American Music Center

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BrooklynNY

http://www.elizabethbrowncomposer.com

Elizabeth Brown combines a succesful 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, 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. Other notable pieces include her chamber opera Rural Electrification (2006), for theremin, voice, and recorded sound, funded by a Barlow commission; Collected Visions, an installation done 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. 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. Featured as composer and soloist at the 2004 Big Apple Shakuhachi Conference in New York, she has given solo moonlight shakuhachi performances as Artist-in-Residence in Maine's Acadia National Park, in the sculpture quarry of the Lacoste School for the Arts in Provence, and in Isle Royale National Park, a U.S. Biosphere Reserve in the middle of Lake Superior. She premiered Mirage for shakuhachi and string quartet with the Grainger Quartet at the World Shakuhachi Festival 2008 in Sydney, Australia. From December 2008 until May 2009, she lived in Japan on a Cultural Exchange Fellowship supported by the US/Japan Friendship Commission. Flute Force premiered Brown's The Baths of Caracalla, for four alto flutes and recorded sound, in their 25th anniversary concert in January 2008 at Weill Hall. In March 2008, Brown premiered Piranesi, for theremin and string quartet, with video by Lothar Osterburg, in a program of her music at the Issue Project Room. Performers included the Momenta Quartet, Flute Force, and guitarist Benjamin Verdery. In 2007, she was guest composer and thereminist at both Monadnock Music and the Yale Summer School of Music in Norfolk, and her music for maverick game designer Eddo Stern's Darkgame was part of the inaugural show at Laboral, a new-media museum in Gijon, Asturias, Spain. 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. She also played the solo theremin part in Gavriil Popov's First Symphonic Suite with the American Symphony at Lincoln Center. Brown performs as flutist with a number of New York-based ensembles, including Orpheus, American Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, New York City Ballet Orchestra, and Flute Force. Brown 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
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