Antonia Brico

Antonia Louisa Brico (June 26, 1902 – August 3, 1989) was a Dutch-born American conductor and pianist.

Early life and education Born Antonia Louisa Brico to a Dutch Catholic unmarried mother in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Brico was renamed Wilhelmina Wolthuis by her foster parents. She and her foster parents migrated to the United States in 1908 and settled in California. On leaving Oakland Technical High School in Oakland in 1919 she was already an accomplished pianist and had experience in conducting. At the University of California, Berkeley, Brico worked as an assistant to the director of the San Francisco Opera. Following her graduation in 1923 she studied piano under a variety of teachers, most notably under Zygmunt Stojowski.

In 1927, Brico entered the Berlin State Academy of Music and in 1929 graduated from its master class in conducting. During that period she was also a pupil of Karl Muck, conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom she studied for a further three years after graduation. and in 1939 conducted the Federal Orchestra in concerts at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Brico settled in Denver, Colorado in 1942. She was conductor of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra from 1958-1963. She taught piano or conducting to such students as Judy Collins, Donald Loach, James Erb and Karlos Moser. In 2003, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Death and legacy Brico died in 1989 after a long illness at the age of 87. She had lived at the Bella Vita Towers, a nursing home in Denver, since 1988.

Dutch director Maria Peters' movie (The Conductor) about the life of Brico, starring as Antonia Brico, was released in 2018.

Children's picture book In One Ear & Out the Other: Antonia Brico & her amazingly musical life by Diane Worthey and illustrated by Morgana Wallace was published by Penny Candy Books in 2020. The book is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.