R. Timothy Brady (b.1985) is a social entrepreneur and composer living in New York. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Brady has studied with Steve Everett, John Anthony Lennon, Sonia Possetti, and Michael White, but his earliest musical training consisted of songwriting lessons from local country singer Cindy Whitley Hansard. When he first approached classical composition as an undergrad at Emory University, it was from a background in the vernacular, as performer, improviser, and electronic musician.
He graduated cum laude from Emory, where writing an original score for Tim Robbins’ stage production-in-progress of Dead Man Walking combined Brady’s passions for music and for political advocacy. In 2004 he received the Edwin J. Brown Scholarship to study social problems in his hometown, and in 2007, he founded Soulbird Music Project, an organization dedicated to finding common ground among socially conscious non-profits through the communicative power of music.
In 2007, Brady performed with the band One Hand Loves the Other on their self-titled album (Stickfigure Records), which he composed and arranged; he also presented his first opera, Edalat Square, at the inaugural Opera Vista Festival in Houston, where it shared first prize. Dramatizing the 2005 hanging of two young Iranian boys, Edalat was a success with audiences and critics alike (the Houston Press dubbed it “poignant, highly poetic†and Brady “the composer to watchâ€)—although not with the Department of Homeland Security, which attempted to block the premiere due to Brady’s political ties.
NPR and Swedish public radio have both broadcast excerpts from the opera, which will be revived at Wichita State University in March 2008 and again at Opera Vista that June. A Canadian tour is also in the planning stages, and Logo, MTV’s gay affiliate, has expressed interest in broadcasting the opera. Brady hopes to follow Edalat with another theatrical collaboration on themes of global justice.
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