Omar Ebrahim

Omar Ebrahim became a chorister at the Coventry Cathedral in 1964. His exposure to the vibrant contemporary cultural life of that place led him to study singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He served his performing apprenticeship at the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the Glyndebourne chorus, performing the role of Schaunard in La Bohème for Glyndebourne Touring Opera in 1980.

He has been involved with many contemporary opera and concert performances including Nigel Osborne’s The Electrification of the Soviet Union, Tippett’s New Year, and Birtwistle’s The Second Mrs. Kong for Glyndebourne Festival Opera. He has also sung concert performances of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha at the South Bank Centre in London and the title role in Laman’s Agamemnon in the 1997 Holland Festival.

Recent performances include the title role in John Casken’s God’s Liar for Almeida Opera and La Monnaie Brussels, Benedict Mason’s ChaplinOperas with Ensemble InterContemporain, and Aventures, nouvelle aventures with the Schoenberg Ensemble, soon to be released by Teldec Music. Future performances include Peter Eotvos’sSnatches of conversation with MusikFabik in Antwerp, Aventures, Nouvelle Aventures with the London Sinfonietta the BBC Proms and a new opera Thwaite for Almeida Opera. He will also sing three concerts with Ensemble Modern during their residency at the Taipei Festival in spring, 2003.

As an actor he has performed Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon, most recently with the Salzburg Camerata during the Salzburg Festival, and Strauss’s melodrama on Tennyson’sEnoch Arden for IRCAM in Paris. He also played Archie Cannibal in Chips with Everything at Leeds Playhouse.

David Moss

David Moss is one of the most innovative singers and percussionists in contemporary music. He is the founder and artistic director of the Institute for Living Voice (ILV), a new workshop center hosting Master Singers from around the world. The ILV presented its premiere session in 2001 in Ghent, Belgium, and continues twice each year with sessions in Brugge, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Marseilles, and Bologna.

Moss has sung at the Edinburgh Festival, Spoleto Festival, USA, and the Meistersinger Festival in Nürnberg in Heiner Goebbels’ orchestra work Surrogate Cities, and is a vocal soloist in Goebbels’ Prometheus. Since 1995 he has performed as guest with the Ensemble Modern, most recently in their new Frank Zappa Project. Moss has also presented the Strange Stories Project as part of the Bern Biennale; served on the jury for the Darmstadt “New Theater” prize; sung in Andrea Molino’s Death Penalty Project; and appeared as featured soloist in Uri Caine’s Goldberg Variations Project. In 1991 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a DAAD Fellowship (Berlin) in 1992, and was curator of a vocal improvisation project for the Adelaide Festival 2000.

In 2003, Moss will perform as soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle. He will also perform in a new music-theater work by Olga Neuwirth, with a libretto by Elfriede Jelinek, based on David Lynch’s Lost Highway; with the Uri Caine Ensemble at Lincoln Center; and with the “Shouting Men of Finland” around Europe. In 2002, his one-man theater piece Einstein for Aliens premiered in Antwerp, and OWL, a new work Moss composed for the Asko Ensemble based on Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, was performed throughout Holland. In 2004 Moss returns to Luciano Berio’s Cronaca del Luogo in Genoa, London and Paris, and will perform as principal