Latitude 45 Arts Promotion Inc. | Brian Current

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Artist website Contact: Barbara Scales Tel :(514) 276-2694 Fax :(514) 673-0054 email Downloads Biography 90 Kb :: pdf Works List 108 Kb :: pdf Conducting Repertory 70 Kb :: pdf Reviews 121 Kb :: pdf Flyer 325 Kb :: pdf

Brian Current
conductor & composer

"The voice of an original composer with something important to say could be clearly heard" "The composer lives in Toronto; he is worth watching, even from afar"

- Alan Rich, LA Weekly

The music of Brian Current is renowned for its energy, wit and daring bravado. A Guggenheim Fellow(2005) and recipient of the Barlow Prize (2003), Brian Current is counted among the leading composers of his generation in North America.

As composer and conductor, Current won the 2010 K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Music. Administered by the Ontario Arts Foundation and given annually in the disciplines of dance, interdisciplinary arts, literature, music, theatre and visual arts, these prestigious awards support projects that advance an individual’s career. His music has been performed in the US by the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and the Indianapolis and Oakland Symphony Orchestras, and in Canada by the Winnipeg & Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, the Esprit & CBC Radio Orchestras and the Nouvel Ensemble Modern as well as in Europe by the Warsaw National Philharmonic.

His works have also been performed on the Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles and at the VOX Festival of New York City Opera.

Among Brian Current’s recent premieres were pieces for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Ultima Festival in Norway, and a Koussevitzky Foundation commission for Symphony Nova Scotia. He has conducted with New Music Concerts, Soundstreams, the CBC’s In Performance and On Stage and the Esprit Orchestra’s new Waves Festival.

Brian Current’s For the Time Being won grand prize in the CBC National Com-petition for Young Composers in 2001. The work subsequently won a prize at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris and opened the inaugural concert of the Warsaw Autumn Festival.

His CD, This Isn’t Silence: Works for Symphony Orchestra (2008) was nominated for a Juno Award and featured in a CBC broadcast conducted by the composer.

One of his recent works, a 35-minute piece for narrator and symphony orchestra entitled A Young Person’s Guide to new Music for Symphony Orchestra received its premiere by the Esprit Orchestra in Toronto in May, 2010.

Brian Current recently organized James Tenney’s installation piece In a Large Open Space coinciding with Toronto’s Nuit Blanche Festival. The 12-hour performance by 250 musicians and singers attracted some fifteen thousand people to Koerner Hall at the Royal Conservatory of Music. He continues his conducting duties with the New Music Ensemble of the Glenn Gould School at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory.

Current’s 2010-2011 season includes two premieres: in February, Strata, commissioned by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and in April, Whirling Dervish, for Sufi Dervish and orchestra by the Kirchener-Waterloo Symphony. His Accordion Concerto will be performed in October by the Victoria Symphony and his music will be featured in performances by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in March in Winnipeg and in April in Ottawa.

Born in Ottawa, Brian Current decided to devote himself to composition while studying at McGill University in Montreal, continuing on to earn a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was also active as a conductor.

June 2010

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