Cargo Records

• FOCUS ON: Chris Brown

• Official Website >>
• Label: Tzadik >>
• Genre: Avant Garde/Experimental

San Francisco based composer, pianist, and electronic instrument builder, studied composition with William Brooks, electronic music with Gordon Mumma and computer music with David Rosenboom.

Chris Brown’s music has evolved within the intersections of many different traditions and styles. Following early training as a classical pianist, he was influenced by studies of Indonesian, Indian, Afro-American, and Cuban musics, and then took off on branches provided by the American Experimentalists in inventing and 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.

Collaboration and improvisation have been primary in the development of his music for various traditional instruments and interactive electronics. He has had commissions for such pieces from the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, among others. He was a member with percussionist William Winant, saxophonist Larry Ochs, and electronic musician Scot Gresham-Lancaster of the pioneering group "Room", (1984-94) which explored the intersection of composition, improvisation, and electronics. His 1992 composition "Lava", for eight instruments and interactive electronics, is an hour-long, quadraphonic sound environment that virtuosically employs live-sampling to create spatially flowing counterpoints of timbre and rhythm.

As pianist with the Glenn Spearman Double Trio he has 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 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, John Coltrane, Luc Ferrari, and Terry Riley.

Between 1986-97 he was also a member of "The Hub", an ensemble of computer musicians who developed "Computer Network Music", a genre whose sound arises from the interdependency of multiple computer-music systems. The Hub toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe, released three different CDs, and collaborated with such composers as Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran, and Ramon Sender.

He is a featured composer, performer, and/or producer on over 30 recordings of new music.