Pianist Deirdre Brenner believes in the power of storytelling through concert curation. Over the past two decades she has grown a multifaceted career which combines performance, teaching and artistic leadership.
Deirdre has given chamber music and art song recitals in venues including the Wiener Musikverein, Wiener Kozerthaus (Vienna), The Kennedy Center (Washington, DC), Teatro Real (Madrid), Philharmonie Essen, Kunsthalle Hamburg and the National Concert Hall (Dublin). She has performed at festivals including the Seoul Spring Festival of Chamber Music, Oxford Lieder Festival, Aix-en-Provence Festival, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Gustav Mahler Festival Steinbach, and Portogruaro International Music Festival and has recorded for broadcasts ORF, NPR, RTÉ and BR-Klassik. Further musical projects have taken her to Egypt, Venezuela, Jerusalem, the West Bank, Samoa and the Kingdom of Tonga.
Deirdre has partnered with artists including Wolfgang Holzmair, Birgid Steinberger, Tara Erraught, Michael Spyres, John Chest, Layla Claire, Elena Copons, Dorrotya Láng, Sophie Junker, Christina Gansch, Margaret Plummer and Klemens Sander, and has performed as soloist with the New Hampshire Philharmonic, Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, and the Arnold Schoenberg Chor, among others.
In 2013 Deirdre co-founded the Boyne Music Festival with her cousins, Aisling Manning and Julie-Anne Manning. From 2013 until 2018 she also curated the concert series Mosaïque in Vienna which fused art song with other art forms in innovative thematic programs.
Deirdre is currently on the faculty of the Anton Bruckner University in Linz, Austria. While on sabbatical in the spring semester of 2024 she taught in the piano department at the University of Wisconsin’s Mead Witter School of Music. She has previously held teaching positions at the Joseph Haydn Conservatory in Eisenstadt, IES Abroad, and the Performing Center Austria in Vienna.
Born in Massachusetts, USA, Deirdre earned a Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College with a double major in Engineering Sciences and Music, and Master's degrees from both the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Konservatorium Wien (MUK) in Vienna.