.: NEW YORK POLYPHONY - MALCOLM BRUNO

.: Born into a musical family in New Jersey in 1952, MALCOLM BRUNO started writing his own music at the age of 12, later studying in New York at Juilliard and Manhattan Schools of Music and New York University. An MPhil and doctoral thesis in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger at King’s College London University was followed by study in Paris with Max Deutsch and an MMus in London at the Royal College of Music in composition. In 1983 he met Andrew Parrott and became associate director of the Taverner Choir, Consort & Players, a position he held for 20 years.

Since 1985 he has been a music producer for BBC and ITV in the UK, for DRS in Switzerland, NRK in Norway and PRI and PBS in the US. He has specialised in early music performance and music and theatre, working with many of the leading singers and players in Britain and on the Continent and in the US. He has produced many recordings for EMI, Sony, Virgin Classics, Avie, and the Linn and Naxos labels. He produced a Christmas special for PBS from Trondheim in Norway in 2005 that attracted some 5 million viewers in the US alone. In 2006, he founded with four top singers on the American scene New York Polyphony, a new vocal consort specialising in early and contemporary music, whose first commercial release in 2007 has met with huge international acclaim.

In the US he works regularly with the choir and orchestra of the National Cathedral in Washington, the American Boychoir and Westminster Choir in Princeton, the Choir of Men and Boys of St Thomas Church in New York, the St Olaf College and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota and the Concert Royale (baroque orchestra) in New York. He is musical adviser to New York Polyphony and the American Boychoir in the US. In Norway he is adviser to the Barokksolistene and Larvik Barokk of the Vestfold International Festival as well as Nidaros Jentekor, the girls’ choir of Trondheim Cathedral.

Since 2002 he has begun editing a number of major choral works for Bärenreiter Verlag in Germany, beginning with his own reconstruction of Pergolesi’s Marian Vespers, which received its US premiere at the Boston Early Music Festival in May 2007. He is a regular contributor to the British journal Choir & Organ.

Malcolm Bruno lives in Wales with his wife, writer Jessica Gordon and their two sons, Isaac and Caius.

.: UPDATED FEBRUARY 4, 2008