Music Director & Principal Conductor
The Elton B. Stephens Chair
Established as one of Britain's leading conductors, Justin Brown has been Music Director of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra since 2006/07, and from the 2008/09 season General Music Director of the Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe. Following studies at Cambridge University and subsequently at Tanglewood with Seiji Ozawa and Leonard Bernstein, and having been assistant to Bernstein and to Luciano Berio, he made his conducting debut with the celebrated British stage première of Bernstein's Mass. In Glasgow he founded the St. Bride's Chamber Orchestra, performing a wide range of repertoire with soloists including Evelyn Glennie and Jane Eaglen. The Alabama Symphony and Justin Brown have also collaborated with highly-esteemed soloists including Yo-Yo Ma, Leon Fleischer and Vadim Gluzman. Justin Brown is a keen interpreter of contemporary scores, and in recent season has conducted major works by distinguished composers, particularly American, including Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Peter Lieberson and Poul Ruders.
Justin Brown has worked widely in the UK and Scandinavia with orchestras including the BBC Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Bournemouth Symphony and London Symphony Orchestras, the Oslo Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, Bergen Philharmonic, Lahti Symphony, Malmö, Norrköping, Stavanger and Trondheim Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Danish Radio Sinfonietta and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra. He has conducted extensively elsewhere in Europe including concerts with the Netherlands Radio Symphony, Iceland Symphony, Berlin Symphony, Musikkollegium Winterthur and Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. A particular highlight was a performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the Dresden Philharmonic to mark the 55th anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden. Since his highly successful debut with the St Petersburg Philharmonic in 1996, he has returned several times, most recently to introduce Tavener's Akhmatova Requiem. Further afield he has also conducted the Malaysian and Tokyo Philharmonic and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, and in the US the Indianapolis Symphony and the Dallas Symphony Orchestras.
Justin Brown is also renowned for his work in opera, and his repertoire with English National Opera, and Scottish Opera has included Cosi fan Tutte, Le nozze di Figaro, Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, Macbeth, Falstaff and The Cunning Little Vixen, alongside contemporary works such as Berg's Wozzeck and Judith Weir's The Vanishing Bridegroom. He has conducted Fidelio at Lisbon's Teatro San Carlo, La Traviata and The Love for Three Oranges at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, Don Giovanni in Frankfurt, Il Turco in Italia in Nantes and Carmen, La Traviata and Un Ballo in Maschera at Den Norske Opera in Oslo. He has also led semi-staged performances of Porgy and Bess in Norrköping and Carmen in Malmö with Anne Sofie von Otter in the title role.
Recent engagements have included performances with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, and Lithuanian National Symphony, and his debuts with the Württemburgisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn (conducting the Beethoven and Brahms violin concertos with Viktoria Mullova) and the Polish National Radio Symphony of Katowice at the Beethoven Easter Festival in Warsaw in a programme including Beethoven's Triple Concerto and Penderecki's 5th Symphony (for the composer's 75th birthday). Highlights of the 2008/09 season included performances of Verdi's Requiem and Don Carlos and Wagner's Das Rheingold and Die Walkure in Karlsruhe, and concerts with Leon Fleischer and Yo-Yo Ma, and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess with the Alabama Symphony. Future engagements include productions of Fidelio, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung, Der Rosenkavalier, La Traviata and Katya Kabanova in Karlsruhe, a return to the Iceland Symphony, and his debuts with the Sao Paulo Symphony and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestras.
As a pianist, Justin Brown has been hailed in the Swedish press as "one of the most sensitive and emotionally rich chamber musicians of recent years". In addition to chamber concerts and recitals he performs regularly as both soloist and conductor in concertos by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Shostakovich.
Justin Brown's first collaboration with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra resulted in a critically acclaimed recording of Elgar and Barber Cello Concertos with French cellist Anne Gastinel (Naïve). For Bridge Records he has recorded works by Elliott Carter and Poul Ruders, while his recording of Peter Lieberson's "The Six Realms" won a 2006 WQXR Gramophone American Award, and was nominated for a Grammy (Best Classical Recording). His latest Bridge release of Gershwin's complete music for Piano and Orchestra with Anne-Marie McDermott and the Dallas Symphony was chosen as an Editor's Choice by Gramophone.