Composer and librettist Dean Burry is a storyteller. In addition to his extensive work in the opera and concert music fields, he has become one of the world’s leading composers of children’s opera, his works receiving performances across Canada, the United States, Europe, China and Brazil. At over 600 performances, his opera The Brothers Grimm is one of the most produced operas of the twenty-first century and his operatic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit recently received its European premiere to sold out houses in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Following a tenure as Artistic Director of the Canadian Children’s Opera Company, Burry became an Assistant Professor at the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University and Artistic Director of the school’s Music Theatre Creation Program.
Major compositions include The Hobbit for the Canadian Children’s Opera Company and Sarasota Opera, The Scorpions’ Sting for the Canadian Opera Company, The Mummers’ Masque for Toronto Masque Theatre and the CBC serial radio opera Baby Kintyre (released on the Centredisc and Naxos labels in September, 2014). His most recent compositions include Tempest in a Teacup, which premiered in Guiyang, China, The Bells of Baddeck, Shanawdithit (Tapestry Opera and Opera on the Avalon) and Sea Variations, a song cycle for Canadian Art Song Project and tenor Michael Colvin.
Burry was the 2011 recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation’s Louis Applebaum Composers Award for excellence in the field of music for young people and at over 600 performances, his opera The Brothers Grimm is the most-frequently performed Canadian opera. He is currently working on the opera Il Giudizio di Pigmalione and Tracing Colville, a new work for the Kingston Symphony Orchestra.
