspective at how not to lose a business side of the arts, and learn how to treat your art making, spiritual things aside, as a small and dynamic business venture.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
At some point, I read that artists must have certain responsibility, that they are a mirror to the society, they must be politically active and reflective of people, and they are a method to communicate the emotions in the culture. Things continue to shift in my mind, as my goal is to keep discovering what is the meaning of the arts and how my own contribution can help channel human productivity through the eyes of an artist.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
The most complicated and unusual pivot to my career as the opera singer – I would like to think of it as an expansion, but since things get categorized, it is somewhat of a turn – came when I launched my career as a creative film executive. From 2016 to 2023, I was in charge of creative affairs of ACE Pictures, a Malaysian film production and investment company, where my area of expertise focused on development, market research, risk analysis and strategic planning of the company’s current and future projects. I was overseeing a slate of film projects, including Clemency (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance 2019) and Blush (Competition, Drama, Sundance 2019); Daniel Isn’t Real (SXSW 2019); Color Out of Space (TIFF 2020); Come Away (Sundance 2020), and M for Magic (SXSW 2020.) All of the films were distributed, and had critically-acclaimed runs. The film career certainly taught me a lot about the business and legal side of filmmaking, though strangely enough, working on the artistic side and self-producing a lot of crazy projects taught me to be detail-oriented while dealing with hypotheticals, juggling complex interests and competing fractions. I loved it, and now shifted my focus on developing properties for animation, a medium I passionately adore. If it is animated and good then chances are I have already watched it. Twice.
Contact Info:
- Website: theoperaoftimur.com
- Instagram: theoperaoftimur
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TimurandtheDimeMuseum
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timur-bekbosunov-4905011ab/
- Twitter: gloomycomrade
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/theoperaoftimur
Image Credits
Photos by Sandra Powers