About
Described as “such a force!” (Tempo Rubato), “technically assured with excellent control of the keyboard” (Courier Mail), and as a musician who has “at her disposal a myriad of different colours and who knows how to take the time to let the music speak” (Auckland Scoop).
Known for bringing her trademark energy and refinement to a career encompassing solo and collaborative performance, pedagogy, event curation, arts promotion and practice-focused research, Brieley Cutting is dedicated to fostering talented piano students in regional and cosmopolitan centres in Australia, and to being a passionate advocate for live music performance and fellow musicians.
Performing historical through to new music, Brieley Cutting is a prize-winning soloist, her accolades including becoming the National Keyboard Winner of the 2006 ABC Young Performers Awards and receiving Second Placing in the 2010 Kerikeri International Piano Competition in New Zealand. As an artistic director, she received a 2014 Creative Sparks Award from the Brisbane City Council for her DeClassified Music Series, and her multi-disciplinary show Electro Lieder received a nomination for Best in Music at the Sydney Fringe Festival in 2023. As a music researcher, Brieley was made a Fellow of the Winston Churchill Trust in 2013 which allowed her to expand her knowledge in the areas including ensemble performance, historically informed practice, new music and academic research, and as a scholarship student she completed doctoral studies at Griffith University in 2016, her research focus being an examination of the role and skills required of a pianist working in small ensembles.
Brieley has performed extensively in Australia as well as in international venues from London and Europe to New Zealand. Her practice continues to see her performing in a wide variety of performance spaces, covering a broad range of repertoire, and communicating with many different audiences, from concerto soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for live ABC television and radio in Melbourne’s Hamer Hall to performing chamber music for Musica Viva In Schools out at Longreach in outback Queensland. Festival performances include for The Piano Mill at Stanthorpe; Festival of Voices at Mona in Tasmania; at the Queensland Music Festival, Crossbows, Restrung, and Australian Piano Duo Festivals in Brisbane; and in the Newcastle Fringe, Sydney Fringe, Tyalgum and Bangalow Festivals in New South Wales. As soloist and chamber music collaborator in European venues, Brieley has been selected for festival gala concerts in Salzburg and Brussels, and she has performed in recitals facilitated by the Royal College of Music and Australian Music Foundation. Brieley has regularly performed with many leading Australian ensembles including Ensemble Trivium, Australia Piano Quartet, Collusion, Topology and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players, and as concerto soloist with orchestras including the Melbourne Symphony, Adelaide Symphony, Queensland Symphony, Melbourne Youth Orchestra, Queensland Conservatorium Chamber Orchestra and the Nizchny-Novgorod Philharmonic.
Recording projects have included the 2012 Mahler: Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection" for 2 pianos, 8 hands with fellow pianists for Melba Recordings to critical acclaim from sources such as The Guardian (Australia) and The Australian Weekend Review, and joining Collusion Music in 2013 to record the albums Flashpoint: Masterpieces of Messiaen and Hindemith and I read the old dream slowly: An Australian chamber music and art collection as an Ensemble in Residence at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. Finalised in 2022, Brieley was pianist for a series of performances and recordings for the doctoral project of soprano Judit Molnár at Griffith University, which also featured violinist Graeme Jennings, and explored and presented music by the Hungarian composers Béla Bartók and György Kurtág.
Alongside her extensive performance career, teaching and providing piano accompaniment for emerging musicians has remained a constant and important aspect of Brieley’s profession. Previous positions have included being an accompanist at the University of Queensland, and lecturer positions at the University of New England in regional New South Wales and for nearly five years at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney. She has also being invited to be a performance adjudicator for the Queensland Conservatorium and Sydney Eisteddfod, and a PhD examiner for the University of Queensland.
Raised on a farm in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales, Brieley showed musical talent early, receiving her Associate in Music Diploma from the Australia Music Examinations Board aged 11 years and her Bachelor of Music in Performance with First Class Honours from the Queensland Conservatorium aged 18 years, studying with Oleg Stepanov and winning all available performance prizes including the Basil Jones Sonata prize for collaborative work and the Brisbane Club Award, a premiere performance prize across all classical departments. In her graduating year, she performed Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No.1 with the Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra and was a semi-finalist in the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition.
Brieley continued studies for four years in the Performance Program at the Australian National Academy of Music with Frank Wibaut, Timothy Young and Rita Reichman, there being a winner of the in-house Concerto Competition on two occasions, and followed this with a Masters Degree in Performance from the Queensland Conservatorium, studying with Natasha Vlassenko, there winning prizes such as the Margaret Nixon Prize for art song performance and once again becoming a semi-finalist in the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition. Brieley then studied in London and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Performance with Distinction from the Royal College of Music in London whilst studying with Ruth Nye, these studies made possible with a David Paul Landa Memorial Scholarship and support from the Australian Music Foundation and Tait Memorial Trust. Her doctoral studies, completed in 2016 at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, were supervised primarily by Stephen Emmerson. Brieley has also studied with Pamela Page and Max Olding.