Margaret Brandman : Represented Artist
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Random Audio Sample: Binna burra dreaming : for violin and piano by Margaret Brandman, from the CD Sensations |

Photo: Roger Dilernia
Artist website: http://www.margaretbrandman.com
Margaret Brandman's career in music as composer, pianist, music educator, arranger and writer on music education spans more than 50 years. Her award- winning compositions receive both live performances and airplay both in Australia and internationally. In 2019 she received the award for 'Best Foreign Composition' for her Firestorm Symphony (III) 'All the Trees are Growing' from the Artemis Women in Action Film Festival - Women Powered Music.
Born in 1951 into a musical family, Brandman
studied accordion and piano from the age of four, taking up
guitar and clarinet in her teens. Her education, supported by
formal studies in piano, clarinet, harmony and composition at the
Sydney Conservatorium of Music, covered many styles of music from
Classical through to Jazz and Latin-American.
Brandman was awarded a scholarship to the University of Sydney,
where she studied composition with Peter Sculthorpe. In 1975 she
was awarded a Bachelor of Music (Composition), having already
acquired her Associate Performer degree and Teacher of Pianoforte
diploma. She has since also been awarded the F.Comp.ASMC,
F.Mus.Ed.ASMC and L.Perf.ASMC degrees by the Australian Society
for Musicology and Composition, Hon.FNMSM (UK), and the Dip.E in
Piano Pedagogy of the World Piano Teacher's Assocation
(Serbia).
To date, Parma Recordings (USA) have produced three albums of Brandman compositions with a fourth one due for release this year. Sensations - Wind, Waves, Birds and Fire (NV6041) featuring one hour and nineteen minutes of her celebrated orchestral and chamber works, Abrazo (AR0001), a compilation album recorded in Cuba, which includes her suite Warm Winds in Havana for saxophone quartet and percussion, and The Cosmic Wheel of the Zodiac (NV6160) a cycle of 12 songs, one for each sign of the Zodiac, composed to the lyrics of Astropoet Benita Rainer which was performed and recorded by the Prague Mixed Chamber Choir in 2017. Her Australian albums include her song cycle Songs of Love and Desire, written to the lyrics of mezzo-soprano Désirée Regina.
In 2020 Brandman composed several new works including Aurora Australis for orchestra and her Look Around suite for saxophone quartet while in September 2020, the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra recorded her newly orchestrated symphonic tone-poem Spirit Visions for the compilation album Polarities 2 (Parma Recordings) which is due to be released in June this year. This work has received Official Selection for the 2021 Artemis Film Festival which will take place in Los Angeles on 22-25 April.
It has been said of Brandman works '"The music is melodious and intricate, beautifully played.... pieces straddle that indefinable line between jazz and contemporary classical/new music."
Margaret Brandman — current to February 2021
Studied with
Neville Thomas (1964 - 1970)
Isador Goodman (1967 - 1970)
Raymond Hanson (1967 - 1969)
Peter Sculthorpe (1971 - 1974)
Tommy Tycho (1971)
Collaborated with
Desiree Regina (2001 - current)
Irma Enriquez (2013 - 2018)
Martin Cooke (2015 - 2021)
Benita Rainer (2015 - 2018)
John Antoniou (2018)
Margo McLaughlin (2018)
Selected Commissions
Work | Commission Details | |
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Sonorities (unaccompanied piano) | Commissioned by Selma Epstein |
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In Two Minds : Gemini Song, for 2 flutes and piano (2018) | Commissioned by James Fortune. |
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Binna burra dreaming : for violin and piano (2013) | Commissioned by Duo Deconet. |
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Jucaro rhumba d'amor : for violin and piano (2012) | Commissioned by Duo Deconet. |
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The Eastern Spinebill and the Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos herald a Blue Mountains bush fire : for violin and piano (2012) | Commissioned by Duo Deconet. |
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Lyric fantasy (piano with string orchestra) (1996) | Commissioned by Selma Epstein. |