Boris Brott
Principal Youth and Family Conductor, National Arts Centre Orchestra
Boris Brott is one of the most internationally recognized Canadian Conductors, holding major posts as music director in Canada and the United States. He enjoys an international career as guest conductor, educator, motivational speaker and cultural ambassador.
In May 2004, he was named to the newly created position of Principal Youth and Family Conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, where for over 20 years he has regularly been conducting student matinees and Young People’s Concerts.
In this role, Boris Brott works closely with the NAC Music Education team to develop the Orchestra’s Student Matinees and TD Canada Trust Young People’s Concerts, and is the principal conductor of these programmes. He also participates in outreach, including orientation sessions with schoolteachers, community visits, school visits, and adult education, as well as the Parents for the Arts network and the Youth for Music Council. On tour, he has led the Orchestra in student matinees in the U.S. (2003), British Columbia (2004), and Alberta-Saskatchewan (2005), and he is joining the Quebec Tour in 2006.
In Canada, Mr. Brott had developed no fewer than six Canadian Orchestras: Thunder Bay Symphony, Regina Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, CBC Winnipeg, Symphony Nova Scotia, and most notably the Hamilton Philharmonic, where Mr. Brott was Music Director from 1969 to 1990. He was Artistic Advisor and Founder to the newly created Symphony Nova Scotia from 1984 to 1989.
Internationally, Mr. Brott has served as Assistant Conductor to the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, and as Music Director and Conductor for the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden (two years), and Northern Sinfonia (five years), and the BBC Welsh Symphony (seven years). In addition, he has guest-conducted in Mexico, the United States, South America, Central America, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Scandinavia, Japan, Korea, Israel and the Netherlands.
Mr. Brott has won prizes in major international competitions: the Pan American Conductors Prize in Mexico, the Liverpool Conductors Competition in Great Britain, and Dimitri Mitropoulos International Conductors Competition in New York, where he joined the ranks of Seiji Ozawa and Claudio Abbado as a Gold Medal Winner. In 1987, Mr. Brott was awarded Canada’s highest civic honour, Officer of the Order of Canada. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law in 1988 at McMaster University, was made a Knight of Malta in 1990, selected as “International Man of the Year” by the International Biographical Centre in Cambridge England in 1992 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts of Great Britain in 1996. In 2006 he was appointed to the Order of Ontario.
Boris Brott has a commitment to the development of new audiences and young artists. His programmes have received rave reviews, in particular, a series of concerts bringing to life the great classical composers. Mr. Brott is Artistic Director of the Brott Music Festival, which was established in 1988, as Ontario’s principal set of classical music festivals.
The Festival presents Spring, Summer and Autumn seasons and is the home of Canada’s National Academy Orchestra a unique 26-week annual mentor-apprentice program which provides practical training for young professional graduates of post secondary education.
Besides numerous film and radio commitments, Mr. Brott has conducted, produced and hosted over 100 television programs on both sides of the Atlantic. He has recorded for CBC, Septre-Mace, Mercury, Pro-Arte Records and Sony Classical where CDs with the late Glenn Gould have recently been released.
Mr. Brott is founding Conductor and Music Director of the New West Symphony, in Los Angeles California. The orchestra was founded in 1995 and is being acknowledged as the ‘other’ great orchestra of Los Angeles. In addition he serves as Artistic Director of the McGill Chamber Orchestra in Montreal.
He has developed a corollary career as a motivational speaker giving 35 presentations annually to fortune 500 companies around the world linking music and business. The speeches centre around the “teamwork”, “creativity” and “leadership” aspects of music and business. A partial list of recent audiences included CEOs of IBM, American Express, American Airlines, Sandoz, Compaq, Intel, General Electric, Phizer, Pharmacia Upjohn, Sun Microsystems, and General Motors.
Boris Brott is married to Ardyth Webster Brott an author and attorney. They have three children.
February 2007
