Dr. Brandt is co-founder and Artistic Director of the Houston-based contemporary music ensemble Musiqa (www.musiqahouston.org). Musiqa presents subscription concerts at the Hobby Center and free loft concerts at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Musiqa also has one of the largest outreach programs of any contemporary music ensemble in the United States: The ensemble has performed for over 30,000 public school students in the past seven years and won four consecutive awards from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Dr. Brandt is the author of an innovative, free web-based music appreciation course called “Sound Reasoning” (www.soundreasoning.org), created for the Connexions Project. “Sound Reasoning” was awarded an Access to Artistic Excellence Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Dr. Brandt has organized two international conferences on “Exploring the Mind through Music,” most recently in June 2011. He is currently pursuing several research projects into music and cognition and serves on the Advisory Board for Methodist Hospital’s Center for Performing Arts Medicine. Dr. Brandt has also written liner notes for New World, Bridge and Albany Records.
Dr. Brandt is an Associate Professor of Composition at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He was awarded the University’s George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching in 2007 and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize in 2001.