Chair, Piano; Piano Literature class
Well known in the music profession as an identifier and nurturer of musical talent, Brubaker's students have won major international competitions and prizes, and built careers throughout the world.
Acclaimed for his subtle mastery of the classical repertory, Bruce Brubaker has become a champion of contemporary American music, particularly the works of composers Philip Glass and John Adams. Brubaker is creating a new role for the pianist. He is highly regarded for his innovative programming, often combining music with other media.
He has recorded three CDs on the Arabesque label in a continuing series exploring American piano music. The newest, Hope Street Tunnel Blues, was released in 2007, and includes Brubaker's transcription of Knee Play 4 from Glass's opera Einstein on the Beach. Brubaker's CD Glass Cage, with pieces by Glass and John Cage, was named one of the ten best releases of 2000 by The New Yorker.
As an advocate for new music, Brubaker has premiered works by Glass, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and John Cage. He performed at Sanders Theater in collaboration with Cage during the composer's tenure as Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at Harvard University. Of Brubaker's playing at a later recital at Harvard, the Boston Globe wrote: "A big-toned, brainy, firebrand kind of music making that made you think of—dare one say this?—Rudolf Serkin."
A National Endowment for the Arts grantee and Xerox Pianist Program artist, Brubaker has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, at Leipzig's Gewandhaus, and London's Wigmore Hall. He has also toured France, England, Italy, Germany, Finland, Holland, Belgium, Latin America, and Asia.
As a festival director, Brubaker was the creator in 2000–2001 of "B-A-C-H," a six-concert series in New York examining the connections between J. S. Bach and the composers who followed him. The previous year, at the turn of the millennium, he organized "Piano Century," in which 101 pianists performed 101 20th-century pieces in 11 concerts. In May 2004, Brubaker created and performed Pianomorphosis, a new 70-minute multidisciplinary performance piece for the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival in Michigan. Brubaker's performance piece Haydnseek, created with Nico Muhly, was presented for the first time in the U.S. as the first public musical performance at Boston's acclaimed new Institute for Contemporary Art in 2007.
Brubaker is the founder and artistic director of the chamber music festival SummerMusic. Through his ongoing involvement with such organizations as the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, and Ghent's Orpheus Institut, Brubaker continues to expand the role of the musician in today's world. In 2009, Brubaker was chosen as the U.S. representative for the "Behind the Music: The Performer as Researcher" initiative based in Australia, which will be an extension of Brubaker's earlier work in this area done at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent. The project will culminate with a conference in Brisbane in 2012.
The Wall Street Journal, The Piano Quarterly, Keyboard Classics, Chamber Music, and USA Today are among the periodicals in which Brubaker's writing about music has appeared. He was co-editor and a contributor to Pianist, Scholar, Connoisseur: Essays in Honor of Jacob Lateiner (Pendragon Press, 2000), a collection paying homage to his former teacher. In 2008, Brubaker accepted an invitation to maintain a blog at ArtsJournal.com, where he writes on musical and extramusical topics.
Brubaker trained at the Juilliard School, where he received the school's highest award, the Edward Steuermann Prize, upon graduation. He joined the Juilliard faculty in 1995. The pianist has given masterclasses and forums at Juilliard, Columbia University, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Related links:
Read Bruce Brubaker's blog, PianoMorphosis, at ArtsJournal.com
Story on Bruce Brubaker in The New York Observer
Interview with Bruce Brubaker on the New York Pianist blog
2009-09-04
Contact Bruce Brubaker
FELIX MENDELSSOHN