Soprano, sound artist, and teacher Micaela Tobin recently performed as a vocalist with the Los Angeles-based experimental opera company, The Industry, and their groundbreaking production of Hopscotch- a mobile opera for 24 cars (dir. Yuval Sharon). Her credits also include the West Coast premiere of John Luther Adam’s Sila: The Breath of the World, at the 2015 Ojai Music Festival, and as a soprano soloist alongside Annette Bening in Medea at UCLALive. Micaela is currently co-designing her own experimental opera, unsealed/unseamed, to be performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the summer of 2016.
In addition to having performed with numerous experimental rock bands in both Seattle and Los Angeles, Micaela has developed her own music and performance project called “White Boy Scream,” in which she dissects her operatic style of singing through the use of electronic effects pedals. The Stranger described her music as “cryptic musique concrete–ish pieces, augmented by electronically warped chants, [that] cast an unsettling spell.” Micaela was most recently invited to perform her music at the New Music Encounters Plus International Music Festival in Brno, Czech Republic, where she also performed David Rosenboom’s iconic piece for brain waves, “Portable Gold and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Micaela also recently released her second full-length album, entitled Hustle Divine, through Hanged-Man Recordings.
An inter-disciplinary collaborator, Micaela has worked as a vocalist on installations such as: Field Guide To the Gamble House (Patrick Ballard, Machine Project), Delta Lamenta (Eve Luckring, POST Gallery), and Debysi (Kira Blazek, Ashes/Ashes). Her vocals also appear on the soundtrack of the documentary Radical Grace (dir. Rebecca Parish, comp. Heather McIntosh).
Micaela received her Bachelor of Arts in music, with a concentration in voice performance, from the Herb Albert School of Music at UCLA. There, she had the opportunity to perform several leading and supporting roles such as Monica from Menotti’s The Medium, and Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A in VoiceArts at the California Institute of the Arts, under the guidance of Jacqueline Bobak.
Passionate about arts education being a vehicle for community building, Micaela has taught music with several Los Angeles non-profit organizations including Inner City Arts, the Full Circle Opera Project at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, and the Cal Arts Partnership Summer Arts Program. She currently teaches voice at the Los Angeles Music and Art School.
