Brett Banducci is a composer, violist, and educator residing in Los Angeles. He is the 2016 recipient of the Andrew Imbrie Music Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A frequent performer with the Pasadena Symphony and Los Angeles Master Chorale Orchestra, Brett has performed throughout his 27 years in Los Angeles with every major ensemble in town. He is a longtime contributing member to the Hollywood Studio Symphony and has played on countless records, films, and television scores— including albums by Madonna and Barbra Streisand.

His compositions have been performed and premiered at Brooklyn’s MATA Festival Interval New Music Series, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Los Angeles-based Hear Now Festival, among others. His quintet for five cellos was performed by the Sakura cello ensemble at the Sedona Chamber Music Festival in 2016. A devoted educator he spearheaded an innovative composition program for the Young Musicians Foundation in 2015. He was visiting instructor at the Harvard-Westlake School in 2020; where he taught a composition course on twelve-tone theory and mentored student composers. During the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic he sprang into action to create The Micro-Conservatory of Music, which will launch fall 2020 with a 12-week synchronous online course focusing on the string quartets of Beethoven. Brett received his DMA from the University of Southern California in 2016. His primary composition teachers have included Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, and Morten Lauridsen; and he has studied at the Aspen Music Festival and School with Sydney Hodkinson. Brett has a Bachelor of Music in Viola Performance from CSUN, his primary teachers include Pamela Goldsmith and Keith Greene, and a Master’s of Music from UC, Riverside where his primary teachers included Byron Adams, Tim Labor, Paulo Chagas, and René Coulombe. Brett currently co-hosts a dynamic new podcast for the Pasadena Symphony with music director David Lockington, and assistant Pops conductor Larry Blank. He is currently writing a new work for hornist James Thatcher and the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra, to be premiered in April of 2021.

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