Aleksandr Brusentsev is a composer who creates ‘brilliantly conceived and realised’ (Simon Bainbridge) music that embodies the joys, complexities, and contradictions of a 21st-century life in transition. His idiosyncratic compositions have been performed and lauded in the US and across the UK by both artists and audiences alike.

More committed to saying it right than to simply saying it, Brusentsev approaches each composition as multi-layered musical world, one that invites and engages as much as it challenges and provokes one to listen not as a spectator but as a participant. Never one to compromise by ‘writing down’ to anyone, he achieves his populist aims not through simplicity but through transparency of form, of intent, and of process, both within the music and in it’s presentation.

To that end, he has placed special focus on working with artists and organizations similarly committed to meaningful engagement. Recent projects have included commissions from the forward-thinking Christina McMaster and The Hermes Experiment, his distinction-earning Royal Academy of Music Masters thesis, Connect . The . Dots, and his ongoing work with Tania Holland Williams’ Arts Council-funded brainchild, the Davy Jones’ Locker concert series.

In addition to his more experimental work, Brusentsev has also made a name for himself working with such renowned artists as Alexandra Wood,  Huw Watkins, the CHROMA Ensemble, the Blossom Street Singers, the Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who premiered his work, Our Own Light, in Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the 2013/14 LPO Leverhulme Young Composers programme. Other recent recognitions, include ‘high commendation’ in both the Alan Bush and Eric Coates composition prizes at the Academy as well as an associate placement on the LSO Soundhub Programme.

His primary teachers have been Alex Freeman at Carleton College (BA) and Huw Watkins at the Royal Academy of Music (MMus).