Tim Brady
[1] He is internationally recognized as one of the world's leading experimental/new music guitarists (1997, Guitar Player: "One of the 30 Most Important Guitarists for the Future of the Instrument"), and in recent years has gained a strong reputation as one of Canada's leading composers of chamber, orchestral and music theatre works (2003 Prix OPUS Composer of the Year award, given by the Conseil québécois de la musique; 2006 Jan V. Matejcek award, given by SOCAN).
His most ambitious and complex modernist work, the 1982 orchestral score Variants, was premiered by the Esprit Orchestra in Toronto in the 1987–1988 season, recorded by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as a result of winning the 1986 Micheline Coulombe St-Marcoux Prize (CAPAC).
Brady had his first major international collaboration in 1983, performing a duo concert at the Edmonton Jazz City Festival with the Hungarian bass virtuoso Aladar Pege.
Upon returning to Montreal in 1987, Brady founded his own chamber group and production company in order to have some control over his work, and his new vision of creative music.
A CD of the project was released in the autumn of 1991, to coincide with the groups' first major tour, including 13 concerts across Canada, plus a performance at Roulette, New York's well-known experimental music space.
In collaboration with partners in Toronto, Jonquière, Winnipeg, Victoria, Vancouver, and New York City, he created the festival The Body Electric / Guitarévolution, which was held in 1997, presenting a total of 23 concerts.
The event featured performances by David Torn, the Fred Frith Quartet, Elliott Sharp, René Lussier, Ron Samworth, Greg Lowe, John Oliver, Kapser Toeplitz, Scott Johnson and Paul Dresher.
Out of this failed opera experience came his first major song-cycle, entitled Revolutionary Songs (1993), based on a variety of poems in English, French and Spanish.
Sung by soprano Nathalie Paulin, and scored for Bradyworks, the work was premiered at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and later released on CD in 1996, supported by a 5-city Canadian tour.
The work combines pulsing, jazz and minimalist inflected harmonies with distorted rock guitar and a large range of electronic tape sounds to create a 40-minute portrait of the experience of political revolution.
A second Bradyworks song-cycle followed, entitled The Knife Thrower's Partner (1997), using only a quartet of acoustic instruments in setting a text by Canadian poet Douglas Burnet Smith (whose work Brady would use again in 2009).
Later in 2003 Bradyworks performed its first European tour, with concerts in London (for the BBC at Maida Vale), Aberdeen University (Scotland) and at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin (Ireland) as part of the Crash Ensemble's New Music Festival.
– Festival Les Musiques – May 2003) and New York (Interpretation Series, Merkin Hall – November 2002) by its commissioner, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and was released on CD in 2004.
The next few years would be occupied with the creation and production of Brady's two chamber operas: The Salome Dancer (2005 – libretto by John Sobol, commissioned and produced by NUMUS concerts at the Open Ears Festival, with Bradyworks in the pit, conducted by Paul Pulford, with stage direction by Anne-Marie Donovan), and Three Cities in the Life of Dr. Norman Bethune (2003) – found-text libretto by the composer, commissioned by La Société Radio-Canada, premiered by Bradyworks and baritone Michael Donovan in Montreal.
Brady left the Innovations en concert production company in 2004 to focus on his own projects (running under the Bradyworks banner), and to work on the beginnings of what would eventually become the Canadian New Music Network (CNMN, 2005).
The organization brings artists together in an annual event entitled FORUM, held in a different Canadian city each year (Winnipeg – 2007, Toronto – 2008, Montreal – 2009).
Brady's renewed interest in solo performance led to his second collaboration with Messier: the 65-minute work for video and electric guitar entitled 24 Frames, premiered in Montreal in October 2008.
2015 saw the premier of his chamber opera "Ghost Tango" (libretto by Douglas Smith) in Halifax (NS), and Kitchener (ON), and 2016 saw the release of the first CD of his new electric guitar quartet, Instruments of Happiness, on the US Starkland Records label.
The Instruments of Happiness Quartet did a major Canadian tour in 2017, performing in Edmonton, Halifax, Regina, Brandon, Winnipeg, Victoria, and Montreal.
CDs The following compositions by Tim Brady are also featured on compact discs: The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Toronto NOW Magazine, Montréal La Presse, The Gazette, Le Devoir, Voir (Montréal, Québec City), Halifax Chronicle-Herald, Vancouver Georgia Straight, Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Philadelphia Inquirer, Winnipeg Free Press New York Village Voice (1991), Edmonton Journal (1991), Mannheimer Morgan (2007), Rhein-Neckar Zeitung (2007), Die Reihnpalz (1995), Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Union Times (1993), Quebec City Le Soleil (1996), The Glasgow Scotsman (1999), AF of M International Musician (1999), Sydney Morning Herald (2000), Copenhagen Berlingske Tilden (2001), Bolzano Corriere delle Apli (2001), Bolzanno Il Mattino (2001), Dublin Irish Times (1998), Baseler Agenda (2004), Sherbrooke La Tribune (2005) Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, INA-GRM (Radio-France), Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival, festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville, Bang on a Can Festival, Relâche ensemble, Esprit Orchestra, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Orchestre symphonique de Laval, G.M.E.M.
