Elizabeth Brown (born 1953) is an American contemporary composer and performer, known for music described as otherworldly, which employs microtonal expression, unique instrumentation and a morphing, freewheeling language.Gann, Kyle. "American Composer: Elizabeth Brown," Chamber Music, April 2002, p. 18–9.Kozinn, Allan. "Zany New Music, But Quirkily Compelling," The New York Times, May 14, 2003. Retrieved November 5, 2020.Clements, Dominy. "Elizabeth Brown, Mirage," MusicWeb International, August 2013. Retrieved November 5, 2020. Her work is frequently commissioned for specific ensembles (e.g., Newband, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra)Powers, Ann. "A Generous, Friendly Dose of Experimentalism," The New York Times, November 3, 2001, p. 16. Retrieved November 5, 2020.Keedle, Jayne. "A Musical Democracy: Orpheus Chamber Orchestra premieres the Lost Waltz," The Hartford Advocate, November 13, 1997. and has been performed internationally in solo, chamber and orchestral contexts at venues including Carnegie Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music.Holland, Bernard. "In a World of Civility, A Sudden Mozart Shift," The New York Times, November 26, 1997, p. E12. Retrieved November 3, 2020.Eisler, Edith. "Flute Force, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall," New York Concert Review, Spring 2008, p. 24.Music From Japan. "Flutes from the East and the West / Song from the Spirit of Japan," Events. Retrieved November 9, 2020.Asian Cultural Council. Elizabeth Brown, Grantees. Retrieved November 9, 2020. She has written extensively for flute, unconventional instruments such as the Partch complement and theremin, and the traditional Asian shakuhachi and đàn bầu; she combines them in original ways that mix Western and Eastern, ancient and modern, and experimental and conventionally melodic sensibilities.Sullivan, Jack. "Elizabeth Brown, Mirage," American Record Guide, January/February 2014, p. 83.Gardner, Alexandra. "Sounds Heard: Blowing In The Wind (Flute Edition)," NewMusic USA, September 17, 2013. Retrieved November 5, 2020.Hamilton, Andy. "Elizabeth Brown, Mirage," Wire, November 2013. Composer and critic Robert Carl calls Brown a "gentle maverick" whose avant-gardism bends and subverts traditional tropes with an unironic, unpretentious manner "that is fresh and imaginative, but never afraid of beauty, nor of humane warmth."Carl, Robert. "2004 Want List," Fanfare, November/December 2004, p. 104–5.
As a multi-instrumentalist, Brown is best known for flute, shakuhachi and theremin. She has performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall in Boston, and the World Shakuhachi Festival (London), among other venues.Schweitzer, Vivien. "American Symphony Orchestra," The New York Times, January 28, 2008. Retrieved November 9, 2020.Boston Symphony Orchestra. "Musicians Performing During the 2017-2018 BSO Season." Retrieved November 9, 2020.World Shakuhachi Festival. Concerts, 2018. Retrieved November 9, 2020. Her music was recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007;John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Elizabeth Brown, Fellows. Retrieved November 3, 2020. she has also received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, New Music USA, and composition competitions in Tokyo for traditional Japanese instrumentation, a rarity for a Westerner.New York Foundation for the Arts. "Directory of Artists’ Fellows & Finalists," 2018. Retrieved November 3, 2020.New Music Online Library. "Elizabeth Brown." Retrieved November 3, 2020.Carl, Robert. Elizabeth Brown – Mirage, liner notes, Brooklyn, NY: New World Records, 2013. Retrieved November 3, 2020. Brown lives in Red Hook, New York in the Hudson Valley and is married to visual artist and frequent collaborator Lothar Osterburg.Ross, Alex. "The Power of Four: String quartets multiply across New York," The New Yorker, January 28, 2013. Retrieved November 3, 2020.Sheridan, Molly. "New York: Bright Lights, Small Farm-Elizabeth Brown’s Rural Electrification," NewMusic USA, May 26, 2006. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
Early life and career Elizabeth Cecile Brown was born in 1953 in the small town of Camden, Alabama and grew up on an agricultural research station and working farm there.Van Cleve, Libby. Elizabeth Brown, Yale Oral History of American Music, 2010. Retrieved November 3, 2020. Despite the area's cultural limitations, she studied piano, performed in church choirs and school bands, and took up the flute at age 16.Sheridan, Molly. "Slipping Through Memory: The Music of Elizabeth Brown," NewMusic USA, February 19, 2008. Retrieved November 5, 2020.West, Paul R. "Brown, Elizabeth," Oxford Music Online. Retrieved November 3, 2020. After a year at University of Southern Mississippi, she transferred to College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati (BM, 1975), studying with Robert Cavally. She subsequently moved to New York, finding work as a union usher at Lincoln Center—a three-year experience she considers foundational to her education—and was accepted into The Juilliard School a year later.
After studying under Samuel Baron and earning a degree in flute performance at Juilliard (MM, 1977), Brown established herself in New York's freelance performance community. She subbed at the Metropolitan Opera and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and toured with groups such as Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Philharmonia Virtuosi, gaining notice in the New York Times and other publications for her technique and musicianship.de Marcellus, Juliette. "Hits of the 1700s Still Charming," Palm Beach Daily News, July 26, 1979.White, Marion. "Concert of concertos 'refreshes,'" Greenwich News, December 22, 1983.Kraglund, John. "Chamber series start triumphant," The Globe and Mail (Canada), November 26, 1984.Kozinn, Allan. "Lessons in Concert," The New York Times, November 28, 1998, p. C22. Retrieved November 3, 2020.Oestreich, James R. "A Violinist Returns, Playing Small-Scale Works," The New York Times, February 18, 1991, p. 18. Retrieved November 3, 2020. In the 1980s, as a member of a dance company, Gathering Wood, she began her composing career while in her late 20s, despite the lack of formal training in composition.Dunning, Jennifer. "Nancy Allison in American Program," The New York Times, June 23, 1986, p. C12. Retrieved November 5, 2020.Teck, Katherine. Music for the Dance: Reflections on a Collaborative Art, Los Angeles: Greenwood Press/University of California, 1989. Retrieved November 5, 2020.Dunning, Jennifer. "The Dance: Jesse Duranceau," The New York Times, April 17, 1986. Retrieved November 5, 2020.
While on an orchestra tour of Japan during this period, Brown discovered the shakuhachi, an ancient Japanese bamboo flute whose varied, subtle tones she has likened to the private music in her head. The instrument evokes nature and was traditionally played by mendicant Zen monks as a mode of meditation.Hoover, Joanne Sheehy. "Composer-in-residence premieres two works," Taos Journal, May 30, 2001.Williams, Ryan. "Evoking the sounds of nature through music," Williams-Grand Canyon News, April 20, 2011, p. 2B. After studying in the Kinko School tradition with Ralph Samuelson, and Mizuno Komei and Yamato Shudo in Japan, the instrument became a major influence on her musical language. In subsequent years, Brown learned the theremin—after seeing a documentary on the life of Leon Theremin in the mid-1990s—and the đàn bầu (Vietnamese monochord), traveling to Vietnam to study in 2000.Ernest, Dagney C. "A singular voice, in honor of one," Courier-Gazette (Camden, ME), May 20, 2015. Retrieved November 9, 2020. She has incorporated all three instruments into her composing.
Composing Brown's experience as a performer has shaped the way she composes. She gravitates toward instruments with distinctive, weightless timbres and the capacity for subtle inflections and wavering pitches, which glide in and out to blur or dissolve seemingly "normal" melodies and harmonies.Fischer, Tobias. "15 Questions to Elizabeth Brown," Tokafi, October 21, 2008. Retrieved November 3, 2020. As a result, her sound is often characterized as otherworldly, dreamlike and hallucinatory, whimsical, and sometimes, melancholy. Some writers compare her musical language to memory, with glimmers of thought emerging through microtonal expression, subtle textures, and unexpected recognizable sounds and musical references. Composer and critic Kyle Gann calls her approach a "smooth, introverted surrealism," blending stream-of-conscious non-sequiturs, strange conceits and quotations (of Classical, standards and folk music) into elegant wholes that draw listeners into complicity rather than provoking them. The American Record Guide writes that Brown combines "avant-garde gestures with open-hearted songfulness."
Flute and chamber music Brown's flute compositions often employ an extended microtonal technique influenced by shakuhachi music and birdsong. The Los Angeles Times described her early piece "Augury" (1987, for flute and guitar) as a "mystical, quirky" work using simple tonal language, inventive guitar effects and dissonance; it won the National Flute Association’s (NFA) Newly Published Music Award in 1988.Wager, Gregg. "Music Reviews : Flute, Koto and Guitar Concert in Pasadena," Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1989. Retrieved November 5, 2020. The NFA later commissioned Brown to write a solo flute piece for its 2000 high school contest: "Trillium" (1999), a delicate, three-part work.Ford, Ronda Benson. "High School Soloist Competition: Elizabeth Brown's Trillium," The Flutist Quarterly, Winter 2008, p. 28.
Several of Brown's flute compositions use pre-recorded sound to explore themes involving memory, sensation and place. The cinematic "Travelogue" (1995, performed and recorded by the quartet Flute Force) blends fluctuating melodies, Asian microtonalism, and modernist bent pitch and multiphonic technique to evoke family car trips; its sonic suggestions of arguments, passing cars and a surreal carnival calliope mix humor, nostalgia, delicacy and occasional raucous energy.Bendheim, Anne. "Flute Force charms a sold-out house," Mobile Press Register, February 14, 1996, p. 3-D.Williams, David. "Flute Force plays with inspiration," The Charleston Gazette, February 15, 1999, p. 4D.Smith, Ken. "Flute Force, Eyewitness," Gramophone, August 2002.Buckley, Daniel. "Flute Force, Eyewitness," Stereophile, August 2002. In 2006, Brown joined Flute Force and together they premiered her "The Baths of Caracalla" (2007) at Carnegie's Weill Hall; the piece surrounds four alto flutes with pre-recorded theremin, flute and psalter whose dissonances, shrieks and slides represent the sights and sounds of the ancient Roman public baths. "Arcana" (2004, commissioned by Toby and Itzhak Perlman) features an Eastern-flavored flute accompanied by recorded theremin and "homemade" drones, creaks, and scratches that evoke tender (a toy shop or dollhouse) and slightly spooky themes (secrets, mysteries, elixirs, intrigue).