Composer and librettist Dean Burry has become one of the world’s leading composers of children’s opera, his works receiving performances across Canada, the United States, Europe, China and Brazil. At over 600 performances, his opera The Brothers Grimm is one of the most produced operas of the twenty-first century. In 2018, Burry accepted a professorship at the Dan School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University in Kingston and is the founding Artistic Director of the Watershed Festival – Reimagining Music Theatre.
Burry was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, but grew up in the small town of Gander. As both his parents’ families came from small outport communities, he spent a great deal of time by the ocean and out in his father’s boat. Music is in the blood of Newfoundlanders, and it was in this environment that Burry began his own artistic journey. Early piano lessons were not completely satisfying, and it wasn’t until a teacher encouraged his desire for composition, at age ten, that music became a passion. Theatre was another great interest and soon he was writing plays and music for the school drama club. His first produced script, Good Gods, won the local drama festival in 1987.
Following high school, Burry began studies as a saxophone major at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. In seeking ways to combine his love of theatre and music, he began composing operas and musicals. In his firsts three years at Mt.A, he wrote, produced and conducted three major dramatic musical works: The Resurrection, Joe and Mary Had a Baby and Unto the Earth: Vignettes of a War.
In 1998, while working as an educator with the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, he was commissioned to write The Brothers Grimm. The opera was a great success and the first work to put the composer on a national stage. The Brothers Grimm has been seen by over 180,000 school children across Canada, the United States, Europe and South America since 2001. The Brothers Grimm is believed to be the most performed Canadian opera ever and one of the most performed 21st century operas.
Other major works include The Hobbit for the Canadian Children’s Opera Company and Sarasota Opera, The Scorpions’ Sting for the Canadian Opera Company, The Vinland Traveler and Le nez de la sorcière forMemorial University of Newfoundland, Pandora’s Locker for The Glenn Gould School, The Mummers’ Masque for Toronto Masque Theatre, the CBC serial radio opera Baby Kintyre (released on the Centredisc and Naxos labels in September, 2014), The Bells of Baddeck (Parks Canada Award of Excellence) and Beacon of Light for Rising Tide Theatre.
Recent premieres include the Dora Award winning Shanawdithit, Sea Variations (Canadian Art Song Project), String Quartet No. 1 (New Orford String Quartet) and the opera Il Giudizio di Pigmalione with COSA Canada and Opera McGill. His chamber work The Highwayman was released on the Centrediscs/NAXOS of Canada label in October 2023.
Burry was the 2011 recipient of the Ontario Arts Foundation’s Louis Applebaum Composers Award for excellence in the field of music for young people. Following the fall 2022 premiere of Tracing Colville with the Kingston Symphony Orchestra, Burry has begun working on a book which charts not only his own artistic journey, but that of famed Canadian war artist Alex Colville.