Biography

Brian Mummert sings, conducts, arranges, and composes music spanning eras and genres, all in the service of harnessing musical narrative as a mode for deepening mutual understanding. He is the founding artistic director of The New Consort, an American Prize-winning vocal ensemble dedicated to exploring the roles musical ritual and community play in our lives; and a co-founder of ChamberQUEER, a chamber music collective highlighting the voices of LGBTQ+ composers and performers, and The Red Ribbon Revue, a World AIDS Day concert featuring HIV+ performers celebrating the legacy of artists lost to AIDS.

Brian has directed world-class ensembles in venues spanning six continents. He has served most recently as Music Director of Ars Musica Chorale in New Jersey and Interim Music Director of NYC’s Central City Chorus. Recent engagements include conducting Pro Coro Canada as a Banff Centre Fellow; a season as the assistant conductor of all-star professional Washington, D.C. choir The Thirteen; and both singing and conducting on the Choir of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge's disc of the works of Julian Anderson, which Gramophone described as "outstanding... the results are tremendously rewarding.” Brian trained as a conductor at Trinity College Cambridge, receiving an MMus with Distinction in 2017 under Stephen Layton and Geoffrey Webber.

As a vocalist, Brian specializes in music of the Baroque, having appeared as a soloist with organizations including Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue, Holy Trinity Bach Vespers, the Academy of Sacred Drama, Bach Akademie of Charlotte, and Spire Chamber Ensemble. He is also an avid and experienced ensemble musician: performances with the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, The Thirteen, Oregon Bach Festival’s Berwick Chorus, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and more have led him to his current position as one of the Gentlemen of the Choir of Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue. Ever the musical omnivore, Brian has also swung with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall, sung the music of Vaughan Williams and Schubert with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and premiered new works by composers including Julian Anderson, Frances Pollock, David Lang, Róssa Crean, Simon Frisch, Sarah Kirkland Snyder, and Tim Holt. Brian's operatic roles include Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas, Bob in The Old Maid and the Thief, Mother in Kurt Weill’s Die Sieben Todsünden, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Apollo in both Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and Charpentier's Orphée, in addition to a broad oratorio & concert repertoire ranging from Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri to Pärt's PASSIO.