Composer, percussionist, educator, and ethnomusicologist Anthony Brown has played a seminal role in contemporary California creative music from his pioneering work with the Asian American jazz movement in the early 1980s to his current leadership of the GRAMMY nominated Asian American Orchestra. Under his direction, the Orchestra has recorded six critically acclaimed CDs, including homages to American composers Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, George Gershwin, and John Coltrane. His composition Rhymes (For Children) served as the theme music for KQED's Pacific Time, a Public Radio International syndicated weekly newsmagazine. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in music (ethnomusicology) from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a master of music from Rutgers University, and is the recipient of numerous grants and commissions from organizations such as Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, Arts International, and Asian Heritage Council. A Smithsonian Associate Scholar, Guggenheim and Ford Fellow, Brown has served as curator of American musical culture at the Smithsonian Institution and as a visiting professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been Fifth Stream Music's artistic dDirector since its establishment in 2005.
Anthony Brown
Studios
Sprague-Smith
Anthony Brown worked in the Sprague-Smith studio.
In January of 1976, the original Sprague-Smith Studio — built in 1915–1916 and funded by music students of Mrs. Charles Sprague-Smith of the Veltin School — was destroyed by fire. Redesigned by William Gnade, Sr., a Peterborough builder, the fieldstone structure was rebuilt the same year from the foundation up, reusing the original fieldstone. A few…