© Kate Russel 2025
I'm Tara khozein
/ˈtɑɹə xoˈzeɪn/ or TA-ruh ko-ZAYN
I am a classical singer, improviser, voice teacher, song maker*, and theater artist. I was born in Ecuador to a mixed Iranian-American family, was raised in New Mexico, and have lived, studied, and worked across the US and Europe. I explore the many intersections of concert music and theatre with a special interest in collaboration and extended vocal techniques**. I also teach singing, am a music director for theater, and a stage director for musicians.
After my formal education (classical singing at NMSU & physical theater at the Jacques Lecoq School), I moved back to my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I directed circus, immersive theater, operetta, and children's and teen's performances, and established a sonic improvisation practice. While in Santa Fe, I became the lead teacher at Santa Fe Performing Arts, a company member of Theater Grottesco, and one of the original contributing musical artists at Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Return, where I later became a performer and eventually the staging director for immersive performance. I moved to Budapest at the end of 2019, and became a part of the free improvisation, contemporary classical music, and experimental music scenes, performing alongside classical, jazz, noise, folk, pop, and electronic musicians. After teaching in-person voice lessons for over a decade, I also established an online voice studio.
My recent creative projects include two world premieres by Czech composer Ondřej Adámek: INES (2024) at Opera Köln, and CONNECTION IMPOSSIBLE (2024) with Ensemble Modern at the Bregenz Festival; two original song cycles from night to autumn, fuming (2026) and Until there is nothing left to forgive (2025) with fine artist Zahra Marwan; Kate Soper's one-woman chamber opera IPSA DIXIT with Chatter ABQ; physical and vocal performances in ONCE WITHIN A TIME, a film by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass; the escape-room opera THE RESILIENCE OF SISYPHOS with composer Wen Liu and director Carmen Kruse; and my one-woman touring show IN TO OUT. In 2025 I also co-directed a series of multidisciplinary performance labs in New Mexico, Maine, and Pennsylvania with theater and film director Martin Boross, and we made a podcast about it.
I am a member of multiple ensembles and bands including texty&raucous improvisation band KAT & THE DEVIL; dirty&free improvisation band PONT; theatriclassical flute & voice duo Pierrot Twins with Jesse Tatum; large improvisation ensemble Budapest Improvisors Orchestra; and Timo Kinnunen's extremely wholesome International Experimental Orchestra. I have performed as a guest with NYC's The Rise of The Novel, NYC's Strike Anywhere Ensemble, and Budapest's Gentry Sultan, and I served as the interim artistic director of Budapest's Soharóza Experimental Choir in their 2023-24 season!
I have released five duo improvisation albums:
Americans Who Love Playing Improvised Music In Budapest (2026) with Gabriel Zucker
Amuse-Bouches (2025) with Rhonda Taylor
Live at Lumen (2024) with Thea Soti
Burdeo-Buda-Bridges (2022) with Etienne Rolin
Iterations (2021) with Carlos Santistevan
I also wrote a song used in Aida Shirazi’s “Yearning, Every Dawn” which premiered at Ojai Festival in 2023.
A vocal improvisation album with visual artist and vocal improviser Brian Belott is also somewhere in the ether, as is an album with pianist/composer/vocalist Ernő Rubik.***
I'm based in Brooklyn, NY and Budapest, HU.
* this is a term I've started to use recently. I write songs for solo voice, but songwriter sounds like I'm good at playing the guitar, and composer sounds like I know what all those saxophone transpositions are.
** extended vocal techniques are ways of vocalizing that are not traditionally used in classical music descending from European traditions, but can be found in other musical and theatrical traditions around the world.
*** You can also find a classical album on Spotify if you search my name, but when I recorded it, I was recovering from working with a voice teacher that did some harm to me, and I wasn't singing very well. This is part of my story, as it is of many singers' stories. Recovering from the vocal and emotional abuse I received from that teacher, has made me a smarter singer and a better teacher with better boundaries(!) for others, so I'm somehow grateful for that experience, although I'm not grateful for the public recording.

© Réka Tóth 2026
upcominG
March: Staring into the void and learning Kurtág's Kafka Fragments
April 11. Vienna, AT at Semmelweisklinik
PIERROT TWINS with Jesse Tatum
Georges Aperghis, Tara Khozein, Amy Beth Kirsten, Kaija Saariaho, Gundega Šmite, Kate Soper
April 12. Budapest, HU at FUGA
PIERROT TWINS with Jesse Tatum
Georges Aperghis, Tara Khozein, Amy Beth Kirsten, Kaija Saariaho, Gundega Šmite, Kate Soper
and potentially followed by the fall of authoritarianism in Hungary!!!
April 13. Budapest, HU at Három Holló
JAZZAJ's TËRÏDÖ JAM
Community improvisation event
April 16. Prague, CZ Location TBA
P I E Collective
Community improvisation event
April 21. Budapest, HU at Jedermann
with Harcsa Veronika, Márkos Berci, Bartokos Botond, and Gyárfás Attila
April 24 & 25. Cologne, DE at Orbit Festival
HOST_OPERA
Participatory documentary opera about freedom
April 30. Budapest, HU at Lumen Kávézó
KAT & THE DEVIL – International Jazz Day
with Márkos Berci, Hock Ernő, Oliver Mayne, and Szilveszter Miklós
Film
Once Within a Time
By Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass, and Jon Kane
Credits: Hero and Soundtrack Vocals
