Boris Brott, (March 14, 1944 – April 5, 2022) was a Canadian conductor and motivational speaker. He was one of the most internationally recognized Canadian conductors, having conducted on stages around the world, including Carnegie Hall, La Scala,and Covent Garden. He was known for his innovative methods of introducing classical music to new audiences. Over his career, he commissioned, performed, and recorded a wide variety of Canadian works for orchestra.
Brott was the founder and artistic director of the Brott Music Festival, National Academy Orchestra of Canada and BrottOpera all based in Hamilton, Ontario. He was the founding Music Director and Conductor Laureate of the New West Symphony in Thousand Oaks, CA and artistic director and conductor of the Orchestre classique de Montreal (formerly the McGill Chamber Orchestra). He was a former Principal Youth and Family conductor with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and Toronto Symphony Orchestra, where he led family and education programs.
Early life and emerging career
Boris Jeremiah Brott was born in Montreal in 1944 to violinist and composer Alexander Brott and cellist Lotte/Charlotte Brott (née Goetzel). His younger brother is cellist Denis Brott. His mother was born in Mannheim, Germany, a country she had left in 1939 because of the Nazis. His family was Jewish. He studied violin with his father, and performed at the age of five with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra at a young people's matinee. He took courses at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal and the McGill Conservatory, and in 1956 studied conducting at the summer school of Pierre Monteux, who engaged him as assistant for concerts in Europe. He next studied with Igor Markevitch and won first prize at the 1958 Pan-American conducting competition. In 1959, at the age of 15, he founded the Philharmonic Youth Orchestra of Montreal and led it in his conducting debut in that city.
In June 1962, Brott won third prize at the Liverpool Competition. He served from 1963 to 1965 as Walter Susskind's assistant conductor with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and then embarked on a career in England as conductor of the Northern Sinfonia at Newcastle upon Tyne (1964-8). He made several tours with this chamber orchestra, among which was one in Canada, which included concerts at Expo 67.
From 1964 to 1967, Brott was principal conductor for the touring company of the Royal Ballet Covent Garden. During the 1965–6 season at Covent Garden he conducted the Royal Ballet's first production at that theatre of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale (1966) and toured the production in Britain. He won first prize and a gold medal at the sixth Dimitri Mitropoulos International Music Competition in 1968 and served 1968-9 as assistant conductor to Leonard Bernstein, with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
Brott was named one of Canada's Outstanding Young Men in 1969 and 1973 by the Junior Chamber of Commerce.
In 1972, Brott was appointed conductor of the BBC Welsh Orchestra.
Later career
Development of Canadian orchestras
Brott directed the Lakehead Symphony Orchestra (Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra) between 1967 and 1972 and the Regina Symphony Orchestra from 1971 to 1973.
From 1969 to 1990, Brott was artistic director and conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, which grew from an amateur ensemble to a professional one with a 42-week season and 16,000 subscribers. The orchestra also gave birth to the quintet Canadian Brass. Brott and the HPO were in the news when they performed in the middle of a steel factory blast furnace in Hamilton's industrial core at Dofasco Inc.- now Arcelor Mittal. A charismatic maestro, Brott included visual elements, ballet dancers, Shakespearean actors, film, rock groups, even astronauts to the stages of classical music concerts.
In the early 1970s, he played an integral role in the acoustic aspects of the construction Hamilton Place, now known as First Ontario Concert Hall in downtown Hamilton. He conducted the first notes heard in the hall on September 22, 1973.
In 1975, Brott assumed directorship of the CBC Winnipeg Orchestra. In 1977 he had made his opera debut, conducting Donizetti's Daughter of the Regiment for the COC. Brott later directed Opera Hamilton and guest-conducted with the Canadian Opera Company and Sadler's Wells Opera.
Brott served as the Principal Youth and Family conductor with both the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. From 1982 to 1985 he was artistic director of Symphony Nova Scotia. He led the Ontario Place Pops Orchestra from 1983 to 1991.