Sir Dirk Brossé

Music Director, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia

Sir Dirk Brossé, born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1960, is a multi-faceted composer and a respected conductor on the international music scene. He is currently Music Director of ‘The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia’, Music Director of the Filmfestival Ghent and Music Director and Principal Conductor of the ‘Star Wars in Concert World Tour’.

Sir Dirk Brossé began his music studies at the Music Conservatories of Ghent and Brussels. He subsequently specialised in conducting, which he studied in Maastricht, Vienna and Cologne. Alongside his many guest professorships, he is currently Professor of Composition and Conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Ghent. Dirk Brossé has conducted all the leading Belgian orchestras, among them, the Brussels Philharmonic, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Flemish Opera and the National Orchestra of Belgium. Outside his native Belgium, he has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London, l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Shanghai, the Vancouver Opera, the KBS Symphony Orchestra of South Korea, l’Orchestra de l’Opéra de Lyon, the World Symphony Orchestra (Japan), the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, the Ulster Symphony Orchestra of Northern Ireland, the Camerata St Petersburg, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the National Orchestras of Venezuela and Ecuador. Dirk Brossé is also a versatile and prolific composer. He has written some 200 works, including concerti, oratorios, lieder, chamber music and symphonic works, that have been performed all over the world and have been recorded in more than 40 countries. His most important works are ‘La Soledad de América Latina’, written in collaboration with the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ‘Artesia’, a universal symphony for orchestra and ethnic instruments, the ethno-classical symphony ‘The Birth of Music’, the oratorio ‘Juanelo’, the lieder cycles ‘Landuyt Cycle’ and ‘La Vida es un Sueno’, the ‘War Concerto’ for clarinet and orchestra, and the violin concertos ‘Black, White & Between’, ‘Sophia’ and ‘Echoes of Silent Voices’. In 2010, at the request of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, he wrote ‘The Hallow-e’en Dances’. This Halloween-inspired work is specially written for age-old, traditional Chinese instruments. Besides this, on numerous occasions, Dirk Brossé has composed for the theatre and the cinema.