The World Festival of Sacred Music-LA is the largest citywide Festival in Los Angeles offering forty-three events over sixteen days in venues across Los Angeles region from Sept 17th to Oct 2nd.

From the Throat singers of Tuva, Siberia to music from the Czech Republic, Korea, Thailand, Mexico, and the magnificent diversity of Los Angeles artists - the Festival provides opportunities for you to cross boundaries of religion, class, culture, race, and language, to share cultural traditions and to contemplate the spiritual, ethical and ecological questions of our times.
The 43 events in the Festival are an invitation to our many communities to witness music both familiar and new. Through music, each person in the audience can expand their definition of who they are as members of this city, go beyond the familiar, and explore the potential of intercultural and interfaith collaboration.
- Judy Mitoma, Festival Director

www.festivalofsacredmusic.org/
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Musician Bios

Robert Een

Robert Een is an acclaimed composer, singer and cellist. The recipient of a 2004 Obie Award for music composition and a 2000 Bessie Award for sustained achievement, Een has performed his music on concert stages and in unusual venues throughout the world, including the Buddhist caves of Ellora, India; the Shinto shrine in Tsurugi, Japan; a theater above the Arctic circle in Norway; the Pushkin Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia; The Fringe Club in Hong Kong; as well as such New York venues as Lincoln Center, The Whitney Museum and The Knitting Factory.

The Village Voice said of his work, "Joyous ... rarely is new music this much fun." The Tucson Citizen wrote, "Original and inviting. Een is a conjuring compositional alchemist." And in The San Francisco Chronicle, "What Hendrix did for the guitar, freeing it from its previous role and expectations, Robert Een does for the cello."

Known for his use of extended vocal and cello techniques, he has recorded eight albums: Mystery Dances, Expanding Universe, Fertile Fields, Your Life is Not Your Own, Big Joe, The Rook: and "Mr. Jealousy" soundtracks, and Music from Blue Earth.

His scores for film include; Ashes and Snow, My Horrible Year, Mr. Jealousy, Trouble on the Corner, The Rook, Guts, and the documentaries Misty Isle Our and Carnival Train.

Robert Een's music for theater and dance can be heard in the repertories of Dan Hurlin, Liz Lerman, Stephan Koplowitz, David Dorfman, Yin Mei, Brian Selznick, Jennifer Muller, Yoshiko Chuma, Pearson/Widrig, and Ron K. Brown, among others. As a teacher he has been a guest lecturer and an artist-in-residence at colleges, universities and professional schools around the globe.

His long association with Meredith Monk culminated in their evening length performance duet, "Facing North."

www.roberteen.com/

Gwen Wyatt

Gwen Wyatt, conductor, soprano, music educator and founder/director of the Gwen Wyatt Chorale, holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Claremont University, an M.A. from CSU-Los Angeles, and a B.S. in music education from the University of North Dakota. Though her lyric soprano voice has received critical acclaim on world stages in the Middle East, Europe and in South America, her passion is the singing of spirituals. She speaks of the late Jester Hairston, her mentor of the performance practices of the spiritual, as inspiring her deep love and understanding of these wonderful songs. Dr. Wyatt, an adjunct professor of voice at Cal State Dominquez Hills and at Rio Hondo College, is concerned with the development of talent for the young, and conducts "How to" seminars for young artists for audition preparation. On Sunday mornings she finds time to serve as Director of Music at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles.

Yuval Ron

Yuval Ron is an international composer and record producer.

The Yuval Ron Ensemble includes Arabic, Israeli and Jewish musicians as well as Christian Armenian artists who unite the sacred musical traditions of Judaism, Sufism and the Armenian Church into an unusual mystical, spiritual and inspiring musical celebration. He is recipient of multiple grants from NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Composers Forum and the California Council for the Humanities. Yuval composed scores for numerous TV programs and films including Proteus, Oliver Twist, The Spiral Staircase, Susie Q and Someone to Die For. He is also a noted lecturer and leader of workshops and master classes at numerous schools and universities in the US and abroad, including Berklee College of Music, MIT, UCLA, UCSD, SCUN, UCSC, Boston Center for the Arts and the Sam Spiegel Jerusalem Film School. For more information about Yuval Ron please visit:
www.yuvalronmusic.com

Sizzle Ohtaka

It's not easy to classify Sizzle Ohtaka; traditional, new age, world music, or experimental music. The result is unique. Sizzle is a voice. An extraordinarily flexible voice which she uses as an instrument. Sizzle performs her original style vocals under the title of "Rainbow Voice." She has attracted attention from the international art scene , performing with the British avant-garde performance group Station House Opera; Monkey Business Class, a part of the European Cultural City Commemoration Ceremony in Copenhagen; with Hotel Pro Forma, a Danish avant-garde group; as well as collaborating with Kazuo Ono, the father of Butoh Dance.

In 2003 Sizzle created Futon Logic which appeared at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and performed Mask Show at the Edinbourgh Fringe Festival. In 2004, Sizzle started A Series of Voice Museums in which she collaborated with masterpieces of painting. She also performs in several hundreds of radio and TV commercials.

Billy Goodrum

There are no walls up in Billy Goodrum's musical world.

Whether he is writing film scores, recording his own songs for all of the Farrelly Brother's offbeat comedies, composing modern jazz pieces or collaborating with artists like Psychic TV, Julia Fordham and Vanessa Carlton, it is always music pure and simple. Billy's background includes graduating with honors from Berklee College of Music, playing with jazz icons Lionel Hampton and Ronnie Laws, playing in rock bands and absorbing the musical heritage of his native North Carolina. Billy has performed on the Jay Leno show, worked with Jonathan Richman playing keyboards on the soundtrack to There's Something About Mary, scored two feature films and, in collaboration with Daniel Ash, (Bauhaus, Love & Rockets) scored the Paramount series Keen Eddie. Billy traveled to India where he recorded 80 year old singer Katie Irani whose CD was released by Manonash Music in 2004, preserving for posterity traditional songs previously handed down through oral tradition. Billy's song "She's the One" was featured in this summer's Martin Lawrence film Rebound.

M.B. Gordy

M.B. Gordy received his Bachelor's degree from Glassboro State College and his master's degree from California Institute of the Arts. M.B. has made an extensive study of ethnic percussion, studying Ghanian drumming with the Ladzepko Bros, tabla with Taranath Rao, as well as Balinese and Javanese Gamalan with Wenten Wasitidiporo. He has a children's CD out with James Richter, which incorporates music influences from around the world. M.B. has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Symphony and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He has played on numerous film scores, including The Crow, Stigmata and Shipping News. Television credits include King of the Hill, The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. As a rocker, M.B. has played with Frank Zappa, Three Dog Night, John Tesh, Loggins and Messina, and Andrea Marcovicci, and is presently the percussionist with the Doobie Brothers. He leads drum circles and educational clinics, independently as well as for Yamaha music education and is working on a meditation/yoga CD.

Mader

Mader is a noted film composer and accordionist. He has scored a wide variety of feature films, including Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet (both nominated for Academy Awards), Steal this Movie (The Abbie Hoffman Story), Clockwatchers, Row Your Boat, In The Soup, The Don's Analyst, and Too Tired To Die. He has led numerous alternative/rock bands in Paris, New York and Los Angeles.