Biography
Brenton Broadstock was born in Melbourne, Australia in
1952. He studied History, Politics and Music at Monash
University, and later composition and theory with
Donald Freund at Memphis State University 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 appointed as a Vice
Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of
Melbourne. From
2008 he will be a freelance composer.
