Brett Dean | |
---|---|
Born | Brisbane, Queensland, Australia | 23 October 1961
Occupation(s) | Composer, violist, conductor |
Relatives | Paul Dean (brother) |
Brett Dean (born 23 October 1961) is an Australian composer, violist and conductor.
Brett Dean was born, raised, and educated in Brisbane. He attended Brisbane State High School.
He started learning violin at age 8, and later studied viola with Elizabeth Morgan and John Curro at the Queensland Conservatorium, where he graduated in 1982 with the Conservatorium Medal for the highest-achieving student of the year. [1] In 1981 he was a prizewinner in the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards.
From 1985 to 1999, Dean was a violist in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. [2] In 2000, he decided to pursue a freelance career and returned to Australia, where his many appointments have included curating classical music programs with the Sydney Festival (2005) and the Melbourne Festival (2009). As a composer and musician, he is a regularly invited guest to concert stages around the world. He was the composer-in-residence for the Taiwanese National Symphony Orchestra's 2016/17 season and the Creative Chair for the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich's 2017/2018 season. [3]
Dean was artistic director of the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne until June 2010, when his brother, Paul, took up the post. [4]
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra celebrated Dean's 50th birthday, and his contribution to music as composer, performer and teacher, in its 2011 Metropolis Festival. [5]
He is married to Australian visual artist Heather Betts, and his daughter is the Australian mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean. [6]
Dean began composing in 1988, initially focusing on experimental film and radio projects as well as improvisational performance. Since then, he has created numerous compositions, mainly orchestral or chamber music as well as concertos for several solo instruments. His most successful work is Carlo for strings, sample and tape, inspired by the music of Carlo Gesualdo. On 7 September 2008 his work Polysomnography for wind quintet and piano received its world premiere at the Lucerne Festival; on 2 October 2008 Simon Rattle conducted the first performance of the orchestral song cycle Songs of Joy in Philadelphia. His first opera, Bliss , based on the novel by Peter Carey, premiered at Opera Australia in 2010.
Dean's compositional style is known for creating dynamic soundscapes and treating single instrumental parts with complex rhythms. He shapes musical extremes, from harsh explosions to inaudibility. Modern playing techniques are as characteristic for his style as an elaborate percussion scoring, often enriched with objects from everyday life. Much of Dean's work draws from literary, political or visual stimuli, transporting a non-musical message. Environmental problems are the subject of Water Music and Pastoral Symphony, while Vexations and Devotions deal with the absurdities of a modern society obsessed with information.
In April 2013, "The Last Days of Socrates" was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic. [7] The work for bass-baritone, choir, and orchestra was a co-commission of the Rundfunkchor Berlin, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
In August 2014, "Electric Prelude" [8] was premiered during the BBC Proms 2014 and was conducted by Sakari Oramo.
Dean's clarinet concerto Ariel's Music won an award from the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in 1995. Winter Songs for tenor and wind quintet received the Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize in 2001; Moments of Bliss for orchestra was named Best Composition at the Australian Classical Music Awards in 2005. [13]
Dean has been composer-in-residence several times, including at the 2010 Cheltenham Festival, [14] the 2011 Trondheim Chamber Music Festival, [15] the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2020-23, [16] and Wigmore Hall in 2023-24. [17]
Dean was awarded an honorary doctorate from Griffith University in Brisbane on 21 June 2007. [18]
On 1 December 2008, he was awarded the 2009 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition [9] for his violin concerto, The Lost Art of Letter Writing. [10]
In 2013, Dean was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Music. [19] [20]
Dean received two Ivor Novello Award nominations at The Ivors Classical Awards 2023. Cello Concerto and In This Brief Moment were both nominated for Best Orchestral Composition. [21] The Cello Concerto won the award. [22]
The APRA Awards are presented annually since 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA). [23]
Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result |
---|---|---|---|
2005 | Moments of Bliss (Brett Dean) | Best Composition by an Australian Composer [24] [25] | Won |
Eclipse (Brett Dean) – Artemis Quartet | Best Performance of an Australian Composition [26] | Nominated | |
Moments of Bliss (Brett Dean) – Melbourne Symphony Orchestra | Best Performance of an Australian Composition [26] | Nominated | |
2007 | Viola Concerto (Brett Dean) | Best Composition by an Australian Composer [27] | Nominated |
2008 | The Lost Art of Letter Writing (Brett Dean) – Frank Peter Zimmermann (violinist), Munich Philharmonic, Jonathan Nott (conductor) | Best Performance of an Australian Composition [28] | Nominated |
2012 | Sextet (Brett Dean) – Australia Ensemble | Work of the Year – Instrumental [29] | Won |
2013 | Fire Music (Brett Dean) – Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Brett Dean (conductor) | Work of the Year – Orchestral [30] | Won |
2014 | The Last Days of Socrates (Brett Dean, Graeme Ellis [text]) – Peter Coleman-Wright (soloist), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Simone Young (conductor) | Work of the Year – Orchestral [31] | Nominated |
Performance of the Year [32] | Won | ||
2015 | Dramatis Personae – Music for Trumpet and Orchestra (Brett Dean) – Håkan Hardenberger (soloist), Brett Dean (conductor), Sydney Symphony Orchestra | Orchestral Work of the Year [33] | Won |
The ARIA Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony that recognises excellence, innovation, and achievement across all genres of Australian music. They commenced in 1987.
Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2008 | Brett Dean (with Sydney Symphony Orchestra) | Best Classical Album | Nominated | [34] |
The Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award is given to a person who has made an outstanding contribution to music in Australia.
Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2009 | Brett Dean | Sir Bernard Heinze Memorial Award | awarded | [35] |
The Don Banks Music Award was established in 1984 to publicly honour a senior artist of high distinction who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to music in Australia. [36] It was founded by the Australia Council in honour of Don Banks, Australian composer, performer and the first chair of its music board.
Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result |
---|---|---|---|
2016 | Brett Dean | Don Banks Music Award | awarded |
The Helpmann Awards is an awards show, celebrating live entertainment and performing arts in Australia, presented by industry group Live Performance Australia since 2001. [37] Note: 2020 and 2021 were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2010 | Brett Dean and (Amanda Holden – Bliss | Helpmann Award for Best New Australian Work | Nominated | [38] |
Brett Dean – Bliss | Helpmann Award for Best Original Score | Nominated |
Pēteris Vasks is a Latvian composer.
John Roger Smalley was an Anglo-Australian composer, pianist and conductor. Professor Smalley was a senior honorary research fellow at the School of Music, University of Western Australia in Perth and honorary research associate at the University of Sydney.
Richard John Mills is an Australian conductor and composer. He is currently the artistic director of Victorian Opera, and formerly artistic director of the West Australian Opera and artistic consultant with Orchestra Victoria. He was commissioned by the Victoria State Opera to write his opera Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1996) and by Opera Australia to write the opera Batavia (2001).
Ross Edwards is an Australian composer of a wide variety of music including orchestral and chamber music, choral music, children's music, opera and film music. His distinctive sound world reflects his interest in deep ecology and his belief in the need to reconnect music with elemental forces, as well as restore its traditional association with ritual and dance. He also recognises the profound importance of music as an agent of healing. His music, universal in that it is concerned with age-old mysteries surrounding humanity, is at the same time connected to its roots in Australia, whose cultural diversity it celebrates, and from whose natural environment it draws inspiration, especially birdsong and the mysterious patterns and drones of insects. As a composer living and working on the Pacific Rim, he is aware of the exciting potential of this vast region.
Simon Holt is an English composer.
Matthew John Hindson AM is an Australian composer.
Roberto Sierra is a Puerto Rican composer of contemporary classical music.
John Pickard is a British classical composer.
Andrew Ford is an English-born Australian composer, writer, and radio presenter, known for The Music Show on ABC Radio National.
Donald Henry Kay AM is an Australian classical composer.
Liza Lim is an Australian composer. Lim writes concert music as well as music theatre and has collaborated with artists on a number of installation and video projects. Her work reflects her interests in Asian ritual culture, the aesthetics of Aboriginal art and shows the influence of non-Western music performance practice.
Barry Ernest Conyngham,, is an Australian composer and academic. He has over 70 published works and over 30 recordings featuring his compositions, and his works have been premiered or performed in Australia, Japan, North and South America, the United Kingdom and Europe. His output is largely for orchestra, ensemble or dramatic forces. He is an Emeritus Professor of both the University of Wollongong and Southern Cross University. He is former Dean of the Faculty of the Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne.
Philip Bračanin is an Australian composer and musicologist.
Sebastian Fagerlund is a Finnish composer. He is described as “a post-modern impressionist whose sound landscapes can be heard as ecstatic nature images which, however, are always inner images, landscapes of the mind”. Echoes of Western culture, Asian musical traditions, and heavy metal have all been detected in his music.
James Ledger is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music, and senior lecturer in composition at the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Western Australia, where he is chair of orchestral composition.
Gordon Kerry is an Australian composer, music administrator, music writer and music critic.
Katy Abbott is an Australian composer. Abbott writes music for orchestra, chamber ensemble and voice. Her work reflects her interests in contemporary Australian cultures and often explores notions of home, place, humour and connection.
Stuart Greenbaum is an Australian composer and Professor of music composition at the University of Melbourne. He served as Head of Composition from 2007 to 2023 at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.
Philip Sawyers is a British composer of orchestral and chamber music, including six symphonies.
Lachlan Skipworth is an Australian composer based in Perth, Western Australia.