Biography

Brieley Cutting is an award-winning Australian concert pianist and artistic director. She is a Churchill Fellow, holds a doctoral degree from Griffith University, won a Creative Sparks Award for her concert series DeClassified Music, was winner of the 2006 ABC ‘Young Performer of the Year’ Award in the Keyboard section, and has performed as concerto soloist with orchestras such as the Melbourne, Adelaide and Queensland Symphony Orchestras.

Recent performances have been at Tempo Rubato in Melbourne, Phoenix Central Park's 'The Church' in Sydney, and for Musica Viva's regional touring program.

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Brieley has performed for 4MBS and ABC radio, recorded for Melba Records and Collusion Music as an ensemble in residence at the Queensland Conservatorium, and she has been involved in educational programs, such as for Musica Viva in Schools. Her performances have taken her to major venues in Australia such as Hamer Hall in Melbourne, the City Recital Hall in Sydney, the Adelaide Town Hall, MONA in Hobart, and the Queensland Performance Arts Centre in Brisbane; and to European venues in cities such as London, Brussels and Saltzburg.

Brieley has been invited to perform at many festivals - such as The Piano Mill, Festival of Voices, Queensland Music Festival, Australian Piano Duo Festival, Sydney and Newcastle Fringe Festivals, Tyalgum and Bangalow Festivals - and she frequently collaborates with ensembles, such as Ensemble Trivium, Australia Piano Quartet, Radu Cello Ensemble, Collusion, Topology and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players.

​​​​Brieley was accepted at age thirteen for tertiary studies, graduating aged eighteen from the Queensland Conservatorium with First Class Honours, as concerto soloist with the Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra and as semi-finalist in the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition. Subsequent study was at the Australian National Academy of Music where she was twice a winner of the in-house Concerto Competition, at the International Festival Musici Artis in Brussels, Summer Festival in Salzburg, and she completed a Master of Music at the Queensland Conservatorium and Postgraduate Diploma in Performance with Distinction from the Royal College of Music (London), supported by the Tait Memorial Trust, Australian Music Foundation, and a David Paul Landa Scholarship.

Brieley was the National Keyboard Winner of the 2006 ABC Young Performers Awards, awarded Second Placing in the 2010 Kerikeri National Piano Competition (New Zealand), and she is a 2013 Fellow of the Winston Churchill Trust which took her to London, the Netherlands and New York. In 2016 Brieley completed doctoral studies on scholarship at Griffith University. Major related creative projects included the critically acclaimed Mahler: Symphony No.2 'Resurrection' arranged for 2 pianos, 8 hands for Melba Records; working with Collusion Music as an ensemble in residence at the Queensland Conservatorium; and performing numerous concerts with Artico Ensemble, an ensemble promoting concert performance in local venues.

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Always passionate about promoting art music performance, supporting fellow artists, and encouraging new music creation and performance, in 2011 Brieley founded an award-winning and innovative Brisbane concert series assisted by the local Steinway & Sons piano distributors. This grew into DeClassified Music which ran as a Brisbane concert series until 2016, it being described as “a great addition to the Brisbane Scene” (RealTime Arts) and as exploiting "a critical mass of grass-roots interest in genuinely innovative music and art that is not confined to predictable and formal presentational settings” (University of Queensland School of Music). Reviews of live performances included “lived up to high expectations” (Brisbane Weekender), “one of the best and most exciting ‘jazz with strings’ recordings that I’ve heard” (The Jazz Mann), and "who knew classical music could be so fun, am I right?" (The Factory Diaries). Events were featured in two Queensland Music Festivals, supported by the Australia Council of the Arts and Arts Queensland, and her series was awarded a Creative Sparks Award from the Brisbane City Council. 

Brieley's recent Sydney-based collaborations for DeClassified Music have been Electro Lieder in 2023, nominated for 'Best in Music' at the Sydney Fringe Festival; Grand Duet: Windows into contrasting worlds from 2024, Melbourne's Tempo Rubato describing this as having "incredible repertoire” and being “delivered with so much power and conviction”; Ambient Delights which featured at The Church/Phoenix Central Park in Sydney; and Lyrical Masterpieces was toured by Musica Viva in 2025/26. 

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Brieley was the first Head of Piano at the New England Conservatorium of Music in regional New South Wales and was Lecturer in Classical Piano at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney from 2020 to 2024. Brieley's piano students have graduated with bachelor and masters degrees, attained AMEB Diplomas from as young as ten years old, been prizewinners in piano competitions and eisteddfods, and auditioned successfully for acceptance into specialised performance-focused programs and tertiary degrees. Brieley has adjudicated for organisations such as the Queensland Conservatorium, University of Queensland School of Music and Sydney Eisteddfod, and she is a Steinway Educational Partner. Brieley’s main piano teachers and mentors have included Pamela Page, Max Olding, Oleg Stepanov, Natasha Vlassenko, Timothy Young, Rita Reichman and Stephen Emmerson. 

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Brieley comes from a regional background, growing up on a farm in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales. Her first piano was an old, discarded upright piano delivered to her family’s corrugated iron house on an open, rusty trailer. As her enthusiasm for the piano developed, many hours were spent travelling to capital cities for continuation of her music education. Throughout her career, Brieley has prioritised teaching and performing in regional and rural centres.

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