Justin Brown was for twelve years General Music Director of the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, where he was recognised as “one of today’s leading Wagner conductors” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), received the German Publishers Award for innovative programming, and won wide acclaim for productions such as Les Troyens, A Village Romeo and Juliet, The Ring, Tristan and Isolde, Parsifal and Wahnfried, which he commissioned. He is also Music Director Laureate of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra in the United States, where his programming and commissioning work won multiple national awards and saw the orchestra invited to Carnegie Hall’s Spring for Music Festival.
As guest conductor, he has worked with over 100 orchestras and opera houses worldwide, including the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Dresden Philharmonic, Cincinatti Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic, Sao Paolo Symphony and Sydney Symphony; the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Oper Frankfurt, Grand Théâtre de Genève, La Monnaie, Teatro San Carlo Lisbon, Santa Fe Opera and Teatro Colón Buenos Aires.
His discography includes Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 (Badische Staatskapelle; Diapason d’Or), Gershwin’s complete works for piano and orchestra (Dallas SO, Anne-Marie McDermott; Editor’s Choice Gramophone Magazine) as well as works ranging from Dvorak and Elgar to Elliott Carter and Poul Ruders.
Brown studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and at Tanglewood, later becoming an assistant to both Leonard Bernstein and Luciano Berio. He began his career at ENO and Scottish Opera, and made his debut with Bernstein’s Mass at the Guildhall School.