Biography

Australian pianist Brieley Cutting brings energy and refinement to a diverse career encompassing solo and collaborative performance, event curation, arts promotion and practice-focused research. A dedicated piano teacher, she also greatly enjoys sharing her experience and love of music with student musicians.

Brieley has performed as pianist in many roles - as concerto soloist, recital soloist, chamber musician, vocal and choir accompanist - and for many situations, including for live radio broadcasts, live and studio recordings, and for educational programs, such as Musica Viva in Schools. Her performance activities have included many festival appearances - for The Piano Mill, Festival of Voices, Queensland Music Festival, Australian Piano Duo Festival, Sydney and Newcastle Fringe Festivals, Tyalgum and Bangalow Festivals - and collaborations with many ensembles, such as Ensemble Trivium, Australia Piano Quartet, Radu Cello Ensemble, Collusion, Topology and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players.

Brieley has performed for major venues in Australia such as Hamer Hall in Melbourne, the City Recital Hall in Sydney, the Adelaide Town Hall, MONA in Hobart, and the Queensland Performance Arts Centre in Brisbane; for European venues in cities such as London, Brussels and Saltzburg; and more recent performances have been at Tempo Rubato in Melbourne, Phoenix Central Park's 'The Church' in Sydney, and for Musica Viva's regional touring program.

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Brieley comes from a regional background, growing up on a farm in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales. Her first piano was an old, discarded upright piano delivered to her family’s corrugated iron house on an open, rusty trailer. As her enthusiasm for the piano developed, there would many hours spent travelling to Brisbane and back again for weekly piano and music lessons.

Brieley was accepted at age thirteen for tertiary studies, graduating aged eighteen from the Queensland Conservatorium with First Class Honours, as concerto soloist with the Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra and a semi-finalist in the Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition.  

Subsequent study was at the Australian National Academy of Music where she was twice a winner of the in-house Concerto Competition, leading to concerto performances with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic. Brieley extended her studies and performances at the International Festival Musici Artis in Brussels and Summer Festival in Salzburg, and with a Master of Music at the Queensland Conservatorium. During this time, competition success included being National Keyboard Winner of the 2006 ABC Young Performers Awards and performing as concerto soloist with orchestras including the Melbourne, Adelaide and Queensland Symphony Orchestras.

Brieley continued studies in London at the Royal College of Music, supported by the Tait Memorial Trust, Australian Music Foundation, and a David Paul Landa Scholarship. She graduated with distinction and performed as soloist and chamber musician in various London venues. She returned to Australia, soon after being awarded Second Placing in the 2010 Kerikeri National Piano Competition in New Zealand.

In 2013, Brieley was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship, which took her to the Netherlands, United Kingdom and New York, and in 2016, Brieley completed doctoral studies on scholarship at Griffith University. Major related creative projects included the critically acclaimed Mahler: Symphony No.2 'Resurrection' arranged for 2 pianos, 8 hands for Melba Records; working with Collusion Music as an ensemble in residence at the Queensland Conservatorium; and performing many concerts with with Artico Ensemble, an ensemble promoting concert performance in community venues.

Always passionate about promoting art music performance, supporting fellow artists, and encouraging new music creation and performance, in 2011 Brieley founded an award-winning and innovative Brisbane concert series, assisted by the local Steinway & Sons piano distributors. This grew into DeClassified Music which ran until 2016 and was described as “a great addition to the Brisbane Scene” (RealTime Arts) and as exploiting "a critical mass of grass-roots interest in genuinely innovative music and art that is not confined to predictable and formal presentational settings” (Liam Viney, University of Queensland School of Music). Reviews of live performances included “lived up to high expectations” (Brisbane Weekender), “one of the best and most exciting ‘jazz with strings’ recordings that I’ve heard” (The Jazz Mann), and "who knew classical music could be so fun, am I right?" (The Factory Diaries). Events were featured in two Queensland Music Festivals, supported by the Australia Council of the Arts and Arts Queensland, and her series was awarded a Creative Sparks Award from the Brisbane City Council. 

Brieley continues to bring together collaborations, promote new music, and produce events via DeClassified Music - recent productions have been Electro Lieder in 2023, nominated for 'Best in Music' at the Sydney Fringe Festival; Grand Duet: Windows into contrasting worlds from 2024, Tempo Rubato describing this as having "incredible repertoire” and being “delivered with so much power and conviction”; Ambient Delights which featured at The Church/Phoenix Central Park in Sydney; and Lyrical Masterpieces was toured by Musica Viva in 2025/26. 

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Brieley has been based in Sydney since 2020 after being offered the position as Lecturer in Classical Piano at the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney, which she held until leaving in 2024. A dedicated piano teacher, Brieley has assisted many beginner pianists with creation of a strong foundation, and her more advanced students have graduated with bachelor and masters degrees, attained AMEB Diplomas from as young as ten years old, been prizewinners in piano competitions and eisteddfods, and auditioned successfully for acceptance into specialised performance-focused programs and tertiary degrees. Brieley has adjudicated for organisations such as the Queensland Conservatorium, University of Queensland and Sydney Eisteddfod, and is a Steinway Educational Partner.

Brieley’s main piano teachers and mentors have included Pamela Page, Max Olding, Oleg Stepanov, Natasha Vlassenko, Timothy Young, Rita Reichman and Stephen Emmerson.