Brian Suits
Affiliate Artist in Collaborative Piano and Chamber Music

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; his second album is scheduled for release on Stomp Records in early 2008. 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 in New 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. Suits is a frequent guest conductor of 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," and the upcoming "Mask," 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 taught at the Yale School of Music from 1990-2002, and is currently an Affiliate Artist at the University of Houston's Moores School of Music. 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.