Conductor Profile:

A Juno award-winning conductor and composer, Brian Current has been lauded for leading exceptional performances of outstanding repertoire. Passionate about detail of gesture, colour and texture, he is known for conducting definitive and impactful performances of uncompromising music.

Brian Current has conducted a wide range of repertoire and has championed nearly one hundred works by Canadian composers, including commissioned world premieres by Linda Catlin Smith, Anna Hostman, Brian Harman, Bekah Simms, Christopher Mayo, So Jeong Ahn, Andrew Staniland, Alice Ho, Robert Lemay and Omar Daniel. Described by the Globe and Mail as a conductor “with assurance and no undue fuss”, Brian Current has been the main conductor of the Continuum Ensemble since 2011 and has guest conducted with Symphony Nova Scotia, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, City Opera Vancouver, the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, The National Youth Orchestra of Canada, The Ottawa International Chamber Festival, The 21C Festival, The COC noon-hour concert series, New Music Concerts, the Esprit Orchestra, The Glenn Gould School Opera, the Kensington Symphonietta (Calgary), Voca Dell Arte (Italy), Soundstreams (Toronto), the Toronto Centre for the Arts, The Luminato Festival, The New Creations Festival, Maniac Star, CBC's In Performance, The Five-Penny Ensemble (Sudbury), Cbc’s On Stage, The UC Berkeley Symphony as well as the National Arts Centre Orchestra as part of their prestigious conductor training program. In 2012, Brian Current mentored young conductors in a conducting masterclass with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra.

Brian Current’s main conducting activities since 2007 have been as director of the New Music Ensemble of the Glenn School (The Royal Conservatory), where he has instructed hundreds of young musicians in the performance of contemporary music, many of whom are today working professionally around the world. Repertoire has included works by prominent international composers who visited for the sessions.

Brian Current holds a PhD in music composition on full scholarship from the University of California (Berkeley) where he studied conducting with David Milnes and Michael Morgan and was assigned the direction of the UC Berkeley symphony during summer sessions. He was subsequently awarded a fellowship in the prestigious National Arts Centre conductor training program where he studied under internationally renowned conducting mentor Jorma Panula and later attended conducting masterclasses in Royaumont, France under the Hungarian conducting luminary Péter Eötvös.

Brian Current is also one of Canada’s most highly respected composers. His music, lauded and broadcast in over 35 countries, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barlow Prize for Orchestral Music (USA), the Premio Fedora (Italy) for Chamber Opera, and a Selected Work (under 30) at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris.  Brian’s pieces have been programmed by all major symphony orchestras in Canada and by dozens of professional orchestras, ensembles and opera companies worldwide, including portrait concerts dedicated entirely to his work.