Biography
The Toronto period (1980–1986)
In 1980 Brady moved to Toronto where he began working both as a contemporary classical composer and as a jazz guitarist. In Toronto his work as a composer was still strongly influenced by modernist tendencies (i.e.: Elliott Carter, Anton Webern, Pierre Boulez), including his earliest professional chamber piece for voice and ensemble, 4 Songs and an Intermezzo, and other early works such as his String Quartet #1, the chamber work Five Settings (1983, commissioned by Arraymusic), and the Chamber Concerto (1985, commissioned by New Music Concerts). A series of imaginative but conventional modernist chamber and orchestral works would start to make Brady's reputation as a composer across Canada, and would win him 5 composition awards from CAPAC (now SOCAN) from 1982 to 1986, and he was a finalist in the 1986 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Young Composers' Competition, with the work Visions. His most ambitious and complex modernist work, the 1982 orchestral score Variants, was premiered by the Esprit Orchestra in Toronto in the 1987–1988 season, recorded by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as a result of winning the 1986 Micheline Coulombe St-Marcoux Prize (CAPAC).
However, two works of the Toronto period point to the future vision of music as a more unified means of expression, without stylistic boundaries: SOUND OFF (1983), for 40 saxes, 30 trombones, 30 trumpets and 8 bass drums (an outdoor performance piece – unperformed until 1999) and Visions (1984), for improvising soloist and string orchestra. This latter work was to become his first CD release in 1988, in a remarkable performance by trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, with the Orchestre de chambre de Montréal.
First recordings, first productions
Brady also recorded and produced his first 4 records in Toronto – an ECM-influenced jazz trio set of original tunes called Chalk Paper, a recording of 3 chamber works for solo piano (performed by Marc Wider), and two digitally recorded LPs of music for solo guitar and electronics: dR.E.aM.s (1985) and The Persistence of Vision (1987). These two solo recordings began to make his reputation as a guitar innovator both in Canada and internationally.
Brady's Toronto years also mark the beginning of his work as a concert producer. In 1982 he founded the production company Contemporary Music Projects, and he would produce and perform in major jazz orchestra events with iconic American jazz arranger Gil Evans (1984) and maverick Canadian trumpeter/composer Kenny Wheeler (1985).
During this period his various jazz groups/big bands performed in clubs and concerts in Toronto and Montréal, and did recordings of his original jazz works for the CBC Radio programme Jazz Beat, as well as for the new music/contemporary classical programme Two New Hours. Brady had his first major international collaboration in 1983, performing a duo concert at the Edmonton Jazz City Festival with the Hungarian bass virtuoso Aladar Pege.
Montreal, part 1: Bradyworks (1987–1997)
Upon returning to Montreal in 1987, Brady founded his own chamber group and production company in order to have some control over his work, and his new vision of creative music. The group was named simply "Bradyworks".
The first major Bradyworks project was Inventions, a 90-minute music and dance collaboration, created in conjunction with Ottawa choreographer Julie West. The work included the 5 musicians of Bradyworks plus the jazz soloists Barre Phillips (bass) and John Surman (saxophones). A CD of the project was released in the autumn of 1991, to coincide with the groups' first major tour, including 13 concerts across Canada, plus a performance at Roulette, New York's well-known experimental music space. The tour featured a chamber work entitled The Songline, which had been commissioned by and premiered at the Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV).
This project, as with almost all of his recorded productions since 1988, was produced in collaboration with engineer and producer Morris Apelbaum, who also works as live sound engineer for the Bradyworks ensemble.
1992 saw the release of his landmark solo guitar and electronics CD Imaginary Guitars. This was followed by several other solo guitar CDs, all focusing on composing new music for guitar with electronics and tape: Scenarios (1994), Strange Attractors (1997) and the double CD 10 Collaborations (2000). All these recordings were on the Justin Time Records label, out of Montreal. Brady toured extensively in the 1990s as a solo guitarist, including performances at the 1993 Printemps de Bourges music festival, the 1993 Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival (with his first electric guitar concerto, LOUD), the 1993 Bang on a Can Festival, a 1994 collaboration with the Relâche ensemble in Philadelphia, a 1995 UK tour for the Sonic Arts Network with a performance for the BBC at The South Bank (London), a commission and a solo performance at Maison Radio-France (INA-GRM, Paris) in 1996 (and again in 2001), the 1997 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and the 1999 Strange Attractor's world tour, with 23 concerts in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong, including a performance at the Festival international de Jazz de Montréal.
The Body Electric Festival (1997)
Since 1994 Brady had been running the concert production company Innovations en concert, producing many different events in Montreal, some with his music, but also producing concerts by many touring and local musicians as well. In 1995 Brady had the idea of producing the first-ever international festival of contemporary chamber and orchestral music for electric guitar.
In collaboration with partners in Toronto, Jonquière, Winnipeg, Victoria, Vancouver, and New York City, he created the festival The Body Electric / Guitarévolution, which was held in 1997, presenting a total of 23 concerts. The event featured performances by David Torn, the Fred Frith Quartet, Elliott Sharp, René Lussier, Ron Samworth, Greg Lowe, John Oliver, Kapser Toeplitz, Scott Johnson and Paul Dresher. Brady also premiered his second electric guitar concerto, The Body Electric (1997), on the closing night of the event, a work commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and performed by the Esprit Orchestra. A second, somewhat smaller version of the festival was held in 2002.
Bradyworks – vocal music (1997–2000)
Parallel to his work as a guitarist, his interest in opera, music theatre and vocal music had become one of his main artistic preoccupations. From 1989 to 1992 he worked on a chamber opera version of the Man Booker prize-winning novel The Bone People , by New Zealand author Keri Hulme. The project was never completed due to difficulties in working with Hulme, but it sparked a keen interest in vocal music and music theatre which continues in his current works.
Out of this failed opera experience came his first major song-cycle, entitled Revolutionary Songs (1993), based on a variety of poems in English, French and Spanish. Sung by soprano Nathalie Paulin, and scored for Bradyworks, the work was premiered at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and later released on CD in 1996, supported by a 5-city Canadian tour. The work combines pulsing, jazz and minimalist inflected harmonies with distorted rock guitar and a large range of electronic tape sounds to create a 40-minute portrait of the experience of political revolution. The work had three American performances in 2001, at The Kitchen (New York City, performed by Bradyworks), in Kansas City (New Ear Ensemble), and in Boston (Auros New Music Ensemble).
A second Bradyworks song-cycle followed, entitled The Knife Thrower's Partner (1997), using only a quartet of acoustic instruments in setting a text by Canadian poet Douglas Burnet Smith (whose work Brady would use again in 2009). Bradyworks toured this piece across Canada in 2000, giving 8 performances with mezzo-soprano Anne-Marie Donovan.
Montreal, part 2: operas, Ambiances magnétiques, CNMN (2002–2005 )
In 2002 Brady parted company amicably with Justin Time Records and began working with Ambiances Magnétiques based in Montreal. The first release was of his work 20 Quarter Inch Jacks, a piece for 20 electric guitars, commissioned by the Festival Les Coups de Théâtre. In 2003 he released Unison Rituals, a CD of his music for saxophone and chamber ensemble, including the first of many collaborations with the Quasar saxophone quartet, and an overdubbed and reduced performance of the 1983 work SOUND OFF, for 100 winds and 8 bass drums. Later in 2003 Bradyworks performed its first European tour, with concerts in London (for the BBC at Maida Vale), Aberdeen University (Scotland) and at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin (Ireland) as part of the Crash Ensemble's New Music Festival.
2002 saw the premiere of his 45-minute, multi-movement work Playing Guitar: Symphony #1, for solo electric guitar, sampler and 15 musicians. The work was performed in Montreal (Oscar Peterson Hall, Concordia University – Oct. 2002), Marseille (G.M.E.M. – Festival Les Musiques – May 2003) and New York (Interpretation Series, Merkin Hall – November 2002) by its commissioner, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and was released on CD in 2004. 2002 also saw the premiere of his orchestral work Three or Four Days After the Death of Kurt Cobain by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréa under conductor Rafael Frubek de Burghos, followed by a performance by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in 2004.
The next few years would be occupied with the creation and production of Brady's two chamber operas: The Salome Dancer (2005 – libretto by John Sobol, commissioned and produced by NUMUS concerts at the Open Ears Festival, with Bradyworks in the pit, conducted by Paul Pulford, with stage direction by Anne-Marie Donovan), and Three Cities in the Life of Dr. Norman Bethune (2003) – found-text libretto by the composer, commissioned by La Société Radio-Canada, premiered by Bradyworks and baritone Michael Donovan in Montreal. Bethune had subsequent productions in Lennoxville, Toronto and Guelph (conducted by Pierre Simard), and was released on CD in 2005.
Brady left the Innovations en concert production company in 2004 to focus on his own projects (running under the Bradyworks banner), and to work on the beginnings of what would eventually become the Canadian New Music Network (CNMN, 2005). [2] The CNMN is a large, pan-Canadian movement to make contemporary creative concert music a more vibrant part of Canadian society. The organization brings artists together in an annual event entitled FORUM, held in a different Canadian city each year (Winnipeg – 2007, Toronto – 2008, Montreal – 2009). [3] Brady is the current president of the CNMN (2005–2010). Since 2004 he has served on the board of directors of The Music Gallery.
In 2006 Brady released his first solo CD in 6 years, GO [guitar obsession], signaling a renewed interest in electric guitar music. The CD combined several of his works with pieces by composers Alex Burton, Tristan Murail, Jean-François Laporte and Laurence Crane. He toured music from the CD to the Netherlands in January 2007 in collaboration with the Quasar saxophone quartet (concerts in Eindhoven, Utrecht and at the BIMHAUS in Amsterdam), and in July of the same year he toured the project to Australia, performing in Brisbane (The Powerhouse, with Topology), Perth (Tura Concerts), and at the Darwin International Guitar Festival. He was back in the Netherlands in September 2007 for several performances, and also to give a lecture on new music and the electric guitar, at the OUTPUT Electric Guitar Festival, held in the Muziekgebouw, in Amsterdam.
2006 saw the first of two major collaborations with Montréal video artist Martin Messier: the work was entitled My 20th Century, a music/video/theatre work for the Bradyworks ensemble. The work toured Québec in 2008, including a performance at the Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville, and undertook a 9-city Canadian tour in the autumn of 2009, to coincide with the release of the CD and DVD on Ambiances magnètiques.
Brady's renewed interest in solo performance led to his second collaboration with Messier: the 65-minute work for video and electric guitar entitled 24 Frames, premiered in Montreal in October 2008. Another long-term collaborator, the Topology ensemble of Brisbane. Australia, brought out a CD of Brady's chamber work in 2007, entitled SCAT, on Ambiances magnètiques. His 2002 work 20 Quarter Inch Jacks was given its American premiere in January 2009, produced by CALARTS at the REDCAT Hall of the Disney Auditorium, in Los Angeles, and at Rosza Hall in Calgary in 2012.
After many years away from the orchestral composition, 2007 onwards saw a major increase in orchestral works by Brady. This new orchestral music is very different from his earlier, modernist works. Recent orchestral scores include The Choreography of Time: Symphony #2 (for saxophone quartet and orchestra, another collaboration with the Quasar group and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra), Opposites Attract, a bass clarinet concerto commissioned by the CBC Radio Orchestra for Lori Freedman, The Guess Who Symphony, a series of radical deconstruction of songs by the 1960s/1970s rock group The Guess Who (also a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation commission), Requiem 21.5 (for solo violin and orchestra) and Un Amour, un Hiver, for voice and orchestra, with text by Québec pop icon Michel Rivard. The last two works are part of his work with the Orchestre symphonique de Laval, where he served as composer in residence (2008–2013).
The relationship with Laval created the first version of his work "Requiem 21.5 – concerto for violin and orchestra", as well as his "Viola Concerto", written for OSL violist Jutta Puchhammer-Sédillot. From 2011 – 2015 Brady worked closely with Symphony Nova Scotia, in Halifax, premiering both final version of "Requiem 21.5" as well as a commissioned work: "The How and the Why of Memory: Symphony #4". These two works, along with the Viola Concerto, were recorded for Centrediscs, and released in 2015. The CD won an East Coast Music Award for Best Classical CD.
His work "Atacama: Symphony #3" was premiered in 2012, released in ATMA Classique in 2013, and nominated for a Juno that year. It was performed as well at the Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville (2013) and in New York at National Sawdust in 2015, but David T. Little's Newspeak Ensemble and Trinity Wall Street Choir, conducted by Julian Wachner.
2015 saw the premier of his chamber opera "Ghost Tango" (libretto by Douglas Smith) in Halifax (NS), and Kitchener (ON), and 2016 saw the release of the first CD of his new electric guitar quartet, Instruments of Happiness, on the US Starkland Records label. From 2014 – 2017 he also worked on the music for choreographer Isabelle van Grimde's multi-media piece "Symphonie 5.1", in collaboration with drummer Thom Gossage. The work toured to Canada, The Netherlands and France. The Instruments of Happiness Quartet did a major Canadian tour in 2017, performing in Edmonton, Halifax, Regina, Brandon, Winnipeg, Victoria, and Montreal.
2015 also saw his fort work for 100 spatialised electric guitars "100 Very Good Reasons Why", performed at the Montreal/Nouvelles Musiqeu Festival. A YouTube video of that work has proved quite popular. In 2016 he presented another work for 100 guitars – "100 questions, 100 réponse", this time in a church. The work was featured in an article on the history of the electric guitar in UK's Guardian newspaper in August 2016.
In 2014, after 9 years at the head of the Canadian New Music Network, he stepped down as president. He served on the board until 2017, but is still active in cultural policy development. He was awarded the Canadian Music Centre/Canadian League of Composers, "Friends of Canadian Music Award" in 2016 for his work at CNMN.
Two major chamber works were premiered at the 2017 Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville: "Désir: concerto for electric guitar and large ensemble" and "8 Songs about: Symphony #7". Brady was the soloist in the concerto, and conducted the symphony, which featured the voices of Vincent Ranallo and Sarah Albu. Both works are for a chamber group of 13 players, and were recorded for release in 2018.
Instruments of Happiness (2015 – )
In 2015 Brady launched the Instruments of Happiness electric guitar project. The project has 3 parts: an electric guitar chamber quartet, a guitar ensemble of 12 – 20 professionals, and large, site-specific projects for 100 to 150 electric guitars, primarily based around using community, amateur performers. The quartet toured Canada in 2017, and again in 2018 with singer Marie-Annick Béliveau, and made a small US tour in 2019 (New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago). Major site-specific projects for 100 – 150 guitars (all of which are filmed and available on YouTube) include: 2015 – 100 Very Good Reasons Why – Festival MNM – Montreal
2016 – 100 Questions, 100 Réponses – Église le Gesù, Montréal 2016 – 100 Very Good Reasons Why – Modulus Festival – Vancouver 2017 – Hymne Sauvage – Complex Desjardins – Montreal (music by Alexandre David) 2017 – 100 Very Good Reasons Why – Stratford Summer Music Festival – Stratford, ON
2018 – While 100 Guitar Gently Weep – Luminato Festival – Toronto
2019 – As Many Strings As Possible, Playing: Symphony #9 – St. Joseph's Oratory – Festival MNM – Montreal
2021 – Virtual Concerto for an Imaginary Space – an iPhone/video-based production for 62 socially distanced electric guitars
With the exception of the 2017 "Hymne sauvage" project, (music by composer Alexandre David) all the music for the site-specific project is composed by Tim Brady.
Hendrik "Henk" Bouman is a Dutch harpsichordist, fortepianist, conductor and composer of music written in the baroque and classical idioms of the 17th and 18th century.
Thomas Wilson CBE FRSE was an American-born Scottish composer, a key figure in the revival of interest in Scottish classical music after the second world war.
Philip Cashian is an English composer. He is the head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music.
Michael Mantler is an Austrian avant-garde jazz trumpeter and composer of contemporary music.
Alain Trudel is a Canadian conductor, trombonist and composer.
Claude Ledoux is a Belgian composer, born in 1960.
Allan Gilliland is a contemporary Canadian composer.
Matthew John Hindson AM is an Australian composer.
Hanna Kulenty is a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. Since 1992, she has worked and lived both in Warsaw (Poland) and in Arnhem (Netherlands).
Gary Alan Kulesha is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Since 1995, he has been Composer Advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1988–1992) and the Canadian Opera Company (1993–1995). He was awarded the National Arts Centre Orchestra Composer Award in 2002.
Svante Henryson is a composer, cellist, bass guitarist and double bassist, active within jazz, classical music, and hard rock.
José Evangelista was a Spanish composer and music educator who was based in Montreal, Canada. He was professor of composition at the Université de Montréal from 1979 to 2009. A member of the Canadian League of Composers, the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, and an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, Evangelista was known for his commitment to contemporary classical music and non-Western music.
Denis Gougeon is a Canadian composer and music educator. His more than 80 compositions encompass a wide variety of genres, including orchestral works, chamber music, opera, ballet, and pieces for solo instruments and voice. Notable ensembles to have included his compositions in their performance repertoire include the Bavarian State Ballet, the Canadian Opera Company, the I Musici de Montréal Chamber Orchestra, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, New Music America, the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, the Quebec Contemporary Music Society, and the Vancouver New Music Society.
Steven Gellman is a Canadian composer and pianist. He has been commissioned to write works for the Besançon International Music Festival, the CBC Symphony Orchestra, the Hamilton Philharmonic, McGill University, Musica Camerata, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, Opera Lyra, the Pierrot Ensemble, the Stratford Festival, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra among others. Since 1976 he has taught music composition and theory at the University of Ottawa.
François Morel was a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and music educator. An associate of the Canadian Music Centre, he was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec in 1994 and was awarded the Prix Denise-Pelletier in 1996. He has had his works premiered by the CBC Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Patrick Zimmerli is an American saxophonist, composer, arranger, and record producer.
Emmanuel Séjourné is a French composer and percussionist, and head of percussion at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. His music is influenced by Western classical music and by popular music.
Joseph Francis Petric is a Canadian concert accordionist, musicologist, composer, author, and pedagogue.
Nicole Lizée is a Canadian composer of contemporary music. She was born in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan and received a MMus from McGill University. She lives in Montreal, Quebec. At one time, she was a member of The Besnard Lakes, an indie rock band from Montreal.
Cassandra Miller is a Canadian experimental composer currently based in London, UK. Her work is known for frequently utilising the process of transcription of a variety of pre-existing pieces of music.
