Japanese American pianist Bretton Brown enjoys a diverse career as song accompanist, coach, and chamber musician. He lives in London and made his debut there in 2016 accompanying Renée Fleming at Wigmore Hall. His other recital appearances include Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), the Barbican, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Edinburgh International Festival, Konzerthaus Dortmund, and Bold Tendencies. His performances have been broadcast by the BBC and Bayerischer Rundfunk, among others, and he has worked as repetiteur/coach in a number of the world’s great opera houses, including the Royal Ballet & Opera, Dutch National Opera, Royal Danish Opera, and Opéra comique.

Brown is closely associated with the music of Sir George Benjamin. He has worked alongside the composer for over a decade as Benjamin’s repetiteur/coach of choice, including for the world premiere of Picture a day like this (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence), the world premiere of Lessons in Love and Violence (Royal Ballet & Opera), the American premiere of Written on Skin (Tanglewood), and further productions of the composer’s operas and concert pieces around the world. Brown begins the 2025/26 season with Written on Skin at Royal Danish Opera, having spent the summer preparing and performing in the Austrian premiere of Picture a day like this at the Tiroler Festspiele, Erl.

A frequent guest of the Dutch National Opera, Brown returns to that house in 2025/26 for their production of Hannah Kendall’s The Knife of Dawn. He has previously prepared two world premieres at DNO (Ellen Reid's The Shell Trial and Micha Hamel's Caruso a Cuba) as well as the Dutch premiere of Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence.

He has prepared the world premiere of Bernard Foccroulle’s Zauberland, written for Julia Bullock, at le Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, and he assisted Renée Fleming in the preparation of André Previn’s final work, Penelope, written for her and first performed at Tanglewood, where Brown was twice a fellow, receiving the Henri Kohn Memorial Award from the Festival in 2013.

As a coach of established singers, Brown has prepared artists for principal roles at the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Ballet & Opera, the Wiener Staatsoper, the Salzburg Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, and San Francisco Opera, and for concert performances at the Venice Biennale, Carnegie Hall, and the BBC Proms.

Committed to the education of younger artists, Brown leads the collaborative piano programme at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he teaches pianists, coaches singers, and has curated innovative song projects on topics ranging from the ouroboros to climate breakdown. His students have won the Gerald Moore Award and pianist prizes at the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition and Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards, as well as positions in the young artist programmes of the Bayerische Staatsoper and the National Opera Studio. Since 2024, he is also the leader of the resident artist program at the Lakes Area Music Festival in Minnesota.

Raised in Kentucky, Brown holds degrees from Yale, the New England Conservatory, and Juilliard. He won prizes for music and poetry at Yale and was awarded Juilliard’s Richard F. French Doctoral Prize for his dissertation on the life and music of Gustav Holst.