Elisabetta Olga Laura Brusa
Born in Milano, 3rd April 1954, is an Italian - British composer.
As a child wrote 32 piano pieces. At the Milan Conservatoire she formally studied composition with Bruno Bettinelli and Azio Corghi, graduating in 1980. She also received instruction from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Hans Keller. She then taught Composition and Orchestration at the Conservatorio of Milan from 1985 to 2019.
After winning first prize at the Washington International Competition for Composition for String Quartet in 1982, she was awarded the Fromm Music Foundation Fellowship and a Fellowship of the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission the next year to follow the Composition classes at the Tanglewood Music Center and three Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony later in the decade. In 1997 she married the conductor Gilberto Serembe.
Currently, she is best known for her orchestral works recorded in five volumes on the Naxos Records label. She has had numerous commissions and her compositions have been performed in Great Britain, Italy, the United States, Russia, Canada, Austria, Sweden, Ukraine with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, St. Petersburg Camerata State Hermitage Orchestra, CBC Vancouver Orchestra, Gera-Altenburg Philharmonisches, Aachener Kammerorchester, New England Philharmonic of Boston, Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Contemporary Music Forum of Washington D.C., Women’s Philharmonic of San Francisco amongst others. Her music has been broadcast and televised in Great Britain, Italy, the United States, Vatican, Canada, Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark,
Australia, Hong Kong, Vietnam.
- Orchestral Works, volume 1 (Florestan, Messidor, La Triade, Nittemero Symphony, Fanfare): Naxos 8.555266, 21st Century Classics
- Orchestral Works, volume 2 (Firelights, Adagio, Wedding Song, Requiescat, Suite Grotesque, Favole): Naxos 8.555267, 21st Century Classics
- Orchestral Works, volume 3 (Symphony No.1, Merlin): Naxos 8.573437, 21st Century Classics
- Orchestral Works, volume 4 (Symphony No.2, Simply Largo): Naxos 8.574263, 21st Century Classics
- Orchestral Works, volume 5 (Requiem, Stabat Mater): Naxos 8.574589, 21st Century Classics