Brian Bondari was born in Mason City, Iowa in 1979. He holds both a DMA and a M.Mus in Composition from The University of Kansas, as well as Bachelor’s degrees in Music Education and Music Composition from Valdosta State University. His private instructors have included Mary Ellen Childs, Tayloe Harding, Kip Haaheim, and James Barnes. He is an Associate Professor of Music at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where he he teaches Music Theory, Composition, and Electronic Music.
As a composer, Brian has written for orchestra, chorus, wind ensemble, chamber and percussion ensembles, theatre, and the electronic medium. He's had works performed across the US, Europe, and Asia, and has thrice served as a guest composer at the Oiniades Theatre Festival in Greece. His recent works include Symphony No. 2 - Trinity, which was premiered in 2019 by the Trinity Symphony Orchestra to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of Trinity University. Other works include a piece for flute and piano, which was premiered in Carnegie Hall and followed by numerous performances in Italy.
Brian is a member of ASCAP, College Music Society, and Society of Composers, Inc, and is the current president of the Composers Alliance of San Antonio (CASA). His works are published by Kefáli Press.
Brian Bondari was raised on the coastal plains of southern Georgia, spending the bulk of his youth fishing, skateboarding, and swatting gnats away from his face. Eventually, it dawned on him that since his last name began with a “B”, it was futile to resist fate any longer, and he therefore decided to join the swollen ranks of the other B-named composers.
He plunged headlong into his studies, first completing Bachelor’s degrees in Music Education and Music Composition at Valdosta State University in Georgia. By then, he had grown sick of swatting gnats, so he packed his bags and headed to the Midwest for graduate school, completing his MM and DMA in Music Composition at The University of Kansas. Several excellent teachers over the years tried valiantly to teach him the craft of composition, including Tayloe Harding, Mary Ellen Childs, and Kip Haaheim, but Bondari finally found his mentor in James Barnes (another B-named composer). Under Barnes’ tutelage, he wrote a lot of strange music.
Degrees in hand, Bondari headed for Texas. After a two-year stint at UT Tyler, he took a position at Trinity University and now calls San Antonio “home”. He now spends less time skateboarding and even more time writing strange music, often blatantly tuneful and based on Greek and Persian mythologies. In San Antonio is where he plans to stay, unless those south-GA gnats somehow migrate that far west.