Boris Brott

Boris Brott was born in Montreal on 14 March 1944 and is one of the leading figures in Canadian orchestral conducting in the second half of the twentieth century. The son of the musician Alexander Brott, he trained with his father and with such distinguished teachers as Monteux, Markevich and Bernstein. He made his conducting debut in 1958 at the head of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico.

In 1959 he founded the Montreal Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, and from 1963 to 1965 he served as assistant conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. In England he conducted the Northern Sinfonia in Newcastle from 1964 to 1968, toured with the Royal Ballet, and in 1966 premiered The Soldier's Tale at Covent Garden. After winning the gold medal at the Dimitri Mitropoulos Competition in 1968, he became assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic and held posts in Ontario and Saskatchewan, as well as with the Hamilton Philharmonic from 1969. In 1972 he took on the directorship of the BBC Welsh Orchestra and, from 1976 to 1983, that of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra of the CBC.

In the following decades he founded the Boris Brott Summer Music Festival in Hamilton in 1988, and collaborated with the McGill Chamber Orchestra of Montreal and the New West Symphony Orchestra of California. His legacy rests above all on his educational work and on the creation of youth and regional projects, which he sustained while working as a guest conductor with the leading orchestras of Canada, the United States and Europe.