Annette Brosin is a composer and bassist from Germany. She has been writing music since the age of 10.

 

In 2002 she left for Austria to study Tonmeisterei (Sound Engineering) with Jürg Jecklin and Ulrich Vette at the University for Music and Performing Arts, Vienna.

A year later, she entered the composition program and studied analysis, theory, harmony and counterpoint, and composition with Marcel Reuter, Annegret Huber and Chaya Czernowin. Additionally, she studied jazz theory, composition and arrangement, with Christian Mühlbacher, and applied music (film and theatre) with Klaus-Peter Sattler and Reinhard Karger.
After receiving her diploma in composition in 2009, she moved to Victoria, BC to pursue a PhD in music composition which she finished in 2015 under Christopher Butterfield.

 

During her PhD program, Annette received a DAAD scholarship for doctoral studies and was recipient of a University of Victoria fellowship. She was endowed with a Marie E. Vertine scholarship twice, and awarded the Martlet Music Award for Excellence in Advanced Composition.



Her thesis composition ​#ffffff was premiered March 2014 at the University of Victoria, and she defended her doctoral dissertation "Musical Memory, Cultural Memory, and Digital Technologies: Perspectives and Analytical Approaches" in the fall of 2015. Her doctoral committee included Christopher Butterfield, George Tzanetakis, Arthur Kroker, Joseph Salem, and Martin Iddon as external examiner.

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As an active participant she attended master classes in Hungary (Bartók Festival, Szombathely), Austria (IMPULS, Graz), and Germany (MATRIX, at the Experimentalstudio Freiburg) where she was awarded a scholarship, and was invited to participate at the OPERARE workshop for new music theatre hosted by the Zeitgenössische Oper Berlin. 

She had lessons with Mark Andre, Chaya Czernowin, Detlef Heusinger, Michael Finnissey, Gyula Csapó, Beat Furrer, Johannes Schöllhorn, Vladimir Tarnopolski, and Brice Pauset.

 

Annette is looking back at a series of commissions to write music for Mark McGregor, Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, Katie Rife, Dave Riedstra, Tiresias Duo, Hayley-Laufer Duo, Rockeys Duo, Redshift Music Vancouver, Strata Festival Saskatoon, Bienal Música Hoje, and Contact Contemporary Music Toronto. Her music has furthermore been read and performed by Sylvie Lacroix, Aventa Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Bozzini Quartet, Microcosmos String Quartet, the McGregor-Nesselroad-Barnes Trio, Alan Matheson Jazz Septet, and Vienna's Nouvelle Cuisine Big Band. With performances in Continental Europe, North and South America, her work has also been broadcasted by RBB Berlin, and CFUV Victoria.

She was guest composer at the Experimental Music Festival Casse-Tête in Prince George (2017) and at Strata New Music Festival Saskatoon (2018), and her compositional work has been generously supported by Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council.

Annette has written, recorded and produced both music and sound design for several theatre productions and has done the same in the field of film on multiple occasions.

Over the last decade, Annette's academic and creative work has encompassed the roles of composer, sound engineer, instructor, organizer, and active musician. As such, she has gained wide-ranging experience in fulfilling and bridging the compositional, performative, and technical tasks of music creation which has deeply influenced her approach to composing music and how she negotiates the complex relationship between contemporary “classical” and popular music.
In her compositions, Annette investigates aspects of memory, historical and cultural disintegration, individual and communal identity, and the implications of performance-based concert settings within digital culture. Her recent works highlight various approaches to such matters and address related compositional problems. In many of her pieces, she integrates live electronics – primarily to demonstrate and problematize the changed roles of “acoustic” music and “live” performance within today’s recorded, edited and reproduced musical culture.
 

Annette is committed to expanding discussions and notions about music by inviting audiences to consider and perceive music not only as absolute, universal, self-present, and autonomous, but also in terms of facets often regarded as non-musical. Instead, she pursues perspectives of musical practice that involve broader cultural and interdisciplinary frameworks. 

 

After years of teaching composition and music theory in the roles of Sessional Instructor as well as Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Victoria, Annette has embarked on a new journey in the trades, which allows her to focus more on writing and playing music while continuing her teaching as private instructor in the Cowichan area.



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Detailed CV (2021) for download

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