Concerts

Dr. Andrew Brownell–2019 MMTA Guest Artist

The recital will be on Saturday, November 9 at 7:30pm in the C Minor Recital Hall in Ellis Hall on the MSU campus.

Since winning 2nd Prize at the 2006 Leeds Competition, Andrew Brownell has pursued an active and varied international performing career.  Critics regularly remark on his creative programming and interpretive insight.  Musical Opinion described him as “potentially one of the most significant pianists of his generation”, and The Oregonian wrote that Brownell “impresses as much with his mind as with his hands… the anti-Lang Lang.”

Mr. Brownell won 2nd Prize ex aequo at the 2002 International J. S. Bach Competition in Leipzig, making him the first American pianist to have ever won a prize in the history of the competition.  He also won 1st Prize at the 2005 J.N. Hummel Competition in Bratislava, has since achieved widespread recognition as “one of the foremost Hummel interpreters of our time” (Hudobný Život), and is an honorary member of the Hummel Gesellschaft in Weimar.  His edition of the Piano Concerto in a minor, Op. 85 was released by Breitkopf & Härtel in 2016.

Mr. Brownell’s performances have aired on BBC radio and television, Classic FM (UK), NPR, CBC, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, and RBB KulturRadio.  He has been soloist with orchestras such as the Hallé, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Slovak Philharmonic, and the Hermitage State Orchestra (Russia); and he has collaborated with such conductors as Sir Mark Elder, Owain Arwel Hughes, André Bernard, and Murray Sidlin.

A native of Portland, Oregon, Andrew Brownell began studying the piano at the age of four.  His teachers have included Nancy Weems and Horacio Gutiérrez at the University of Houston; John Perry at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles); and Joan Havill at the Guildhall School of Music in London, where he earned a doctorate.  An enthusiastic collaborative artist, Andrew Brownell was a member of a prize-winning trio at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition (USA) and has appeared in concert with principals of orchestras such as the Philharmonia, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and Vienna Philharmonic.  In 2017, he joined the faculty of the Butler School of Music, The University of Texas at Austin.

Commissioned Composer Concert

Saturday, Nov 9th, 2019 at 4 pm
C MInor Recital Hall

Please join us for the premiere performance of MMTA’s 2019 commissioned composer: Bret Bohman.

Bret Bohman is a composer of acoustic and electronic music. With a background in dance music production and jazz guitar improvisation, his concert works meet somewhere in the cross-section of these influences and the modernist and post-modernist traditions of Western concert music. Themes of therapy, liminal spaces and art as a vehicle for healing are all central ideas to his recent work.

Mr. Bohman’s compositions have been heard throughout the United States at various venues and festivals including National Sawdust, New Music Festival at Bowling Green State University, Strange Beautiful Music X in Detroit, New Music Gathering 3, Aspen Music Festival, New York City Electronic Music Festival at Abrons Playhouse, 73rd Wellesley Composers Conference, Trinosophes, Toronto International Electronic Symposium, SCI National Conference, SEAMUS National Conference, Electronic Music Midwest, Atlantic Music Festival, Society for New Music, 3rd Annual TUTTI Festival and more. His music has received awards and recognition from the Society of New Music (Brian Israel Award), the RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Competition, the Robert Avalon Composition Prize, ASCAP and the Michigan Music Teachers Association.

Mr. Bohman teaches in the composition department at the University of Missouri in Columbia. He also recently held lecture positions at the University of Michigan in the Comparative Literature Department and taught Electronic Music Seminar as a Graduate Student Instructor.  He received his Doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2014. His primary teachers and mentors have been Michael Daugherty, Evan Chambers, Bright Sheng, Paul Schoenfeld, and Brian Bevelander.