A B o U T

Adrian Ira is a Canadian musician, writer and visual artist working in various genres.

As a lyricist and composer his output includes pop, country, indie-rock, folk and classical. His original composition, Quietly Waiting, appears on multiple Juno and Gramophone Award winning vocalist Emily D’Angelo’s record, freezing, available now from Deutsche Grammophon.  His setting of Robert Burns’ poem, Highlands, has been performed at the Edinburgh Festival and Hanzas perons in Riga, Latvia. Adrian Ira has produced several albums of original solo material and is one half of the country outfit, The Kramer Brothers.  In 2023 his song, Painted Flowers, was integrated into the Hogfish Festival’s adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen, CARMXN, in Portland, Maine.

Adrian Ira was educated at The Juilliard School and The Curtis Institute of Music. As a professional opera singer he has been engaged by many prominent theatres, including The Glimmerglass Festival, Komische Oper Berlin, The Metropolitan Opera, Israeli Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Opera Philadelphia, San Diego Opera, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Castleton Festival under the baton of Maestro Lorin Maazel, Opera Omaha, Pacific Opera Victoria and Edmonton Opera.  On the concert stage he has been heard at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival and in various countries throughout Europe with Curtis On Tour.  Upcoming projects include Luigi in Puccini’s Il Tabarro, Curly in Floyd’s Of Mice and Men and the Madwoman in Britten’s Curlew River.

As a visual artist his work has been exhibited in Toronto’s Distillery District and at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska, as part of Opera Omaha’s 2019 ONE Festival. That same year his drawings were featured as part of the design concept for Opera Omaha’s production of Philip Glass’s, Les Enfants Terribles.