Faces to Watch

Isabel Bayrakdarian

Soprano

Isabel Bayrakdarian might be said to be an emerging artist. After all, the Lebanese soprano, who won Placido Domingo’s Operalia competition in 2000 at Royce Hall, is just becoming known. But “emerging” hardly seems apropos for a singer who has probably been heard by more people than all other present-day operatic sopranos put together. That’s because -- after encountering her Canadian recording of Armenian liturgical music, “Joyous Light” -- “Lord of the Rings” composer Howard Shore decided he wanted her voice on the soundtrack of “The Two Towers,” the second installment of the popular trilogy.

In fact, it would be best to say that Bayrakdarian, who appeared last season in a small role at Los Angeles Opera (in a staging of Monteverdi’s madrigal “Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda”), has more importantly arrived because of her dazzling performance as Therese in the Metropolitan Opera’s new staging of Berlioz’s “Benvenuto Cellini.” On Feb. 14, she will star in San Diego Opera’s new production of Bizet’s “Pearl Fishers,” and she will return to L.A. Opera on May 22 as Susanna in a new production of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro.”

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FLUX Quartet

String ensemble

In the land of post-Kronos string quartets, the FLUX Quartet, which will appear in the Monday Evening Concert Series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on March 22, is perhaps the most impressive: It’s proved willing to take on the greatest marathon in the string quartet literature, Morton Feldman’s exquisitely transcendental six-hour String Quartet II, written for the Kronos 20 years ago. At the Ojai Festival three years ago, FLUX (Tom Chiu, left,Cornelius Dufallo, Darrett Adkins, Kenji Bunch) also demonstrated plenty of 21st century cutting edge and a first-rate technique.

For LACMA, FLUX will go the opposite Feldman direction with the teeny-tiny, early “Structures.” It will also tackle late 20th century classics by Ligeti and that magnificent otherworldly Italian weirdo, Giacinto Scelsi, along with music newer and sassier.

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Unsuk Chin

Composer

The Ojai Festival lucked out, you might think, by commissioning a new work from Unsuk Chin for this year’s concluding concert June 6. Suddenly the 42-year-old South Korean composer is very hot, her Violin Concerto having just won the 2003 Grawemeyer Award, a prize that captures attention if for no other reason than that it includes a $200,000 check.

In fact, Ojai’s commission wasn’t luck at all. Kent Nagano, last summer’s festival artistic director, is a longtime champion of Chin. One of the first things he did when he took over the German Symphony Orchestra in Berlin two years ago was to make her composer in residence (the concerto was a Berlin commission). One of the first things he did when asked to become music director of Los Angeles Opera was to suggest that it commission an opera from her.

That opera, based on “Alice in Wonderland,” is set for 2005, and the composer, who has a love of puzzles and whose scores are wondrous interplays of sonic fancy and maze-like structures, says she will explore some of the same “Alice” ground in her Ojai piece for soprano Milena Kitic and orchestra.

-- Mark Swed