Margaret Brouwer

Margaret Brouwer is an award-winning American composer and composition teacher. She holds a bachelor of music degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music (1962), a master of music degree from Michigan State University (1963), and a D.M.A. from Indiana University (1988). Brouwer’s honors include an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Meet The Composer Commissioning/USA award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ohio Council for the Arts Individual Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, the Cleveland Foundation, the Gund Foundation, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the Ford Foundation and the John S. Knight Foundation. Performances since 2016 include those by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Maryland Symphony, Toledo Symphony, Saratoga Symphony American Modern Ensemble, National Gallery in D.C., Composers Now at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Bowdoin’s Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music, the National Opera Center and Symphony Space in NYC, as well as throughout Taiwan and Germany. Notable commissions and premieres since 2010 came from the Dallas Symphony for Concerto for Viola and Orchestra; the Detroit Symphony for Rhapsody for Orchestra; the Rochester Philharmonic for Caution Ahead - Guard Rail Out; the American Pianists Association for a competition finalist work, Prelude and Toccata; CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra for her Children’s Symphonic Drama, Daniel and Snakeman; and the American Composer's Orchestra for Breakdown! Brouwer’s chamber ensemble, Blue Streak, which performs on Naxos, is in its seventh season touring throughout the country performing innovative and eclectic programs. Brouwer’s music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, the Cutting Room, Symphony Space, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orchestra of St. Luke’s “Second Helping,” the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the Kennedy Center, the Concoran Gallery, and the Philips Gallery. Other orchestral performances include those played by the Seattle, Liverpool, Akron, Canton, Columbus and South Carolina Symphonies. Brouwer served as head of the composition department and holder of the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1996 to 2008. Residencies include those at MacDowell where she has been a Norton Stevens Fellow and at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. Recordings of Brouwer’s music can be found on the Naxos, New World, CRI, Crystal, Centaur, and Opus One labels. In 2015, the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center began the creation of a Margaret Brouwer Collection. Brouwer's scores, manuscripts, papers, and recordings will be available for research by scholars, composers and performers.