School of Music

Mixing performance with inspirational discards, assembled utilitarian objects, interactive technology, movement, and music, Opera Povera Director Sean Griffin has been active throughout the US, Mexico, Asia, and Europe, directing, designing, composing, arranging, recording, and conducting. Whether inventing a language, or composing hysteric choreographic and choral methodologies, concert music works, film scores, installations, operas, and devised music theater, or creating hundreds of numerically-conceived collages and drawings, intuitive and experimental music practices lie at the foundation of Griffin’s works.

Griffin founded Opera Povera in Los Angeles in 2010. Opera Povera collaboratively combines ethnographic, archival, political, queer, and historical research with critical artistic inquiry. Recent collaborators include Charles Gaines, George Lewis, Catherine Sullivan, Pauline Oliveros, and Ron Athey. Productions, recordings, live performances, and designs have been featured at MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, RedCat, LACMA, MAK Center at the Schindler House, the 56th Venice Biennial, Chicago’s MCA, Ostrava Days in the Czech Republic, the 2017 Ojai Festival, The Broad Museum, and 2018 Berliner Festspiele’s MaerzMuzik.

Griffin received an MFA from CalArts and a PhD from UCSD. He has taught at UCSD, CalArts, and the University of Chicago, and recently taught digital and sound art as associate professor at the University of Guanajuato, Campus Irapuato-Salamanca, Mexico.