R. Timothy Brady, Music and Libretto

R. Timothy Brady (b. 1985) is an activist and composer living in New York. Born in Atlanta, Georgia. Brady has studied with Steven 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 co-founded Soulbird, an international social action network that promotes and advocates human rights, social justice, and diversity, through music and the arts.

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 watch”)—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 April 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.

A. R. Madabushi, Libretto

A. R. Madabushi is a film studies graduate of Emory University and currently resides in London, pursuing a degree in medicine. His interest within the intersecting fields of cinema and medicine has driven him to explore the moral, ethical, corporate, and political implications of topics such as human cloning and the treatment of coma patients.

Filmmaking and screenwriting have been his tools of exploration, inspiring the production of Genesis V (2006) and Coma (2007), short films undertaken in collaboration with R. Timothy Brady and Jimmy Sutherland. In 2006, Genesis V took the Best Picture award at the Campus Moviefest Student Film Festival hosted by Emory University, finishing in the top 15 internationally. His latest film project was an impact film made for The India China and America Institute in Atlanta that compares the dynamics of resource sharing in the world economy with the interconnected systems of the human body.

While he plans for a career in medicine, A. R. Madabushi holds little doubt that his work in cinema will shape into something of a lifestyle for him. As far as he is concerned, his desire to explore medical issues and illuminate them through the magic and alchemy of filmmaking shall never cease.

Lou Rodriguez, Libretto

Lou Rodriguez is an Atlanta-based singer-songwriter and member of the band One Hand Loves the Other, which he founded with R. Timothy Brady back in the winter of 2003. He began singing at a very early age, emerging from a background inspired by blues and soul artists of the twentieth century female persuasion. The Plastic Ashtray said of the band’s debut album, “To make music this engaging and beautiful is a feat in itself. This is their art, believe in it because it really is that good.” One Hand Loves the Other was selected as Creative Loafing’s 2007 Best Local Pop Band.