Denis Brott CM, SMOM is a Canadian cellist, music teacher, conductor, and founder and artistic director of the Montreal Chamber Music Festival.
Brott was born in Montreal, into a family of professional musicians; he is the son of the violinist and composer Alexander Brott and cellist Lotte Brott[1] (née Goetzel), and the younger brother of late conductor Boris Brott. His mother was born in Mannheim, Germany, a country she had left in 1939 because of political oppression.[2]
He studied cello with Walter Joachim[3] at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal from 1959 to 1967, with Leonard Rose at The Juilliard School in New York from 1964 to 1968, with Janos Starker at the Indiana University in Bloomington from 1968 to 1971 and with Gregor Piatigorsky at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, until 1975, acting as Piatigorsky's assistant for part of his four years there.[citation needed]
As a young man Brott performed as a cellist and conductor, winning numerous awards including:
In 1975 he became a professor of Cello and Chamber Music at the North Carolina School of the Arts. In 1978, he became a professor of Cello and Chamber Music at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan,.[5] In 1980, he joined the Orford String Quartet at the University of Toronto, quartet in residence at the U of T Faculty of Music, teaching and performing there until 1989.[citation needed]
In 1985, Brott played a pivotal role in the creation of the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank, which collects fine string instruments to lend to Canadian musicians. In recognition of his contribution, the Instrument Bank loaned him a 1706 David Tecchler cello for his lifetime use, and named the instrument in his honor as well as that of William Turner, "Brott-Turner Tecchler".[citation needed]
Since 1989 he has been Professor of Cello and Chamber Music at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal. In 2017, he was appointed conductor of the Conservatoire's Grand Orchestre à Cordes.[citation needed]
In 2017, he began giving guest master classes for the Netherlands String Quartet Academy.[citation needed]
His concert tours have taken him to four continents and he has performed at many festivals, including Marlboro, Sitka, Santa Barbara, Banff, and Toronto Summer Music.[citation needed]
Brott has also taught at numerous summer music festivals, most notably at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara California from 1992 until 2001, where he held the Jeanne Thayer Cello Chair; the Orford Arts Centre; Domaine Forget; and Musicorda Chamber Music Institute and Festival. He is a regularly invited teacher and performer at the Banff Summer Music Festival as well as frequent juror and lecturer at the Banff International String Quartet Competition.[citation needed]
He was guest artistic director of the Festival of the Sound in Ontario in 1991.[6]
He has served as an international juror at distinguished competitions including the Evian International String Quartet Competition[7] (1993), the Munich International ARD String Quartet Competition (1996 & 2008), the CBC Radio National Competition for Young Performers (1997), the Munich International ARD Cello Competition (1998) and at the Banff International String Quartet Competition twice.[citation needed]
Brott performed for nine years with the Orford String Quartet, during which time he recorded 25 chamber music CDs. During his tenure the quartet was named Ensemble of the Year by the Canadian Music Council (1986) and their recordings of the complete string quartets of Beethoven won the Grand Prix du Disque Award (1998) and two Juno Awards (1985, 1987) for Best Chamber Ensemble Classical Recording.[citation needed]
Brott appeared as invited guest cellist with some of the world's finest string quartets including the Emerson, Guarneri, Tokyo, St. Lawrence, Fine Arts, Dover, Ulysses, and Barbican String Quartets.[citation needed]
Brott has made many recordings as a solo artist, the best known being the Brahms Sonatas for cello and piano with Glen Montgomery, piano, and Homage to Piatigorsky with Samuel Sanders, piano, Evan Drachman, cello and Tony Randall, narrator.[citation needed]
Brott is the founder and artistic director of the Montreal Chamber Music Festival.[15][16]
In 1990, Brott moved back to Montreal, with plans to make classical music more accessible to the public by developing an international chamber music festival. His idea gained the approval of then mayor of Montreal, Pierre Bourque. It was decided to hold the Festival at The Chalet de la Montagne situated atop Mont Royal.[citation needed]
In 1995, the first Montreal Chamber Music Festival was held at The Chalet de la Montagne, with Brott as its founder and artistic director. The festival organizers sought out historic locations for the performances and planned concerts by internationally known chamber musicians and chamber ensembles. The aim was to allow promising young chamber musicians to perform with established musicians thereby acquire experience essential to the development of their careers, promote exchanges between Canadian and foreign chamber music artists and enhance the stature of Montreal as a cultural hub for chamber music activity.[citation needed]
In 2006, the Festival participated in the rejuvenation of downtown Montreal known as the "Quartier des festivals". The festival moved to the historic St. James United Church.[citation needed]
The Montreal Chamber Music Festival performs annually in the salle Bourgie at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.[citation needed]
In 2020, due to COVID-19 restrictions prohibiting in-person, live performance, the Festival became a Festival Reimagined. Over an 18-month period it produced over 21 videos[17] when live concerts were prohibited.
Since the fall of 2021, the Festival is back to presenting live concerts.[citation needed]
In mid-March 2020, Brott contracted one of the first gravely serious cases of COVID-19 in Canada and was placed in an induced coma intubated in intensive care in Montreal's CHUM Hospital for over 32 days. He has made a complete recovery.[citation needed]
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