Todd Brief is an American composer and musician. Brief played a variety of instruments at an early age, most seriously the piano, and began composing at the age of 15. He continued formal studies in composition with Ralph Shapey in Chicago, and earned degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music and Harvard University, where he worked with Donald Martino, William T. McKinley, Gunther Schuller, Earl Kim, and Leon Kirchner. Further studies were undertaken through various fellowships to the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood and the Darmstadter Ferienkurse fr Neue Musik, and with Isang Yun in West Berlin through the German Academic Exchange (D.A.A.D.). His compositions, written for a large variety of vocal and instrumental ensembles, have received more than 30 awards and prizes including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Prix de Rome, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Award, "Young Generation in Europe" Prize from the City of Cologne, "Frderungspreis" from the City of Stuttgart, Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundation commissions, and both ASCAP and BMI awards. His works are performed throughout the U.S. and Europe, at major contemporary music festivals and by orchestras such as the I.S.C.M. World Music Days, Gaudeamus MusicWeek, Darmstadter Ferienkurse fr Neue Musik, Fromm Festival, the Rome Radio Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra.
Todd Brief
Studios
New Jersey
Todd Brief worked in the New Jersey studio.
The yellow clapboard New Jersey Studio, located on a grassy, sloping site, was funded by the New Jersey Federation of Women’s Clubs and built as an exact replica of Monday Music Studio (1913). The studio’s porch rests on fieldstone piers that increase in height as the ground slopes to the west. Like Monday Music Studio, New Jersey…