Brad Cawyer

Брэд Койер

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Brad Cawyer’s latest project with the reMusik.org was the International Music Festival “Contemporary East and West”, which took place on May 23, 2010 in the Saint-Petersburg State Philharmonic Hall (Glazinov). At this concert Saint-Petersburg State Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra performed 2 works by American composers John Adams and Aaron Copland.

Copyright © reMusik.org

Brad Everett Cawyer (born December 28, 1980 in Dallas, United States) is an American conductor.

B. Everett Cawyer has recently emerged onto the international classical music scene following student years in Europe. His thorough absorption of that continent’s classical style of conducting displays his deep-founded musicianship via clear and enlightening technique. Everett’s affable approach to working with orchestra inspires an atmosphere uplifting to performers and audience alike.

In addition to work with symphonic orchestra, his most recent engagements include conducting opera and giving premieres of new works for ensemble and for chamber orchestra. In this area Everett has developed especially strong ties with Persian composer Mehdi Hosseini.

B. Everett Cawyer’s musical growth was initially fostered through participation in a large number of musical organizations (including orchestras, choirs, and bands) during his education in Texas public schools until 1999, during which time he was awarded the John Philip Sousa Band Award. He sang in choirs from the age of 8, and he began studying piano at 11 years old. Despite his late introduction to instrumental music he soon was playing various wind instruments, transferring from oboe to bassoon, and then adding trombone and tuba before beginning his college studies.

From 1999 to 2003 Everett studied at Texas A&M University, where he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree and worked as orchestra manager for the community’s resident orchestra. In addition to guest conducting for the Brazos Valley Symphony, Everett helped create the Texas A&M University Orchestra, for which he served as founding conductor. During his three years (2003-2006) with this orchestra, Everett built the orchestra up from twenty to more than sixty musicians and presented programs that included staples of orchestral repertoire, including Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture, excerpts from Stravinsky’s Firebird, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 in full.

With this orchestra Everett made a concerted effort to plan programs that would educate, as well as entertain the audience, building in the listeners new appreciation and desire for live symphony orchestra performance. For one such program, entitled Natural Enemies, he engaged with the audience in exploring the expansion of harmony as a driving force in the development of western music. A major highlight of his work with this orchestra was the US premiere of the oratorio Let There Be Joy by present-day Russian composer Konstantin Zhigulin, for which concert Everett prepared both the chorus and the orchestra, as well as writing program notes and translating the Russian text for the concert playbill.

Following his time with the Texas A&M University Orchestra, Everett left the US to study in Saint Petersburg with Professor Alexander Alexeev. He used this time with Professor Alexeev to reinforce his conducting technique and system of musical interpretation with the style of Professor Hans Swarowsky of the Vienna Music Academy, under whom Alexander Alexeev studied alongside Claudio Abbado and Zubin Mehta. Living in Russia’s cultural capital additionally gave Everett ample opportunity to observe the performance practice of Russian orchestras and opera houses with respect to their national repertoire.

Prior to his time studying with Alexander Alexeev, B. Everett Cawyer worked with Franz Anton Krager at the University of Houston, as well as Marcelo Bussiki and Timothy Rhea of Texas A&M University. In the course of developing toward a professional career, he participated in workshops and masterclasses with Jorma Panula, Markus Lehtinen, Kenneth Kiesler, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Marin Alsop.