ELISABETTA BRUSA  

Born in Milan, Italy, in 1954, Elisabetta Brusa started composing before she was 5 and created over 30 piano pieces and a string quintet (kept by memory through the years) before starting Composition studies at the Conservatorio of Milan with Bruno Bettinelli, teacher of Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Riccardo Chailly, Maurizio Pollini, and Uto Ughi. She graduated with Azio Corghi in 1980 with a Diploma in Composition.

From 1976 to 1981 she followed the composition courses at Dartington Hall, Great Britain, held by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and from 1978 to 1985 she took periodic lessons from Hans Keller in London. In l982 she won the first prize of "The Washington International Competition for Composition for String Quartet" with her "Belsize" String Quartet. During the following years she was also given several other awards in minor competitions. In l983, having been awarded the "Fromm Foundation Fellowship" and a "Fulbright" travel bursary, she was a student in the composition courses held by Hans Werner Henze and Gunther Schuller at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts. In l988, l989, and l990 she was awarded Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony (U.S.A.) for artistic residencies to work on her first "Symphony" for large orchestra and other works.

Brusa has had numerous commissions, and her compositions have been performed in various cities in Italy, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Canada, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Korea, and Albania with orchestras such as the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, the Boris Brott Festival Orchestra, the Virtuosi of Toronto, the Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra of Tirana, the London Chamber Symphony, the New England Philharmonic of Boston, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the Alea III Ensemble of Boston, the Contemporary Music Forum of Washington D.C., the Women's Philharmonic of San Francisco, the Frauen Kammerorchester von Osterreich of Vienna, the Pomeriggi Musicali Orchestra of Milan, the Angelicum Orchestra of Milan, the Orchestra da Camera Gli Armonici of Palermo, and many other chamber orchestras, ensembles, and soloists. Her music has been broadcast and televised by RAI Radio and RAI TV (Italy) and Radio Vaticana, BBC Radio 3 (Great Britain), Radio CBC (Canada), various radio stations in the U.S., and MBS-FM Australia (Radio 2 - Sydney, Radio 3 - Melbourne and Radio 4 - Brisbane). She has taught Composition since 1980 (Conservatorios of Vicenza, Mantova and Brescia) and at the Conservatorio of Milan since 1985. In 2002, she was conferred the biannual course of Traditional Orchestration for the Triennial Superior Courses.

Elisabetta Brusa is married to the conductor Gilberto Serembe.

October 2002

Visit Brusa's website at www.elisabettabrusa.it