Brendan Townsend

Brendan Townsend (b. 1968) is an Irish-born conductor, educator and cellist.
Appointed as Music Director of the Laredo Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003, Townsend has attracted widespread attention as a conductor. He won the “2007 ASCAP Award for Innovative Programming” presented by the League of American Orchestras. He has garned a national reputation for including lesser known concertos (in particular) into his concert programs including such pieces as the Violin Concerto of Rodolfo Halffter, Cello Concerto by Behzad Ranjbaran, Sinfonia Concertante by Miklos Rozsa and is a supporter of many of the country's finest living composers such as Lee Actor, Heather Schmidt, and Peter Boyer.
In 2003 he was appointed to the Music Directorship of the Laredo Philharmonic Orchestra. He also holds a concurrent teaching position at Texas A&M International University and until 2011 also taught at Laredo Community College. As a guest conductor, he has worked in Florida, Georgia, both Carolinas, Tennessee, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and California. He has also conducted concerts in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and recently, Honduras.
Growing up in County Cork, Ireland, the son of Dr. Declan Townsend, a musician, educator and conductor. He began his musical studies in cello and chamber music at an early age
at the Cork School of Music with cellist Gerard Kelly, and chamber musician Constantine Zanidache.
He earned his Diploma of the Cork School of Music in 1988. He further achieved a Licentiate Diploma in Cello Performance from Trinity College, London. He spent a year in Essen, Germany where he took cello lessons from Young-Chang Cho at the Folkwang Hochschule before transferring to the Conservatorium voor muziek (in Maastricht), where he attained a Docerend Musicus diploma in cello under the tutelage of Mirel Iancovici, and an Uitvoerend Diploma in conducting under Jan Stulen in 1994.
He began his conducting career with the Cork Gilbert & Sullivan Society at age 18. He made his professional European debut with the Netherlands Promenade Orchestra before going on to conduct over 20 orchestras, choirs and opera companies in Europe. From 1995 - 1997 he was the Music Director for Sinfonietta Geleen and Ars Antiqua et Nova. In 1997 he moved to the United States where he was Music Director of the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio and director of orchestras at the University of the Incarnate Word. In 2001 he became the interim Music Director of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra and Director of Orchestras at Tennessee Tech University. Since 2004 he has conducted all musical theater productions for Laredo Theater Guild International. In September 2005 he took over as Music Director of the Laredo Philharmonic Chorale. Since 2006 he has been a frequent guest conductor of the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, the Kingsville Symphony Orchestra, and recently the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Honduras.
In recent years his concert programs have included works by Marion Ingoldsby, Declan Townsend, Stephen Dankner, David Avshalomov, Bruce Craig Roter, Peter Boyer, Nancy Galbraith, Christoper Rouse, Henryck Gorecki, Mikolaj Gorecki, Yoshimatsui, Behzad Ranjbaran, Roberto Sierra, Ross Edwards, Heather Schmidt, and Lowell Lieberman.
He has worked alongside soloists Christopher O'Riley (piano), Wesley Baldwin (cello), Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio (violin), Cho-Liang Lin (violin), Herman Godes (piano), Ilya Itin (piano), Luis Casal (viola), David Delambre (violin), Heather Schmidt (piano), Susan Liu (piano and gu zheng), Suzanne Ramo (soprano), Patrick Henkens (tenor), Paul Mc Namara (tenor), Franz Kokkelmans (baritone), Melinda Hughes (soprano), Roger Martin (flute), James Lotz (bassoon), James Spinazola (saxophone) and many others.
His research has led to the publication of "PRACTICE: An acronym for a holistic approach to practice" in the International Journal of Music Education (Volume 30, No. 4).
* Laredo Musical Theatre Online website

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