Musicatlas
News for Dean
- $200,000 Grawemeyer Award for Brett Dean
[posted 3 December 2008]The world's most prestigious prize for composition, the Grawemeyer Award, was won by Australian composer Brett Daen.
The work that won him the prize is a four-movement concerto for violin and orchestra, called “The Lost Art of Letter Writing”. He is the first Australian composer to win the award.
The piece was written for violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann, and was chosen from 145 entries from all around the world. Last year it was performed for the first time in Cologne, Germany, by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, with Brett Dean as the conductor.
Previous winners of the Grawemeyer award are Pierre Boulez, John Adams, György Ligeti, Thomas Adès, Witold Lutosławski, Toru Takemitsu and Krzysztof Penderecki.
[Source: www.theage.com.au]
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Life
Australian composer Brett Dean is also a viola player. He went to Germany in 1984, where he played in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He moved back to Australia in 2000, where he now spends most of his time composing.