Biography
Brenton Broadstock was born in Melbourne, Australia. He
studied History, Politics and Music at Monash University,
and later composition and theory with Donald Freund at
the University of Memphis in the USA and with
Peter Sculthorpe
at
the University of Sydney. The University of Melbourne
awarded him the Doctor of Music degree in 1987.
In 1991
he signed a publishing contract with G. Schirmer, Australia
(Music Sales). He has won numerous prizes for composition
including First Prize in the 1981 Townsville Pacific
Festival's National Composition Competition for his
orchestral work Festive Overture; the Albert Maggs Award;
two APRA Music
Awards for his orchestral works The Mountain and Toward
The Shining Light; First Prize in the Hambacher Preis
International Composers' Competition, West Germany for
his Tuba Concerto; and in 1994 he received the
Paul Lowin Song Cycle
Award,
Australia's richest composition prize, for Bright Tracks
for mezzo soprano and string trio. His orchestral work
Stars In A Dark Night (Symphony #2) received four
'Sounds Australian' National Music Critics' Awards
including 'Best Australian Orchestral Work in 1989' and
was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's entry to
the prestigious Paris Rostrum of Composers in 1990. In
2001 he received the Australian Music Centre’s Victorian
Award for Best Composition –
Dark
Side Symphony #5, and in 2002 his Federation Flourish
was nominated for an APRA/AMC “Orchestral Work of the
Year”.
April
2008
His
music has been performed at many international festivals
including The Stroud Festival, England; the 11th Berlin
Biennale; the Festtage fur Musik in East Berlin; Darmstadt
Summer School, West Germany; the Music Today Festival,
Tokyo; the Hong Kong and Oslo World Music Days; Asian Music
Festivals in Japan and Korea; Musica Nova Festival in
Munich; the BBC Proms; the European Brass Band
Championships in Birmingham; and in Australia at the
Adelaide Festival, Musica Nova Festival, Brisbane; Summer
Music, Moomba and Spoleto Festivals in Melbourne and the
Townsville Pacific Festival. There have also been
performances in England, Germany, New Zealand, Canada,
Russia, Sweden, Spain and China.
He has
had performances by all of the major orchestras in
Australia: the Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland,
Tasmanian and West Australian Symphony Orchestras, the
Australian Youth Orchestra and Camerata Australia, and by
the Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra in Japan, the BBC
Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra in Munich,
the Pacific Ocean Orchestra and the Krasnoyarsk Orchestra
in Russia, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Moldova, the
Ulster Orchestra, and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in
Finland.
In July 1994 The Australian Youth Orchestra conducted by
Yakov Kreisberg performed Festive Overture on their world
tour, including the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and
the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Brenton has also written several major brass band works; he
was commissioned to write Winds of Change, which was
premiered at the 2000 European Brass Band Championships in
Birmingham by the Yorkshire Building Society Brass Band,
conducted by David King, and broadcast, on BBC Radio (see
Reviews). This work was the A Grade Test Piece at the 2002
Australian Brass Band Championships held in Geelong.
Brenton’s 30 minute work Gates of Day was premiered as the
final work in the 2001 Melbourne International Festival of
the Arts. Scored for 100 brass players (4 brass bands),
military band and 400 bellringers playing 2001 bells it was
played at the outdoor Sidney Myer Music Bowl to an audience
of several thousand.
In 2001 he was one of seven composers commissioned to
compose a work, Jagged Tears, for the Field of Bells - a
computer controlled interactive installation (a public
music instrument) - at Birrarung Marr in Melbourne. Jagged
Tears can be heard at 9am 12.30pm and 5pm every day. For
more information:
http://www.abc.net.au/arts/music/stories/s510908.htm
and
http://www.ausbell.com/Federation%20Bells/FEDBELLS.html
Field
of Bells, Melbourne
In
1988-89 he was the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's Inaugural
Composer In Residence. In 1997 he received the Jean Bogan
Prize for his solo piano work Dying of the Light and in
1998 he received the Michelle Morrow Memorial Award for
Composition and an Explorations Opera Project grant. In
1998 he spent three months in Italy on fellowships awarded
by the Civitella Ranieri
Foundation
and a Bellagio Study Center Award
from
the Rockefeller Foundation. In November 2005 he returned
to Italy as a fellow at the Ligurian Study Center
in
Bogliasco, Italy. (The picture below was taken from my
apartment window in Bogliasco looking south toward
Portofino!)
Bogliasco,
Italy
In 1999
he received the prestigious
Don Banks Award from
the Australia Council, for his contribution to Australian
Music, which enabled him to compose for most of that year,
including visits to the USA (Visiting Professor of
Composition at Indiana University), England and Russia. His
five symphonies were recorded by the Krasnoyarsk Symphony
Orchestra (Russia) conducted by Andrew Wheeler and released
on the Etcetera label in 2000 receiving excellent reviews
in England and Australia (see Reviews). The CD was named as
one of The Recordings of the Year 2007 by Music Web
International editor Rob Barnett (see Reviews).
Brenton's solo piano work Torre di Forza was one of two
Australian 'test' pieces commissioned for the 2004 Sydney
International Piano Competition, and in 2005 ABC Classics
released a CD of orchestral works performed by the
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ola Rudner (see
Reviews). His chamber opera based on Ray Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451 was performed in Bonn, Germany in April
2006.
Brenton has been a member of many boards, committees and
competition panels, including The Australia Council, Arts
Victoria, the Australian Music Centre, Symphony Australia’s
Reading Panel, the Paul Lowin Prize, The Maggs Prize, APRA
Classical Music Advisory Committee, The Victorian College
of the Arts Committee, Australian National Academy of
Music, Australian Composers’ Orchestral Forum, National
Music Camp, Chamber Made Opera et al, and adjudicator at
several national music competitions and eisteddfods.
In 1995 the Australian Music Centre
published
his book Sound Ideas (with Linda Kouvaras) that
documented 95 Australian composers (see Articles - Rites
of Passage).
Brenton has written 5 symphonies, concertos for tuba, piano
and saxophone, several orchestral works, a chamber opera, 4
string quartets and much chamber, choral and solo music.
His compositions are available on 43 commercial CDs
worldwide (see discography).
From 1982-2006 he was employed in the Faculty of
Music,
University of Melbourne where he was Professor of Music
and Head of Composition.
In
2007 he was one of 4 musicians short-listed for the
Melbourne Prize and he was appointed as a Vice
Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of
Melbourne. From
2008 he has been a freelance composer and in 2009 was
Composer in Residence with the Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra.
