| Currently Music Director of Longwood Opera and Principal Accompanist of the Paul Madore Chorale, Jeffrey Brody enjoys an active musical career as composer, conductor, vocal coach, collaborative pianist and organist. Appointed to the musical staff of Seattle Opera in 1986, he has done the musical preparation of that company’s critically acclaimed production of Wagner’s "Ring", serving as Assistant Conductor and Prompter. He has also done musical preparation for Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera New England, MIT Chamber Opera, Janus Opera Productions and the Princeton June Opera Festival. Mr. Brody has been Music Director of Longwood Opera since 1998 and was appointed Musical Advisor of the Boston Wagner Society in 2005. He was named Music Director and Organist of Park Avenue Congregational Church, Arlington, MA in 2007 and serves as Staff Accompanist at New England Conservatory.
He made his orchestral conducting debut with the Richmond Festival Orchestra in 1995 in a program of all original works. Most recently, he guest-conducted the Salem Philharmonic Orchestra at the invitation of Music Director and Conductor Alan Hawryluk, and is a frequent guest conductor of the Harvard Musical Association Reading Orchestra. His compositions include two operas, as well as works for orchestra, chorus, chamber music and organ. They have been performed in Boston’s Symphony Hall, Jordan Hall, the Washington National Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Altenburg and Muenster Cathedrals, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival, the prestigious festival "la città, la musica e il sacro" in Venice, the Temple of the Shinji Kai in Shiga, Japan and on National Public Radio.
Recent commissions include "Beowulf", a Musical Legend for soloists, double chrous and large orchestra written for performance in the Vienna Musikvereinsaal under the direction of Maestro Gerhard Track, as well as "Planetarium", a work for the Arlington-Belmont Chamber Chorus premiered in May of 2005 under the direction of Barry Singer. Most recently, Mr. Brody is the recipient of a very generous grant from the Brannen-Cooper Fund of Brannen Brothers Flute Makers for the composition of a three-movement, 29-minute Concerto for Flute and Orchestra premiered in January of 2009 by flutist Judith Braude and the Salem Philharmonic under his direction. Past seasons have brought the world premiere of his opera, "The Measure of Love", hailed by the Boston Herald as a "sure-fire hit"; the premiere performances of his choral work, "O Fairest Love Divine" by the Paul Madore Chorale; the first performances by the Salem Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Alan Hawryluk of his transcriptions for orchestra of three works by Mozart for mechanical organ; the performance of his Concerto for Organ and Orchestra with organist Berj Zamkochian and the State Symphony Orchestra of Lebanon under the direction of Harout Faslian; the Vienna premieres of his "Haec Dies" for Organ, Strings and Timpani as well as his Symphony for Organ, with Zamkochian performing in the Konzerthaus as well as at Vienna's renowned Karlskirche; and the premiere of "Fanfare!", a short orchestral work written for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Michigan State Symphony Orchestra. The 2004-5 season brought premieres of his "Sinfonietta nel stilo antico" and "The Ballad of the Four Brothers" by the Salem Philharmonic Orchestra. In August 2005 the Harvard Summer Orchestra, under the direction of Judith Zuckerman, played his "Nigun" in Sanders Theater, Cambridge. Highlights of the 2005-6 season included the world premiere of his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, written for Alan Hawryluk, played by the Salem Philharmonic under the direction of the composer. The 2008-9 season brought the premiere of his most recent commission, the Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, by flutist Judith Braude with the Salem Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of the composer, and the world premiere of a song-cycle, "Phantasmagoria" with tenor Christopher Aaron Smith and pianist Terry Decima at New England Conservatory's Brown Hall. The 2009-2010 season brought performances of his works with the Salem Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dirk Hillyer Festival Orchestra, the Harvard Summer Orchestra, the Parkway Concert Orchestra and the Arlington-Belmont Chamber Chorus. The 2010-2011 season brings the premiere of his second opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Longwood Opera, as well as the premiere of his Pezzo Serioso by the Salem Philharmonic Orchestra and premieres of his arrangements for organ, brass quartet and timpani of Vierne's Carillon de Westminster and Rimsky-Korsakov's Procession of the Nobles.
A finalist in the 1999 European International Composers Competition, he has been the recipient of numerous ASCAP special awards. Several of his commissioned choral and organ works have been released on compact disc by the AFKA and SPC labels. His compositions are published exclusively by Ashbrook Music, Boston.
Mr. Brody is a member of the International Siegfried Wagner Society; the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; the National Association of Teachers of Singing; the American Guild of Organists, and is a founding member of the Boston Singers Resource, for which he has served as audition adjudicator. In honor of the many years of his artistic collaboration with the late Boston Symphony Orchestra Organist, Berj Zamkochian, the Gomidas Organ Fund presented Mr. Brody with the baton used by Dr. Charles Munch, Music Director and Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1949-1962.
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