Brett Dean

Dean returned to Australia in 2000 to concentrate on his growing compositional work. His music now attracts wide international attention and has been taken up by leading conductors. One of the most frequently performed composers of his generation, he often draws on literary, political or visual stimuli, including compositions inspired by paintings by his partner Heather Betts.

He began composing in 1988, at first through experimental film and radio projects and improvisational performance. Since then he has written extensively for orchestra and chamber forces, as well as concertos for several solo instruments. His best-known work is Carlo for strings, sample and tape, inspired by Carlo Gesualdo. Polysomnography for wind quintet and piano received its world premiere at the Lucerne Festival on 7 September 2008; on 2 October that year Simon Rattle conducted the first performance of the orchestral song cycle Songs of Joy in Philadelphia. His first opera, Bliss, after Peter Carey’s novel, premiered at Opera Australia in 2010.

Dean’s style favours dynamic soundscapes and complex rhythms in individual parts, shaping extremes from harsh explosion to near silence. Modern playing techniques and elaborate percussion—often using everyday objects—are characteristic. Non-musical ideas travel with the scores: environmental concerns in Water Music and Pastoral Symphony, and the absurdities of an information-obsessed society in Vexations and Devotions.