Bruce Brubaker

Concepts

Brubaker's work uses and combines Western classical music with postmodern artistic, literary, theatrical, and philosophical ideas. He is associated with the recent revitalization of classical music (sometimes termed "alternative classical"). He has created and performed multidisciplinary projects at the International Piano Festival La Roque d'Anthéron, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, Columbia University, and at the Juilliard School. He is praised as a performer of music by Philip Glass; The New York Times wrote: "Few pianists approach Philip Glass's music with the level of devotion and insight that Bruce Brubaker brings to it, precisely the reason he gets so much expressivity out of it." Brubaker has published articles about music and semiotics, and performance as research. Brubaker advocates the treatment of written music as "text"—he has sometimes performed and recorded new music without the direct input of the composer. Brubaker has said: "The piano is a tool that can be used in different ways. Classical music can be taken as material for new art." Brubaker has argued that technology is returning music to a pre-composer condition, and equalizing or blurring the roles of listener, performer, and composer. In a conversation with Philip Glass in Princeton, Brubaker referred to "the demise of the composer." Brubaker said: "Now, it's becoming a little less clear who creates a work, who plays the work, and who listens to the work. Those roles used to seem to be so clear – you know, Beethoven wrote it, Brendel played it, and the audience at Carnegie heard it. But I don't think that quite works anymore."

Background

Brubaker was born in Des Moines, Iowa and educated at the Juilliard School where his primary teacher was pianist Jacob Lateiner. At Juilliard, he also studied with Milton Babbitt and Felix Galimir, and with Louis Krasner at Tanglewood. As a concert pianist, he has appeared performing Mozart with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, Haydn's music at the Wigmore Hall, Messiaen's music and Philip Glass's music at New York City's (Le) Poisson Rouge nightclub, Brahms's music at Leipzig's Gewandhaus, and extemporizing simultaneous performances with his former student Francesco Tristano and jazz legend Ran Blake.

He received a fellowship grant from the National Endowment from the Arts, and was named Young Musician of the Year by Musical America. He has performed at Leipzig's Gewandhaus, New York's Avery Fisher Hall, and Antwerp's Queen Elizabeth Hall. Brubaker's blog "PianoMorphosis" appears at ArtsJournal.com.

Recording

Brubaker's solo piano recordings survey a range of American music by Glass, John Adams, Alvin Curran, William Duckworth, Meredith Monk, Nico Muhly, and John Cage. Brubaker has premiered piano music by Cage, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Nico Muhly, and Daron Hagen. He has collaborated with Meredith Monk. In 2012, Brubaker, together with Ursula Oppens, recorded Monk's piano music.

Curator and teacher

For nine years, Brubaker was a faculty member at The Juilliard School where he originated an interdisciplinary performance program in 2001, producing new work with dancers, actors, and musicians. Students from Brubaker's piano repertory class at Juilliard include many distinguished pianists: Francesco Tristano, Simone Dinnerstein, Shai Wosner, Helen Huang, Vicky Chow, David Greilsammer, Elizabeth Joy Roe, Greg Anderson, Vikingur Olafsson, Stewart Goodyear, Adam Nieman, Soyeon Lee, Terrence Wilson, Eric Huebner. At Juilliard, he gave public presentations with Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and Milton Babbitt. In 2000, he produced "Piano Century," an eleven-concert retrospective of 20th-century piano music. Since 2004, Brubaker is a faculty member at Boston's New England Conservatory where he has curated several projects in collaboration with the Boston Symphony and Harvard University.

In 1994, Brubaker founded SummerMusic now held at Drake University in his hometown of Des Moines; he returns annually to lead it.

Discography

Brubaker records for Arabesque, Bedroom Community, ECM, and InFiné.