Brian Suits
Visiting Associate Professor

office: MSM 203
office phone: (713)743-3154
address: 120 School of Music Bldg, Houston, TX 77204-4017
email : bjsuits2@uh.edu

Trained as a classical pianist, Brian Suits is also composer, conductor, arranger, chamber musician, teacher, and improvisational artist. His compositions run the gamut from serious to light styles, and from full-blown orchestral works to the simplest of popular songs. Suits' first album of original solo piano works, "The Way Back," was released in 2004 on musikdorf Records. He premiered his "Piano Concerto" in December of 2003 in Kangneung, Korea, and two months later his "Quartet on Irish Themes" was performed in Tucson, Arizona by violinists Benny and Soovin Kim, violist Roger Chase, and cellist Peter Rejto. His works have been heard in Merkin Hall and on WQXR and WNYC Radio inNew York City. As pianist, Suits has played with the Jupiter Symphony and Sejong Soloists, among others. Suits also recorded a set of 23 piano CDs for Chung-Eum Music Publishers, which include some three dozen sonatas of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, the Bach Inventions and the complete Czerny Etudes. Among other appearances as conductor, Suits frequently guest conducts the French Chamber Orchestra "Alberic Magnard," and has appeared twice conducting the Seoul-based Prime Philharmonic. He appears regularly on the concert stage in collaboration with other musicians, especially his wife, violinist Kyung Sun Lee. The duo has performed on several continents and recorded two CDs together. Since 2006, Suits has been writing and conducting orchestral arrangements in the burgeoning Korean movie industry, working for and with Byeongwoo Lee, guitarist and foremost composer of Korean film music. To date, Suits has worked on "For Horowitz," "The Host," "Bunt," "Miracle on First Avenue," "Voice of a Murderer," "Soo," "Mask," and "Hansel and Gretel," as well as the KBS television documentary "Yellow River." "The Host" was a hit at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and subsequently broke all box office records in Korea. At the 2006 Korean Film Awards, "For Horowitz" won the best music award, and "The Host" was runner-up. Suits is currently working on his first film as music director, a black comedy entitled "Belly-button." Suits coached art song and taught accompanying at the Yale School of Music from 1990-2002. In summers he teaches and plays at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. He received his Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and his Master of Music from the University of Southern California. Foremost among his teachers were pianists David Renner and Brooks Smith. He joined the faculty at Moores in Fall of 2006.