In this inspiration post, I am taking my hat off to new friend and colleague in the world of experimental opera, Timur Bekbosunov. Timur’s work includes his glam-opera indie/pop avant-garde band Timur and the Dime Museum (www.timurandthedimemuseum.com), his performance and collaboration in the visually lush and wonderfully garish film works of Sandra Powers (check out Autumn here), and his performance and involvement in the premiere Anne LeBaron’s  “The Silent Steppe Cantata” in Almaty, Kazakhstan (www.thesilentsteppe.org).

One of the things I appreciate about the work of Timur is that, to me, it gets at opera’s fundamental essence: sheer audacity. Beyond the grandiose sets, complex orchestras, and even it’s hallmark vocalism, opera is about the audacity to have epic dreams and to actualize them. Opera requires transcending  the limits of the body personally, but then also previous notions of what is possible  communally. Opera always requires the work of many to manifest, and expresses a communities’ collective fantasies of  how spectacular the world can be.