Brian Morales, composer

California-native Brian Morales has established an exciting presence on the New York music scene, with a reputation for excellence as a composer, conductor, and orchestrator. Nominated for an Olivier Award (Best Orchestration for the West End production of The Color Purple - directed by John Doyle), Morales continues to explore soundscapes with dramatic elements. He has been named the 2019-2020 Composer-in-Residence with fp Creative where he has composed an interdisciplinary story ballet, Strangers, in collaboration with choreographer, Julia Bengtsson. He recently self-produced a recording of his folk song cycle, Wild Axiom, with text by Grey Grant. In 2020, he was chosen as an Academic Fellow for the Alba Music Festival and was one of a handful of composers who participated in the inaugural Composition program as part of the Cascade Conducting Workshop. In 2019 he was an Academic Fellow at the Talis Festival & Academy in Sarajevo where his oboe quartet, Visions of Sacrifice was premiered (with Celia Craig on oboe and Beatriz Blanco on cello). He was the winner of the 2018 Pittsburgh Philharmonic EQT Young Composer Contest, resulting in the premiere of his orchestral piece Arrivals and was also selected as a winning composer for the 2019 Stradella Baroque Festival’s NEWTRACKS @FBS series with a performance of Una Macchina Per Rosa premiered by the Bryggan Ensemble.

Morales’s orchestrations for Gregory Nabours’s Ovation Award-winning song cycle, The Trouble With Words (Couerage Theatre Company, LA) inspired BROADWAY WORLD to exclaim, “Rock has never sounded so good! ...This has to be one of the best musical reviews I have ever seen.” He composed the original score, conducted and produced music for the indie-film Transcendence (CSM Films). Other film work includes scores for numerous independent shorts and first prize at the 2018 Yorkshire Film Scoring Competition.

Morales’s work as a conductor and orchestrator for Adam Taylor and Scott Joiner’s opera films, “Connection Lost: The Tinder Opera” and “Something Blue: The Bachelor Opera” culminated in a Best Score award at Ireland’s Kerry Film Festival, and was featured on NPR’s ALL THINGS CONSIDERED in 2017.

Collaborations with Swedish choreographer/dancer Julia Bengtsson, include Morales’s ambitious 35-minute ballet, The Ears Have The Wall, for piano quintet and four dancers which premiered at The Tank NYC in 2019, and Blank Space (for violin, clarinet, bassoon, violoncello, and piano) which was performed at the 2018 Fast-Forward Festival. Was it a Dream? (duo for violin and cello) with choreography by Temple Kemezis, was featured at the 2016 New York 10 Dance Festival.

Recent performances of his concert works include To This Great Land (piano trio) at the English Music Festival in Yorkshire; Autumn Chrysalis (violin, violoncello, clarinet, pipa, and yangqun) performed by the Sforzando Collective; and Kyrie (SATB) from his Missa Brevis, which premiered at the 2017 European American Musical Alliance Nadia Boulanger Institute in Paris.

On the podium, he was founding music director of the Orange County Collegiate Orchestra, and he has appeared as guest conductor for the Novus et Antiquus Orchestra, the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia and the Amadeo Philharmonic. A Participant in the 2018 New York Conductor's Workshop, he worked with the Chamber Orchestra of New York and received additional training in orchestral conducting at the Juilliard Evening Division. He served as the assistant conductor for Kimo Furomoto and the Cal State Fullerton’s Symphony Orchestra and the conductor for the CSUF New Music Ensemble, working alongside Paola Prestini, Missy Mazolli, Conrad Pope and Nicole Mitchell.

Morales’s major teachers have included Philip Lasser (theory/composition) Richard Danielpour, Pamela Madsen (composition), Lloyd Rodgers (counterpoint/orchestration), and Bill Cunliffe (commercial arranging). He has a BM from Cal State University Fullerton and an MM in composition from the Manhattan School of Music.

Brian currently is an active chorus member for the acclaimed, award-winning Cantori di NY choir where he sings bass under the baton of Maestro Mark Shapiro