American Music Center

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BrooklynNY

http://www.elizabethbrowncomposer.com

Elizabeth Brown combines a successful composing career with an extremely diverse performing life, playing flute, shakuhachi, theremin, and dan bau (Vietnamese monochord) in a wide variety of musical circles. Her chamber music, shaped by this unique group of instruments and experiences, has been called luminous, dreamlike and hallucinatory. Brown's music has been heard in Japan, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Australia and Vietnam as well as across the US and Europe. A 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, she has received grants, awards and commissions from Orpheus, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, Newband, the Asian Cultural Council, the Japan/US Friendship Commission, Meet the Composer, the Electronic Music Foundation, the Cary Trust, and NYFA. She is the only musician to have both played with Orpheus and also written for them; Orpheus commissioned Lost Waltz in 1997 and premiered it in Carnegie Hall. After hearing the instrument on a concert tour of Japan, Brown began studying shakuhachi (traditional Japanese bamboo flute) in 1984 and its music has been a major influence on her musical language. She is celebrated both here and in Japan for her compositions combining eastern and western sensibilities. This past season alone, Shinshoufuukei (An Imagined Landscape) won Grand Prize in the Makino Yutaka Music Award Composition Competition for Japanese traditional instrument orchestra, and Mirage was a prizewinner in the SGCM Shakuhachi Composition Competition 2010, with performances in Tokyo's Kioi Hall and Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, Takemitsu Memorial. Music from Japan presented the Japanese premiere of Rubicon in Fukushima prefecture, performed by members of Tokyo’s celebrated Reigakusha gagaku orchestra. Music from Japan also commissioned fragments for the moon, for concerts featuring Brown with nohkan/shinobue artist Kohei Nishikawa in February 2011 in New York City and at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Finally, Brown was April Artist-in-Residence in the Grand Canyon, continuing work on a series of solo shakuhachi pieces inspired by particular places in nature. Brown has also given solo moonlight shakuhachi performances in the sculpture quarry of the Lacoste School for the Arts in Provence, and as Artist-in-Residence in both Maine's Acadia National Park and Isle Royale National Park, a U.S. Biosphere Reserve in the middle of Lake Superior. Since she premiered Mirage, for shakuhachi and string quartet, with the Grainger Quartet at the World Shakuhachi Festival 2008 in Sydney, Australia, it has also been performed in Tokyo, Prague, and New York City. In 2008/2009, she lived in Japan on a Cultural Exchange Fellowship supported by the US/Japan Friendship Commission. Brown continues to write for Japanese traditional instruments. Afterimage, for shakuhachi and shamisen, will be premiered in fall 2011 at Roulette, and Slowly Toward the North, for bass koto and shou (mouth organ) will be premiered in Tokyo in May 2012. Brown will present a solo shakuhachi concert in fall 2011 at the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in New York, performing her own music as well as traditional solo repertoire. Spring 2012 will see the premiere of Brown's 4th collaboration with visual artist Lothar Osterburg. A Bookmobile for Dreamers, commissioned by the Electronic Music Foundation through Meet the Composer's Commissioning Music/USA program, is a multimedia chamber opera for theremin, recorded sound, and video. Inspired by the joy of browsing, A Bookmobile for Dreamers will celebrate the imagination as inspired by the printed word. Brown and Osterburg were in residence at the Liguria Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy, in spring 2011. Their previous collaboration, supported by Brown's Guggenheim (and helping Osterburg to earn his own Guggenheim in 2010) was Piranesi, for theremin, string quartet (the Momenta Quartet), and video. Brown has been guest composer and thereminist at both Monadnock Music and the Yale Summer School of Music in Norfolk. She played the solo theremin part in Gavriil Popov's First Symphonic Suite with the American Symphony at Lincoln Center in 2008. Also in 2008, Brown shared a concert with composer Frances White on Tom Buckner's Interpretations series, and was soloist in Seahorse, her concerto for theremin and Partch instruments, with Montclair University's Partch Ensemble. Other notable pieces include Brown's chamber opera Rural Electrification (2006), for theremin, voice, and recorded sound, funded by a Barlow commission; Collected Visions, an installation created in collaboration with photographer Lorie Novak, which has been presented by the International Center of Photography in NYC, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Center for Creative Photography in Tuscon; Delirium, featuring the original microtonal instruments of American composer/inventor Harry Partch, performed by Newband to open the 2001 Bang On a Can Marathon at BAM's Opera House; and Migration, for shakuhachi and strings, which was included on CRI's Emergency Music: Bang On A Can Live Volume 2, and has been widely performed. Brown was Artist-in-Residence at the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music in 2002, through a grant from the Asian Cultural Council. A solo CD, "Blue Minor: Chamber Music by Elizabeth Brown" was released in 2003 by Albany Records. She has been a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy and at the MacDowell Colony, and has been composer-in-residence at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, the Cape and Islands Chamber Music Festival, and the Bennington Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East. Brown performs as flutist with a number of New York-based ensembles, including the American Symphony and New York City Ballet Orchestra, and is a member of the flute quartet Flute Force. Her flute music is performed around the world. She was born in 1953 in Camden, Alabama, where she grew up on an agricultural research station. After receiving a Master's degree in flute performance from The Juilliard School in 1977, she started composing in the late 70's. She now lives in Brooklyn with visual artist Lothar Osterburg.

Sort by

Title	Ensemble Type	Composed	Duration	Media
Afterimage	Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble	2011	00:09:00
Slowly Toward the North, after Yves Tanguy	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2011	00:10:00
Cloudrest	Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble	2010	00:12:00
One String, One Breath	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2010	00:11:00
Shinshoufuukei, or An Imagined Landscape	Orchestra	2010	00:15:00
fragments for the moon	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2010	00:10:00
Seahorse	Unspecified Instrument(s)	2009	00:10:00
Rubicon	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2009	00:10:00
Glacial	Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble	2008	00:09:44
Mirage	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2008	00:12:00
The Baths of Caracalla	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2007	00:07:38
Atlantis	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2007	00:07:00
Piranesi	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2007	00:14:00
Detour	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2006	00:09:00
Rural Electrification	Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble	2006	00:54:00
Antarctica	Solo instrument, non-keyboard	2005	00:07:00
Shakuhachi Duets From Isle Royale	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2005	00:07:00
Lunette	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2005	00:07:00
Arcana	Solo instrument, non-keyboard	2004	00:09:29
Moonflowers	Solo instrument, non-keyboard	2003	00:00:03
Beatitudes	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2003	00:14:00
Concerto for Dan Bau and Chamber Orchestra	Orchestra	2002	00:17:00
Blue Minor	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2001	00:15:00
Catalog of Scents in the Garden at Night	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	2001	00:08:00
Liguria	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1999	00:10:00
Acadia	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1999	00:08:30
Trillium	Solo instrument, non-keyboard	1999	00:04:00
Sound Diary	Keyboard	1999	00:10:00
Harmonia	Orchestra	1998	00:15:00
Anthem	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1998	00:13:00
Delirium	Unknown	1997	00:12:00
Lost Waltz	Orchestra	1997	00:12:00
Delirium	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1997	00:12:00
Alabama Panorama	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1996	00:07:00
Travelogue	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1995	00:08:00
Figures In A Landscape	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1995	00:14:00
Anthem	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1994	00:14:00
Archipelago	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1992	00:12:11
Chronicle	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1992	00:10:00
Secret Life of Birds, The	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1992	00:14:00
Hermit Thrush	Solo instrument, non-keyboard	1991	00:04:00
Fragile Barrier, A	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1991	00:15:00
Maps of heaven	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1991	00:12:00
Migration	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1990	00:11:17
The Memory Palace	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1990	00:09:30
String Quartet no. 1	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1989	00:14:00
Three Outside insights	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1988	00:07:30
Seawatch	Solo instrument, non-keyboard	1987	00:08:00
Three songs on texts of Milosz	Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble	1987	00:07:00
Augury	Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice	1987	00:14:00