Active as both a composer and an educator, Dr. Brakel has taught composition and electronic music at the Eastman School of Music and music theory at the University of Iowa. Currently, he is an adjunct professor of music theory at Chapman University.

His recent honors include commissions by the Hanson Institute for American Music and the RochesterInk Festival, awards from ASCAP, the Eastman School of Music (Howard Hanson Large Ensemble Prize), and the University of Iowa (Henry and Parker Pelzer Prize in Composition), and scholarships from the Internationale Musikinstitut Darmstadt and the Eastman School of Music (Paul Sacher Scholarship). Additionally, he is a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society.

Brakel’s music has been performed by groups and individuals such as the Society for Chromatic Art, Eastman's Musica Nova, Ossia New Music, the NYU New Music Ensemble, and violist John Graham. Performances have taken place across the United States, in Canada, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, and at prominent festivals and conferences including the FSU Festival of New Music, June in Buffalo, SEAMUS, SCI, and the Czech-American Music Institute. His prize-winning collaborative multimedia works with animator Keum-Taek Jung have been selected for festival performances around the world.