Nic Bray
Manitoban composer and performer Nic Bray is a multifaceted musician whose practice spans composition, songwriting, and jazz saxophone performance. His music bridges the gap between contemporary classical, jazz, and pop idioms, showcasing a versatile and inventive approach to composition. He first received recognition as the winner of the 2025 Canadian Music Centre Emerging Composer Competition, working with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Most recently he is a recipient of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2026 Future Award, being commissioned to compose a work for the Hamilton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Nic’s founding of the Towers Archival Association showcases his desire to create spaces that make music accessible to all, with this organization aiming to bring public domain musical artifacts out of private collections and into public access. Through fundraising events and collaborative performances, Nic demonstrates the potential to make a significant impact beyond the stage, using music to build stronger, more vibrant communities.
Featured at CMI
A Day in the Life
This suite is first and foremostly a collection which must be approached considering each movement as a dance. This series of dance-like vignettes showcases a scale of differing moments and emotional states one may experience throughout the course of a day. Dealing with the emotional range possible in ‘a day in the life’, these divertimentos project at times anxiety or sorrow, at times loving and wistful wishes, even reaching moments of joy and triumph. These short outbursts of differing emotional states grow more formally complex and lengthy in ‘Valse’.