Chris Brown’s music has explored the intersection between many traditions and styles. Beginning as a classical pianist, he was influenced by American experimental and improvisational musics as well as by studies of Indonesian, Indian, and Cuban musics. Since the late 1970’s he has been building a personal electronic instrumentation. At first these were amplified acoustic devices; then he went on to build analog circuits that modified their sounds, and custom-made computer systems that interactively transformed them. More recently, he has extended this fascination with instrument building to the design of computer network systems that interact with acoustic musicians and with other computers and musicians connected over the internet.
He has had commissions for such pieces from the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, among others. As pianist with the Glenn Spearman Double Trio he performed and recorded music in the free-jazz tradition at venues including the San Francisco and Monterey Jazz Festivals, the DuMaurier and Victoriaville Festivals in Canada, and extensively in Europe.
He has performed and recorded with such prominent and varied improvisors as Butch Morris, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Marilyn Crispell, Barry Guy, Ikue Mori, Dave Douglas, and John Zorn. He has also been active as a pianist in performing the music of composers such as James Tenney, Henry Cowell, Christian Wolff, William Brooks, David Rosenboom, Luc Ferrari, and Terry Riley.
Chris Brown’s most recent works involve extending the experiences of Network Music into new performance venues. Since 1990 he has also taught electronic music, composition, world music, and contemporary performance practice at Mills College, in Oakland, where he is a Professor of Music and Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music.
magyar