Sean Bradley
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 director of City Opera, a Los Angeles performing arts organization dedicated to the presentation of contemporary classical, crossover, and world music, and founder of Bravoflix, the first online performing arts venue of its kind in the U.S.
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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.
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 Los Angeles cultural institutions, such as the Los Angeles Music Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Bradley's unique vision for City Opera as a cooperative social enterprise enabled the company to earn unrestricted revenue and to operate without philanthropy. Atypical of most opera companies, the company presents artists from all genres, and specializes in the use of performing arts in support of major touring and recording artists, as well as the use of classical talent in corporate entertainment and engagement marketing. In 2011, Bradley founded Bravoflix, an online venue dedicated to live streaming and on-demand performances of music, dance, and theater.
[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 orchestras including the Antelope Valley Symphony Orchestra, 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 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 and 2011, he toured the entire eastern of coast 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 Dohnányi, 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 Solís, Diana Krall, Josh Groban, Rita Coolidge, Arturo Sandoval, Christian McBride, Alex Acuña, 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 Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda).
Bradley is a dedicated educator who also continues to work regularly and directly with students attending a wide variety of pre-professional, public, private, and charter schools, including inner-city schools, throughout Los Angeles. He served as a middle school band and orchestra teacher and as a continuation high school teacher for "at risk" students within the Glendale Unified School District. 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. His work as Music Education Manager for The Da Camera Society at Mount St. Mary's College included coaching advanced chamber music ensembles at the Colburn School in the preparation and delivery of effective outreach presentations. More recently, in tandem with his work for Latin Grammy winner, Marco Antonio Solis, he leads a nationwide mentoring and outreach initiative for touring musicians, preparing them to excite stadium size audiences, while connecting them with schools local to each city on tour. He is on the steering committee for the Los Angeles Arts Consortium, and a board member of the Daniel Catán Foundation.
[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. He studied conducting with John Farrer and briefly with Jorge Mester. 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 Émile Jaques-Dalcroze.
Bradley is a former US Army Ranger (Special Operations) and member of The Old Guard (Presidential Escort), and served in Kuwait and Iraq in 1994 during Operation Vigilant Warrior.
