Gerard Brophy

Title: Hot Metallic Blues 1
Commission: 1996
Completed: 1998
Instrumentation: solo bass guitar and large ensemble
Premiere Location: Katz Performing Arts Center, Pittsburgh, PA
Premiere Ensemble: Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble
Notes: Dedicated to David and Jeff.

After an increasingly musical adolescence, Gerard Brophy began his studies in the classical guitar at the age of twenty-two. In the late seventies he worked closely with Brazilian guitarist Turibio Santos and the Argentine composer Mauricio Kagel before studying composition at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music.

He has been commissioned and performed by some of the world’s leading ensembles, including the Melbourne, Queensland, Tasmanian, West Australian, Sydney and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras: the Malaysian Philharmonic; and the BBC Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestras, to name a few. Over recent years he has developed a keen interest in collaborating with artists from other disciplines and he is particularly active in the areas of ballet, dance and electronica. He has also been involved in exciting collaborations with musicians from other cultures among them the great Senegalese master drummers, the N’Diaye Rose family, and the timbila virtuoso Venancio Mbande from Mozambique.