The award-winning Opera Frontier is a Bay Area performing arts company founded in 2007 by Artistic Director Gail Simpson. Opera Frontier makes opera accessible to opera fans and opera-phobes alike by using unexpected elements of culture, dance, and context to reimagine opera for contemporary audiences. In addition to stage productions, Opera Frontier performs in nontraditional settings, surprises audiences as pop-up artists and creates films for YouTube. Opera Frontier is passionate about covering contemporary social justice issues and also about collaborations that create exciting new works by combining opera with other musical and artistic traditions domestically and from around the world. These works have included collaborations with Circus Abyssinia, as well as with classical Indian, Middle Eastern and Ethiopian musicians. By utilizing instruments not seen in the western classical music canon such as the qanun, tabla, sarode and masenqo, Opera Frontier expands upon traditional operatic pieces to develop something new.