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Margaret Brouwer
Biography
 Composer Margaret Brouwer’s music has earned an unusual amount of praise for its lyrical qualities, rich musical imagery and emotional power. Remarkable for its poetic sensibility, Ms. Brouwer’s music also reveals musical craftsmanship of the highest order. These attributes are found in music ranging from symphonic works for orchestra to a wide variety of chamber combinations such as string quartet, trios, duos and pieces for diverse solo instruments such flute, clarinet, horn and piano. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on February 8, 1940, Margaret Brouwer received her Bachelor of Music from Oberlin College, and her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Indiana University. Although she started out as a professional violinist, it is as a composer that she has made her greatest impact. Her composition teachers have included Donald Erb, Harvey Sollberger and Frederick Fox, as well as George Crumb with whom she studied at the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival. She has served as Composer-in-Residence with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra in Roanoke, Virginia and taught composition at Washington and Lee University. While at Washington and Lee, she was the founding Director of Sonoklect, the University’s new music series and festival. After leaving Washington and Lee, 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. During the 2008/2009 season, the Detroit Symphony will premier Rhapsody for Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra will offer the first performances of BREAKDOWN at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in New York City and at the Annenberg Center for the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. BREAKDOWN is a collaborative work by Brouwer and video/sound artist Kasumi. In April, 2008 Shattered Glass was premiered by MOSAIC and in March of 2007, violinist Michi Wiancko and conductor James Gaffigan premiered Brouwer’s Concerto for Violin and Chamber Orchestra with the CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra. In reviewing this work Donald Rosenberg wrote “…what makes her concerto so alluring is its surprising tension between skittish and poetic material. The three-movement commissioned work abounds in extroverted passages that call upon the soloist to negotiate acrobatic flights and suddenly switch gears. In the opening ‘Narrative,’ the violinist has long, bravura statements that melt seamlessly into tender utterances and back again.” A short work for string quartet, Fling, was premiered at the Cutting Room in New York City in February, 2007 by the Sweet Plantain String Quartet. During the 2005-06 season Brouwer’s Trio was premiered and toured by the Verdehr Trio and Light, for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion and harpsichord was performed as part of the Tanglewood Music Center’s 2005 Festival of Contemporary Music. Writing in The New York Times, Allan Kozinn had this comment to offer: “Margaret Brouwer’s fantastically eclectic ‘Light’ filtered fragments of medieval and Renaissance pieces through a prism of free-ranging melody.” In 2006 Margaret Brouwer received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and she was named a Guggenheim Fellow for 2004, based on her “…unusually impressive achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.” She was awarded an Ohio Council for the Arts Individual Fellowship for 2005. In January 2006 Naxos released a CD of her orchestral music entitled Aurolucent Circles featuring Evelyn Glennie, solo percussionist and The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Gerard Schwarz conducting. In a review of the title work on the CD (written for Ms. Glennie), Lawson Taitte of The Dallas Morning News praises Brouwer, saying: “Ms. Brouwer has one of the most delicate ears and inventive imaginations among contemporary American composers…Ms. Brouwer not only gets seductive sounds out of the instruments, she also creates a dramatic through line that keeps the attention riveted for 27 minutes.” In 2003, a New World Records CD of Brouwer’s music called “Light” received wide acclaim. In addition to Light (referred to above), the recording includes Lament, Under the Summer Tree, Skyriding and Demeter Prelude. Sarah Bryan Miller, writing about the recording in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, found Brouwer to be “that rarity, a contemporary composer whose music is accessible and engaging for a wide range of audiences, but whose work doesn’t sound like movie music. She’s not afraid to be spiky when spikiness is indicated, but there’s never a sense in any of these works that she’s using atonality for its own sake. And often her sonic world is utterly luminous in its beauty.” Similarly, Fanfare magazine praised the new disc in the following terms: “Brouwer’s music has a sense of stylistic independence and openness of spirit…The melodies are memorable, their cut Brouwer’s own; the instrumental writing is unique, sharp, and always expressive.” Additional honors that Brouwer has received include grants and awards from the NEA, Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, Meet the Composer, Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the Indiana Arts Commission, as well as residencies at the MacDowell Colony, where she has been a Norton Stevens Fellow, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Wellesley Composer’s Conference and the Charles Ives Center for American Music. Margaret Brouwer’s music is published by Pembroke Music Co., Inc (BMI), a division of Carl Fischer, LLC and Brouwer New Music Publishing (Sole Selling Agent, Carl Fischer, LLC.). |