Margaret Brandman

In a career of over 50 years, award-winning composer, pianist, and recording artist Margaret Brandman has followed her passion to create appealing music with strong melodic content, sensitive harmonies, and rhythmic ingenuity. Her output includes works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, choir, solo voice, and solo instruments, composed across a wide range of genres from Contemporary Classical to Jazz and Latin-American. 

Brandman’s internationally acclaimed works are regularly performed in concert and have been released on several albums that receive regular airplay on Australia’s ABC Classic FM, and international radio stations including WCNY, New York.

SENSATIONS – Wind, Waves, Birds, and Fire (NV6041) features her celebrated works for orchestral and chamber ensembles recorded by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra and includes the Artemis Film Festival 2019 award-winning work Firestorm Symphony and the composer’s own performance of her solo piano work Autumn Rhapsody. 

“The music of Margaret Brandman… is a continuous celebration of life, of nature, and hope for a better future. The ingredients of this musical palette are persuasive and clear melodic lines, clear and sunny harmonies, a steady rhythmic energy that sometimes draws on syncopated accents of jazz and South American music, an orchestration clear and bright. Both in orchestral compositions as in chamber pieces one can appreciate the organic fluidity of notes and phrases which run and chase each other, the tensions that are created and then resolved: metaphor of Nature, of its variety and harmony, in the highest musical sense.” — Kathodik

POLARITIES VOL. 2 (NV6353) presents her 2021 Artemis Film Festival award-winning orchestral work Spirit Visions, recorded by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, as the opening track on this multi-composer album. 

“With a distinctive Hollywood flavour incorporating a Latin-American flair, this work won for Ms Brandman the ‘Best Foreign Composition’ in the Artemis Women in Action Film Festival in Los Angeles (2021). Ms Brandman has made a real impact in this style of composition and through recordings and performances has secured an international following.” — Barry Walmsley, MTA NSW Studio magazine 

COSMIC WHEEL OF THE ZODIAC (NV6160) a song cycle of 12 songs, one for each astrological sign, composed to the lyrics of Astropoet Benita Rainer, was performed in concert and recorded by the Prague Mixed Chamber Choir in 2017. Instrumental versions of several songs from this cycle, arranged for violin, cello, and flute, have been recorded for other albums, including her album of works for cello – Binna Burra Dreaming.

“Margaret Brandman writes gracefully for the voice and her music is always appealing and welcoming, displaying a variety of compositional techniques to suit each of the 12 astrological signs….The Cosmic Wheel concept is certainly a stimulating idea and well realised.” — Colin Clarke, Fanfare

ABRAZO (AR0001) PARMA Recordings’ multi-composer album on the Ansonica Records, recorded in Cuba in 2015, showcases her jazzy Warm Winds in Havana suite for saxophone quartet and percussion performed by the Javier Zalba quartet. 

“The music is melodious and intricate, beautifully played… pieces straddle that indefinable line between jazz and contemporary classical / new music.” — Jane Mann, London Jazz News 2017

Binna Burra Dreaming (amb 201) is “a pure delight to listen to,” wrote Fine Music magazine reviewer Paul Cooke in regards to this album of works for cello with piano that debuted as No. 1 on the Australian Classical and Classical/Crossover ARIA Charts in 2023.

“Ariel Volovelsky’s sensitive and expressive interpretations work in perfect synergy with composer Margaret Brandman’s subtle performances of her interwoven piano lines to create a sublime listening experience.” — Marilyn Schock, Presenter Fine Music 102.5 FM