Sean Bradley
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Sean Bradley (birthday unknown) is an American conductor, composer, violinist, music theorist, educator, and impresario (producer) of large scale symphonic and operatic events. Bradley is the general and artistic director of City Opera, a Los Angeles performing arts organization dedicated to the presentation of contemporary classical, crossover, and world music.
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[edit] A presenter of new music
Bradley first gained a reputation as a conductor and active proponent of new music while serving as the artistic director of Opera Nova Santa Monica (Gail Gordon, founding executive director). His tenure at Opera Nova was closely associated with a group of five Spanish-speaking composers living and working in Los Angeles known as Los Cinco. Bradley helped to establish this collective as a notable geographic and aesthetic school of contemporary composition.
Building on the success of his work at Opera Nova, Bradley founded City Opera in 2004. His first leadership initiative was the establishment of an extensive education and outreach program. Under his guidance, City Opera won a significant contract authorizing the company to deliver music education services to schools throughout the entire Los Angeles Unified School District, immediately placing the professional scope of the company's community outreach within an important education network that includes other leading musical institutions, such as the Los Angeles Music Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. The company's close ties with civic agencies promise continuing growth while fostering arts access throughout Los Angeles, modeling a new citywide but community-centric manner of doing business in the arts that has garnered increased attention throughout Los Angeles and Southern California.
Bradley's unique vision for City Opera as a cooperative social enterprise has enabled the company to earn unrestricted revenue and to operate without philanthropy. His present endeavors include tackling problems related to the use of technology to increase classical music's accessibility, distribution, as well as convenience and relevancy in participating communities, while simultaneously increasing creative potency and compensation for all company stakeholders.
[edit] Other work
In addition to his duties as a conductor and company director, Bradley's work as a principal and section violin player includes a busy schedule of activity among many orchestras in Southern California and elsewhere. As a soloist, he has premiered original music for the stage by Stephen Schwartz—the composer of the hit musical Wicked—with TheaterWorks in the San Francisco Bay area, and was the featured violinist in a West Coast premiere for Musical Theater West in Long Beach. He has served as concertmaster for several regional and collegiate orchestras including Torrance Symphony, Opera a la Carte, Opera Nova, the Culver City Chamber Orchestra, the Disney-Grammy Collegiate Orchestra, the Eastman Opera and Studio Orchestras, and has also served as assistant concertmaster for the Antelope Valley Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta de Baja California, and the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra. He has served as principal second violin for the Golden State Pops Orchestra, Ventura Music Festival, Asian-American Philharmonic, Saint Matthews Chamber Orchestra, and El Paso Opera, and performed as a substitute first violin for West Bay Opera. He performs regularly with the symphonies and philharmonic orchestras of West L.A., Southeast L.A., Marina Del Rey, Brentwood, Burbank, Calabasas, Antelope Valley, San Bernardino, Redlands, and Riverside and has performed with the Mozart Chamber Orchestra, Angeles Baroque Orchestra, the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, the DaKah Hip Hop Orchestra, and others. In 2007, he toured the entire north to south axis of eastern China with the Mantovani Orchestra. In 2005, Bradley toured with the Orquestra de Baja California and world famous guitarist Angel Romero to Lincoln Center in New York, and, in 2004, he visited nearly all of the contiguous United States during two separate orchestral tours. As an orchestral musician, Bradley has played under the batons of such musical luminaries as Elmer Bernstein, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Jerry Goldsmith, Quincy Jones, Michael Kamen, Lalo Schifrin, Gunther Schuller, Yuri Temirkanov, Michael Tilson Thomas, and John Williams. In addition, he has played in concerts featuring solo artists like Stevie Wonder, Tony Bennett, Marco Antonio Solis, Diana Krall, Josh Groban, Arturo Sandoval, Christian McBride, Alex Acuna, Pinchas Zukerman, and other leading classical, pop, and jazz musicians. Bradley has performed in every major venue in Los Angeles from Disney Hall to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to the Playboy Mansion, and has made brief appearances playing the violin in the films Ray (with Jamie Foxx), Hannibal (with Anthony Hopkins), and Monster-in-Law (with J-Lo and Jane Fonda).
Bradley also continues to work regularly and directly with students attending a wide variety of public, private, and charter schools, including inner-city schools, throughout Los Angeles. He is a former artist-faculty member of the Orange County High School of the Arts where he taught advanced placement (collegiate) music theory, a strings masterclass, and computer music notation. For several years, he also served as a middle school band and orchestra teacher and continuation high school teacher for "at risk" students within the Glendale Unified School District.
[edit] Education and training
Bradley is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music where he studied violin with Ilya Kaler, and composition with Christopher Rouse and Allan Schindler. Other teachers included Aurelio de la Vega and Abram Shtern. He lived for sometime in the studio of famed Dutch painter, Jan H. Hoowij, mentored there by the artist's widow, Pem Hoowij--a protégé of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze.
Bradley is a former Army Ranger (Special Operations) and member of The Old Guard (Presidential Escort), and served in Kuwait and Iraq in 1994 during Operation Vigilant Warrior.
