Jeffrey Brillhart has performed throughout the United States, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Cuba, Israel, and Europe as conductor and organist and is known for his musical versatility. He was awarded first place at the American Guild of Organists National Competition in Organ Improvisation in 1994.
Mr. Brillhart has served as Director of Music and Fine Arts at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church since January 1983. There, he oversees music, education, and arts programs that involve more than one-hundred fifty children, youth, and adults each week. Over his nearly 43-year tenure, he has led choral ensembles from the church on tours to England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Israel, Jordan, Brazil, France and Cuba. In September, 2023, he joined The Curtis Institute of Music faculty, where he teaches organ improvisation.
In June 2023, he retired after 25 years as Music and Artistic Director of Philadelphia’s acclaimed Singing City Choir, one of the first integrated community choirs in the United States. At Singing City he follows a distinguished line of conductors that includes Elaine Brown and Joseph Flummerfelt. Under his direction, his choral ensembles have performed with the Kronos Quartet, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Symphony in C, Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Bobbie McFerrin, Dave Brubeck, Denyce Graves, Helmuth Rilling, and Rossen Milanov, and on tours to Cuba, Northern Ireland, Brazil, Germany, Russia, the Balkans, South Africa and Mexico.
Mr. Brillhart maintains an active schedule as conductor, organist, competition adjudicator, and clinician, most recently at the Kimmel Center (with Canadian Brass and TenThing), Curtis Institute of Music, the Eastman School of Music, Westminster Choir College, Furman University, Walla Walla College, and Baylor University. His organ improvisation textbook, Breaking Free: Finding a Personal Language for Organ Improvisation through 20th-Century French Improvisation Techniques, was published by Wayne Leupold Editions in 2011. A second textbook, A World of Possibilities: Master Lessons in Improvisation was published by Wayne Leupold Editions in 2018. His choral and organ compositions are published by Hope Publishing and E.C. Schirmer.
In 2016 he was awarded the Elaine Brown Award for Choral Excellence, presented by the Pennsylvania American Choral Directors. This past year he presented improvisation masterclasses at the national convention of the American Guild of Organists and in Toronto, at the summer academy of the Royal College of Canadian Organists. He also led the choir of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church on a concert tour to France, performing in Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse (with organist Philippe Lefebvre), Tours, and Paris.
B.M. Drake University; M.M. Eastman School of Music