Brett Dean

Brett Dean (born 23 October 1961 in Brisbane) is a contemporary Australian composer, violist and conductor.

Brett Dean was raised and educated in Brisbane. He started learning violin at the age of eight, 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. In 1981 he was a prize winner in the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards. From 1985 to 1999, Dean was a violist in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2000, he decided to pursue a career as a freelance artist 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 many professional concert stages around the world. He is the composer-in-residence in the 2016/17 season for the National Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan).

Brett Dean was Artistic Director of the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne until June 2010 when his brother, Paul Dean, took up the post.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra celebrated Brett Dean's 50th birthday, and his contribution to music as composer, performer and teacher, in its 2011 Metropolis Festival.

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. In 2002–2003, Dean was artist-in-residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and composer-in-residence at the Cheltenham Festival. In 2007–2008, he became artist-in-residence with the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR.

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