Composer and sound artist Micaela Tobin wields her soprano voice against the confines of convention, specializing in experimental and contemporary realms of opera and noise. From her Los Angeles homebase, Micaela focuses on building connections between the physical voice and one’s “inner” voice as a means of empowerment, challenging colonial stories and systems. Integrating voice with electronics, ritualized gesture and amplified object-symbolism, she weaves dynamic music that is at once alluring and demanding.
With her primary project, White Boy Scream, Micaela dissects her operatic and extended vocal techniques through hardware, oscillating between extreme textures of noise, drone, and sound walls. Here, she explores her diasporic identity as a first-generation Filipina-American. Her most recent full length album BAKUNAWA (Deathbomb Arc) includes elements of sonic ritual, ancient myth, and ancestral memory. Of the album, The New Yorker asserts, “Opera would do well to pay attention.” The album was ranked #9 Release of 2020 in The Wire. Her upcoming album, APOLAKI, continues this thread, already declared by Passion of the Weiss as “a brilliant showcase in the evolution of her art [that] pushes her alchemized sound to its absolute limits.”
As a composer and director, Micaela presented her cinematic debut at REDCAT in May 2021, titled BAKUNAWA: Opera of the Seven Moons, as an adaptation of the synonymous album. Continuing her series incorporating the precolonial mythology of the Philippines, Micaela premiered her second opera in July 2023, APOLAKI: Opera of the Scorched Earth, at the historic Zorthian Ranch. She performed as the principal role of Coyote in the critically acclaimed opera, SWEET LAND (dir. Yuval Sharon & Canuppa Luger; Comp. Raven Chacon & Du Yun.) Her talents were also displayed in The Industry’s groundbreaking piece, Hopscotch Opera, A Mobile Opera for 24 Cars (dir. Yuval Sharon); as principal vocalist in the premiere of Ron Athey and Sean Griffith’s automatic opera, Gifts the Spirit; and as a soprano soloist alongside Annette Bening in the play Medea at UCLALive.
Micaela is the proud recipient of the 2021 MAP Fund, the 2022 NPN Creation & Development Fund, and was most recently awarded the 2024 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, where she will begin composing her next opera.
