Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, led by charismatic Artistic Director Paul Dyer, celebrates the music of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with excellence, flair and joy. Comprising leading specialists in informed performance practice from all over Australia, the Brandenburg performs using original edition scores and instruments of the period, breathing fresh life and vitality into Baroque and Classical masterpieces – as though the music has just sprung from the composer's pen.

The Orchestra's name pays tribute to the Brandenburg Concertos of J.S. Bach, whose musical genius was central to the Baroque era. Since its foundation in 1989, the Brandenburg has collaborated with such acclaimed and dynamic virtuosi as Andreas Scholl, Emma Kirkby, Andreas Staier, Philippe Jaroussky, Elizabeth Wallfisch, Genevieve Lacey and Andrew Manze.

Through its annual subscription series, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra performs before a live audience in excess of 30,000 people, and hundreds of thousands more through national broadcasts on ABC Classic FM. In addition, the Orchestra tours nationally and has a regular commitment to performing in regional Australia. Since 2003 the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra has been a member of the Major Performing Arts Group, which comprises 28 flagship national arts organisations supported by the Australia Council for the Arts.

Since its beginning in 1990, the Brandenburg has been popular with both audiences and critics. In 1998 The Age proclaimed the Orchestra had 'reached the ranks of the world's best period instrument orchestras'. In 2001 The Guardian exclaimed that the Orchestra's sold-out London Proms performance at the Royal Albert Hall was 'an event that just seemed to stop the audience in its tracks - and had everyone roaring for more. The whole concert was just bliss, every single stupendous second of it.' And recently the Sydney Morning Herald described the Orchestra as 'decidedly rapturous and deserving of every bit of the footstamping, cheering ovation'.

The Brandenburg's fifteen recordings with ABC Classics include five ARIA Award winners for Best Classical Album (1998, 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2010).