Prof. Brendan Sweeney

Prof. Brendan Sweeney is a newly appointed adjunct applied composition faculty in the Dewberry School of Music effective Spring 2025. An award-winning educator, arts technologist, and internationally-performed composer whose music and research explores the intersection of modern technology and human expression. A passionate educator, Prof. Sweeney’s research focuses on the importance of developing pedagogical approaches in the arts to support student success in an ever-evolving technological world.

Nominated by his Composition Department colleagues, he received the 2023 University of Florida Graduate School Teaching Award, which recognizes “excellence in teaching”, for the course he designed and implemented from 2022 to 2024 as part of his dissertation research. Prof. Brendan Sweeney’s works have had over 100 performances across 3 continents, with works featured on programs for the the 2024 North American Brass Band Association Championships, the 2024 Cortona Sessions for New Music, the 2023 Penn State International New Music Conference and Symposium, the Contemporary Art Music Project annual festival (CAMPGround 2022), as well as festivals and performances in France, Italy, Austria, and Brazil. Recent collaborations include a work for Orchestra with Sinfonia Cymru in Wales.

Prof. Sweeney regularly collaborates with world-class new music chamber ensembles and is currently composer-in-residence with Tampa Brass Band. As a recording engineer and arts documentarian, Sweeney holds ongoing appointments with national and international concert music festivals, and is regularly engaged through his production company Guesthouse Media to record concerts in New York and around the world. He has professional associations with the Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI), Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), the American Society for Composers Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the International Trumpet Guild (ITG), the North American Brass Band Association (NABBA), and Kappa Kappa Psi (alumni). 

Adjunct Applied Faculty

• Composition

Degrees

• BA, Music, University of South Florida
• MA, Music, University of Florida
• PhD Candidate, Music (ABD), University of Florida