Brett Dean

On 5 March 2020, it was confirmed that Dean was hospitalised in Adelaide with the COVID-19 illness.

In August 2014 "Electric Prelude" was premiered during the BBC Proms 2014 and was conducted by Sakari Oramo.

In April 2013 "The Last Days of Socrates" was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic. The work for bass-baritone, choir, and orchestra was a co-commission of the Rundfunkchor Berlin, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra celebrated Dean's fiftieth birthday, and his contribution to music as composer, performer and teacher, in its 2011 Metropolis Festival.

Dean was Artistic Director of the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne until June 2010 when his brother, Paul, took up the post.

Dean began composing in 1988 initially focusing on experimental film and radio projects as well as improvisational performance. Since then, he has created numerous compositions, mainly orchestral or chamber music as well as concertos for several solo instruments. His most successful work is Carlo for strings, sample and tape, inspired by the music of Carlo Gesualdo. On 7 September 2008 his work Polysomnography for wind quintet and piano received its world premiere at the Lucerne Festival; on 2 October 2008 Simon Rattle conducted the first performance of the orchestral song cycle Songs of Joy in Philadelphia. His first opera, Bliss, based on the novel by Peter Carey, premiered at Opera Australia in 2010.

He has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Griffith University in Brisbane on 21 June 2007. On 1 December 2008, he was awarded the 2009 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his violin concerto, The Lost Art of Letter Writing. In September 2011, he was composer-in-residence at the Trondheim Chamber Music Festival.

Dean's clarinet concerto Ariel's Music won an award from the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in 1995. Winter Songs for tenor and wind quintet received the Paul Lowin Song Cycle Prize in 2001; Moments of Bliss for orchestra was named Best Composition at the Australian Classical Music Awards in 2005. In 2002–2003, Dean was artist-in-residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and composer-in-residence at the Cheltenham Festival. In 2007–2008, he became artist-in-residence with the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR.

Brett Dean was born, raised and educated in Brisbane. He started learning violin at the age of eight, and later studied viola with Elizabeth Morgan and John Curro at the Queensland Conservatorium, where he graduated in 1982 with the Conservatorium Medal for the highest achieving Student of the Year. In 1981 he was a prize winner in the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards. From 1985 to 1999, Dean was a violist in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2000, he decided to pursue a career as a freelance artist and returned to Australia, where his many appointments have included curating classical music programs with the Sydney Festival (2005) and the Melbourne Festival (2009). As a composer and musician, he is a regularly invited guest to many professional concert stages around the world. He is the composer-in-residence in the 2016/17 season for the National Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan). He was the Creative Chair in the 2017/2018 season for the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich.

The APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA).

Brett Dean (born 23 October 1961) is a contemporary Australian composer, violist and conductor.