Opera Povera Director, Sean Griffin has been active throughout the US, Mexico, Asia, and Europe, directing, designing, composing, arranging, recording, and conducting. Whether inventing a language, or composing hysteric choreographic and choral methodologies, concert music works, film scores, operas, and devised music theater, or creating hundreds of numerically-conceived collages and drawings, intuitive and experimental music practices lie at the foundation of Griffin’s works.

In January, Sharon Chohi Kim and Micaela Tobin both appeared with Opera Povera as soloists in Griffin and Ron Athey’s Gifts of the Spirit produced by The Broad at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral. 

With Opera Povera, Griffin has created new performance works with Ron Athey, Charles Gaines, George Lewis, Anne LeBaron, Pauline Oliveros, and is a longtime collaborator with Catherine Sullivan, Juliana Snapper, Aiyun Huang, and Stacy Ellen Rich. Griffin’s productions, recordings, live performances, and designs have been featured at MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, RedCat, LACMA, MAK Center at the Schindler House, Volksbühne, Secession Vienna, EMPAC, the 56th Venice Biennial, Chicago’s MCA and Trap Door Theatre, Ostrava Days, Tate Modern, Royal Academy of Arts, June In Buffalo, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Gwangju Biennial, Seoul’s Festival BO:M, Taipei’s Forum Music, and the 2017 Ojai Music Festival.

Soprano and sound artist Micaela Tobin specializes in contemporary voice, having been invited to premiere new work at the 2016 NOW Fest at REDCAT, OutSider Fest in Austin, and internationally at the XIII Festival Internacional Musica Nueva in Monterrey, Mexico, the New Music Encounters Plus International Music Festival in Brno, Czech Republic, the 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the 2016 Vancouver New Music Festival. She has also performed with The Industry in their groundbreaking opera, Hopscotch-a mobile opera for 24 cars. Micaela composes and performs her own hybrid of noise music and opera under the moniker, “White Boy Scream.” The recent premiere her electroacoustic noise-opera, Unseal Unseam, at Highways Performance space in October of 2017 was described as “paralyzingly beautiful (New Classic LA).” She is currently on faculty in the VoiceArts department at the California Institute for the Arts.

Sharon Chohi Kim is a vocalist and composer. She recently made her debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall as the alto soloist in Mozart’s Requiem. The premiere of her new opera Unseal Unseam was described as “hair-raising” and “paralyzingly beautiful” (New Classic LA). She sang in the West Coast Premiere of Sila: Breath of the World by John Luther Adams. Her performance has been described as "explosive" (Wall Street Journal, 2015) in her role as Lucha in Hopscotch with the The Industry Opera Company. Sharon has performed with such organizations as Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera Company, The Industry Opera Company, Pasadena Opera Company, The Music Center, MOCA, Broad Museum, and Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles. She has toured Canada, South Korea and the United Kingdom singing experimental music. She received her MFA at California Institute of the Arts, and she is currently on the voice faculty at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.