sven edward olbash

Interim Artistic Director

Multidisciplinary artist Sven Edward Olbash has credits as a conductor, opera singer, musical theater actor, writer, stage director, organist, composer, theatrical clown, acrobat, and trapeze performer. Career highlights include a solo voice recital at Old First Concerts, vocal soloist at Other Minds Festival with professional new music ensemble Volti, producing and directing a recording of the Ockeghem Requiem with medieval vocal ensemble Euouae, and cabaret performances including Rick Berlin’s Cha Cha Club, Barnaby’s World of Wonderment, SF Boylesque, Picklewater’s Clown Cabaret, “Trapped in the Closet” at Infusion Lounge, and opening for the Dresden Dolls with a performance of Kurt Weill’s “Buddy on the Night Shift” dressed as Rosie the Riveter.

Sven is founder of Voice Science Studio where he teaches singing technique and musicianship (online and in-person) for adult amateur choral singers and aspirational middle through high school students. He is artistic director of Lacuna Arts Chorale, a San Francisco nonprofit organization promoting excellence in vocal and a cappella choral music. He holds degrees in voice performance and vocal pedagogy from Boston University and New England Conservatory of Music and has been a teaching artist with San Francisco Opera for over a decade. He has been a guest clinician for SF Choral Society, Piedmont Boys and Girls Choirs, SF Lyric Opera, Gregorian Institute of Canada, and the National Association of Teachers of Singing—which awarded him the Joan Frey Boytim prize for private studio teachers in 2018.

As a practicing homosexual with a disability, Sven is as passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts as he is about high camp, film noir, solfège, midcentury interior design, creative dress, licorice, and the music of Joni Mitchell. In his free time Sven enjoys studying Spanish, jazz piano and ceramics, as well as watching other people’s dogs playing at Duboce park.