Gary Brain’s Change of Fortune Made Him World-Class Conductor

Internationally renowned conductor and percussionist, Palmerston North-born Gary Brain has died in Paris. He was 72.

In 1989 Brain was the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s highly regarded principal percussionist and timpanist. He had already been awarded an OBE for his services to schools, having performed 1000 solo concerts to children by the time he’d turned 40. He wanted to break down barriers about classical music, so performed in schools wearing jeans and at T-shirt. His many fans included Mongrel Mob members, who would ask for his autograph.

When stars like Sir Elton John and David Bowie toured, Brain was hired as a backing percussionist.

He began his career as a timpanist after attending Berlin’s Staatliche Hochschule für Musik.

But it was an accident in 1989 on a flight from Auckland to the United States that changed Brain’s life.

The unexpected outcome saw him become one of our most successful conductors based overseas, where he had lived since 1990 – including being the first New Zealander to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra.

His recording career was equally prestigious, including the German Grammy-Echo award for conducting the best orchestral CD of the year for his first recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. He championed Polish-Swiss composer Czesław Marek, recording three orchestral CDs, the first of which won the German Record Critics Award.

In Wellington Brain founded chamber group Music Players 70, who performed works by contemporary and avant garde composers including George Crumb and Stockhausen. The group put on a festival series where they premiered “every bit of new music we could lay our hands on, commissioning new works, changing the constitution of the group to suit the programme”.

Brain had lived in Paris with his partner from 1986.

Original article by Tom Cardy, Stuff, May 23, 2015.