Bill’s expertise as a pianist, percussionist, composer and producer can be heard on some 140 albums to date. His album Kaleidoscope – Music for Mallet Instruments won the 2024 ECMA and MusicNL Classical Album of the Year awards. Tom Allen of CBC Radio’s It’s About Time writes, “Bill Brennan’s Kaleidoscope is perfectly named – a constantly shifting, twirling, entrancing and enchanting swirl of beauty and fascination.” His recording with Andrea Koziol, I’ll Be Seeing You, garnered the 2019 MusicNL Jazz and Blues Award. Brennan’s album Solo Piano received nominations for MusicNL and ECMA Instrumental Album of the Year. His album Solo Piano 2 won the MusicNL Instrumental album of the year in 2008. Bill’s most recent album is “Dreaming in Gamelan”, a project with co-composer Andy McNeill. This year saw him win his first Juno as orchestrator of Deantha Edmunds’ piece “Angmalukisaa”.
Brennan was musical director of CBC’s beloved Vinyl Café, and a documentary composer for David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things. Internationally, his work has been formally recognized through prestigious awards and commissions, including the Freddie Stone Memorial Award. Always in demand as a folk and jazz pianist, Brennan performs regularly with his own projects. He has performed across North America and around the world: Indonesia, Austria, Germany, France, Japan, Norway, the Czech Republic, England, Portugal and Switzerland.
Brennan currently directs the award-winning Jazz East Big Band and Gamelan Sagara Asih. More than 40 years of relentless experience have garnered Brennan a solid reputation as a performer, composer and arranger of contemporary classical, jazz, folk and world music — always exploring, always open to new ideas, Brennan’s talents resist classification. The Toronto Star says: “Brennan … is a central figure in this country’s music.”