About Brother John

Award-winning composer John Paul Russo (b. 1967) is a member of a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church called the Capuchin-Franciscan Friars, as the initials after his name indicate. He is usually called "Brother John" (all friars go by the title of "Brother"). He presently lives in Union City, New Jersey, where he is the director of vocation ministry for his province. Until last summer, he was stationed for 10 years at Most Holy Redeemer parish in Tampa, where he worked as pastoral associate and director of faith formation.

Brother John began piano lessons at age 9 and then began composing at the age of 11, and has been producing works ever since. During his high school years he attended a community music school and studied theory and composition. He went on to study composition at the Eastman School of Music (1985-89) and then at Indiana University (1989-90). During that time, he also attended a summer composers’ seminar in Aspen, Colorado. Through the course of these years, he studied composition with Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, Warren Benson, David Liptak, Fred Fox, Claude Baker, William Bolcom, Earl Brown, George Tsontakis, Jacob Druckman and others.

In 1991, he decided to join the Capuchins where he spent several years in formation and ministry to the poor (especially as director of a soup kitchen for 3 years) and in 1997 moved to the parish in Tampa until the summer of 2007 when he was transferred to New Jersey to take on his new ministry.

Brother John has won several national awards for his works, including a Herbert Zipper prize, 2 ASCAP awards, and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the National Academy of Arts and Letters. He has recently written a series of sacred works, especially a Mass setting for unaccompanied chorus called Missa pro nova aurora, which was dedicated to Pope Benedict XVI and was presented to him in the summer of 2006. Other works include the 7-movement Canticle Odes for solo piano; 2 short orchestral works (FrateVento and Un Français à New York) -- both written for and premiered by The Florida Orchestra last season; Fuser for string quartet; Eventual Horizons for mixed piano quintet; and various other works for chorus, small ensembles and solo instruments.