Dr. Jeremy Scott Brown
BMus/MMus/DMus/Performer's Certificate
Pronouns: He/Him
Positions
Professor, Saxophone
Professor, Jazz Saxophone
Artistic Director, Calgary Wind Symphony
University of Calgary
Division Lead - Music
University of Calgary
Contact information
Phone number
Office: +1 (403) 220-5380
I'm looking for...
Research partners
Jazz patronage topics.
Background
Educational Background
B.MuEd. Music, Washington State University, 1980
D.M.A. Music, Ohio State University, 1993
M.M. Music, University of Rochester, 1982
Performer's Certificate, Saxophone Music performance, Eastman School of Music, 2023
Micro-Certificate, Teaching, Taylor Institute Education, University of Calgary, 0021
Biography
Dr. Jeremy S. Brown
Jeremy Brown is Professor of Music at the University of Calgary (1990-present) and performs as a jazz, classical and free improviser, primarily on the saxophone. He is also a woodwind doubler and frequently performs as a flautist, clarinetist, and penny whistle. At the University of Calgary School of Creative and Performing Arts, he has been a conductor of wind bands and jazz bands. He teaches courses in improvisation, instrumental music education and SoTL, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He is in his twenty-fifth year as conductor of the Calgary Wind Symphony. He was the saxophone soloist with the National Youth Band of Canada in 2015, sponsored by Yamaha Canada, and again as conductor/artistic director in 2017, an unprecedented double invitation. He was the founding artistic director and conductor of the National Concert Band of Canada, 2002-2010, an auditioned youth band of students from across Canada. He has been the artistic director and conductor of the Calgary Wind Symphony for 23 years, a 60-member wind band founded in 1955.
As director of The UCalgary Saxophone Ensemble, his students gave world premieres of works by Jordan Nobles and Laurie Radford at the 2020 North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference, in Arizona, USA. He also recently recorded a Jazz YYC that was featured at the 2020 Jazz YYC Jazz Festival found at (https://youtu.be/WfVL81Gep54). In February 2021, he was selected to be a performer at the International Conference for Saxophone Performance and Pedagogy. https://www.saxophonepedagogyandperformance.com/p/program.html
As an author, he has written numerous pedagogical articles for The Instrumentalist magazine and the Jazz Educators Network, among other periodicals, book chapters and festschrift. His recent book The Wind Band Music of Henry Cowell (Routledge Press, 2018) includes definitive recordings of Cowell's band music with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra's winds, conducted by Dr. Brown. He was the series editor and lead compiler of the inaugural Royal Conservatory of Music Saxophone Series (Frederick Harris Music, 2014), a multi-volume saxophone anthology with graded repertoire, etudes, technical studies and orchestral excerpts. He is currently writing a book, New Perspectives on Jazz Patronage, to be published by Routledge Press in 2024.
His recording of emergence (2022) on Redshift Records was nominated as Outstanding Classical Composition of the Year by YYC Music Awards. Wayfaring (2014) by Nova Pon, was nominated as the Outstanding Classical Composition of 2015 by the Western Canadian Music Awards. In 2010, his solo recording of Canadian solo and chamber music for saxophone, "Rubbing Stone," was nominated for Outstanding Classical Record of the Year by the Western Canadian Music Awards. In 2017, he was nominated for the Student's Union Teaching Award, an award he won in 1999. In 2014 he was awarded the inaugural University of Calgary Teaching Award by the Faculty of Arts. In 2009 he was recognized at Southam Hall in Ottawa as a "Canadian Music Ambassador" by the Canadian Music Centre to commission and perform music by Canadian composers, with about sixty works commissioned. In 2008, he was named one of five "Innovators of the University of Calgary" for his community outreach with the Salvation Army. In 2007 was awarded the David Peterkin Award for his contribution to music education in Alberta by the Alberta Band Association.
As a university teacher, his undergraduate and graduate students have won numerous national and international awards, scholarships and recognition. His university ensembles have been widely recognized for original programming and performing excellence; most recently, the UCalgary Jazz Orchestra won the Outstanding Ensemble Award at the 2013 Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival and ten outstanding soloist awards at the 2014 Elmhurst Jazz Festival, Chicago, Illinois and numerous soloist awards at the 2018 Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival.
As an improviser, he has worked with numerous free music specialists, including English saxophonist John Butcher, Montreal composer Chantale Laplante, Toronto pianist Marilyn Lerner and Joe Morris over several months in Calgary as a Killam Scholar. Morris and Brown recorded an album to be released in 2022, Magnitudes, on the Polish record label Fundacja Sluchal.
He has recorded numerous records, including Scaramouche with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (2003, CBC records) In the Company of My Soul (2003, Arktos Label), Ornamentology (lightblue records), Rubbing Stone(2010, Centredisc Label), The Lethbridge Sessions (2014, Centredisc Label) Music for Soup (2015) and Verismo Jazz Quintet (2005). His recording “Saxophone Legacy” (2022) with American tenor saxophonist Jack Wilkins, a Fulbright scholar at UCalgary in 2018, was recently #1 in the radio play in Canada. His new recordings of saxophone music, “In Flight” with commissioned works by Canadian composers Vincent Ho, David Eagle, Claude Laplame and Nova Pon, will be released in 2023 on Redshift Records. “Intersections,” a jazz recording of original compositions with Alberta jazz musicians will also be released in 2023, on Chronograph Records.
As a saxophone soloist, he has appeared with many bands and orchestras, including the Washington-Idaho Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Red Deer Symphony, Festival Orchestra of the 2003 World Saxophone Congress (Minneapolis), the Okanogan Symphony Orchestra, Kensington Sinfonia, the Calgary Civic Symphony, Calgary Youth Orchestra and the Ottawa Symphony. He is also a lead tenor saxophonist with the Calgary Jazz Orchestra and regularly performs with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra as a jazz and classical soloist. In April 2022 he was the featured soloist and visiting artist with the Washington State University wind ensemble.
He was the founding artistic director of Rubbing Stone Ensemble and the Jeremy Brown Collective, new music ensembles based in Calgary. As the artistic director and conductor of the Calgary Wind Symphony, the group has toured Europe twice, performing at the Mid-European Conference. The CWS performs four major concerts a year and has commissioned and premiered numerous new works for wind bands, including the Canadian premiere of Slipstream by Juno-award-winning composers Jordan Nobles' world premiere of Flat Out Covering Ground by Allan Bell. In 2003, he co-founded Verismo, a Calgary jazz quintet whose inaugural recording garnered great critical acclaim and subsequently performed at the 2007 Montreal Jazz Festival.
As a composer, his works, a mix of classical and jazz elements, have been performed at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, The Banff Centre, the Yardbird Suite, and recorded on “Saxophone Legacy.”
Courses
| Course number | Course title | Semester |
|---|---|---|
| MUPF 32501 LAB 01 B01 | Instrumental Jazz Ensemble | 2023 |
| MUPF 32501 LAB 01 B01 | Instrumental Jazz Ensemble | 2021 |
| MUSI 221 LEC 01 01 | Performance Practicum I | 2021 |
| MUSI 321 LEC 01 01 | Performance Practicum III | 2020 |
| MUSI 421 LEC 01 01 | Performance Practicum V | 2021 |
| MUSI 462 LEC 01 01 | Junior Performance Project | 2020 |
| MUSI 52506 LEC 02 02 | Topics in Music Performance | 2021 |
| MUSI 560 LEC 01 01 | Senior Project | 2020 |
| MUSI 62507 LEC 03 03 | Topics in Music Performance | 2020 |
Projects
New Perspectives on Jazz Patronage
I am currently researching a new book, under contract to Routledge Press for the Transnational Studies in Jazz Series.
Arts patronage is typically defined as the financial, emotional and social support that allows artists the freedom to further their artistic ambitions by engaging in creation and collaboration. The support of individual musicians—emotional and financial—by lovers, spouses, colleagues, family members, and the decision-makers for record labels is, of course, universal. The classic model of patronage, an individual of position and wealth, institutions such as churches and the aristocracy, each eager to encourage composition and performance to enhance social status and to bring pleasure, have made an indelible mark on the course of music in the Western world. For a host of historical and sociological reasons, jazz patronage has taken forms that are only loosely related to the customs of other Western art forms, including music. Such patrons can be found in jazz, although not on as grand a scale. This book is about the beneficial actions of the people, businesses, and institutions that made jazz the international artistic and social phenomenon it is today. For this reason, those who support individual artists or musical enterprises must be recognized for their essential role in its history.
While it can be asserted that though it may be in the artist’s lifeblood in a symbolic sense, music does not always exist for musicians. It is primarily generated for and enjoyed by those in society who are not musicians. Through much of the twentieth century and beyond, the beneficial actions by a web of jazz critics, promoters, impresarios, writers, lovers, spouses, and the wealthy helped sustain jazz artists and allowed them to realize their ideas and dreams. Although much of this support was undoubtedly acted out of self-interest, owners of clubs also must be acknowledged for their positive impact on jazz musicians’ careers since the days of Storyville. The payments they made for professional services in jazz were not all that different from the relationship of Haydn to Lord Esterhazy, of Tchaikovsky to Nadezhda von Meck, or of Stravinsky to Diaghilev. Patronage support enabled them to experiment and collaborate in what could be called, metaphorically and often literally, a sheltered environment. As Nancy Wilson summarized, “The creation of great art does not rely solely on the creativity of great artists. Behind countless masterpieces are promoters, critics, and consumers who make artistic expression possible.”[1]
The beneficial acts of patronage in jazz in the first half-century of its evolution were unprecedented, mostly unrecognized and unique to jazz. Patrons created a network of support critical to the new music's evolution as a remedy to the United States’ uneven political economy, that is, the relationship between individuals, government and public policy. This connection between political economy and beneficial acts in jazz remains unrecognized and unexplored. Arguably, it is the radical insecurity of life as a jazz musician, particularly African American jazz musicians, that created the need for a unique set of patronage acts. The musicians' attitudes and bohemian lifestyles, the nature of patrons’ unconventional contributions also added to the lack of recognition by writers, historians and those within the jazz milieu of the integral role of patronage in this new art form.
[1] “Norman Granz: Jazz Genius Behind the Scenes.” National Public Radio, Jazz Profiles. August 6, 2008. https://www.npr.org/2008/08/06/93324539/norman-granz-jazz-genius-behind-the-scenes. Accessed July 6, 2023.
Awards
- Nominated for a Students Union Teaching Excellence Award, UCalgary Students Union/Association. 2017
- 2014 Faculty of Arts Teaching Award (Established), 2014
- (Nova Pon) Nominated for Outstanding Classical Composition of the Year, Western Canadian Music Awards. 2014
- Nominated for Outstanding Classical Recording of the Year, Western Canadian Music Awards. 2009
- Newspaper Review, Ottawa Citizen. 2013
- University of Calgary Jazz Orchestra, Outstanding Performing Ensemble, University of Idaho, Lionel Hampton JAzz Festival. 2013
- Nomination for Outstanding Classical Recording of 2010, 2010
- Review of Rubbing Stone Recording, the Wholenote magazine, Toronto, Wholenote magazine. 2010
- Named Ambassador of Canadian Music, November 2009, 2009
- North American Saxophone Alliance 2009 Concerto Competition Winner, 2009
- Leaders in Innovation: U of C Innovators, 2008, University of Calgary. 2008
- David Peterkin Award, 2007
- David Peterkin Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music Education, 2007
- Juried invitation to perform at the 2007 Montreal International Jazz Festival, 2007
- Great Teachers of U of C, 2004
- Great Teachers of U of C Website, 2004
- Invited to appear by an international panel of editors in the next edition of Saxophone Soloists and Their Music, 2004
- Selected to appear by an international panel of editors in the next edition of Saxophone Soloists and Their Music, 2004
- Teaching Excellence Award, UCalgary Students Union . 1999
- emergence, my CD recording on Redshift Records was nominated as Oustanding Classical Recording of 2022, YYCMusic Awards. 2023
In the News
- Biographical Interview as Life as Musician and American, living in Canada. Canadian Band Association Journal. (2019)
More Information
2023
Book. New Perspectives on Jazz Patronage. Contract with Routledge Press for the Transnational Studies in Jazz series. In progress.
Book Chapter. The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender. A 7000-word book chapter, pp. 32-42, Lil Hardin Armstrong and Helen Joyner, The Forgotten Patrons of Jazz.
Festschrift Essay. Legacies of Power in American Music. “Some Thoughts on the Role of Patronage in the History of Jazz.” College Music Society Sourcebooks and Monographs in American Music. Pp. 23-42.
New recording with Joe Morris, free improvisation. Recorded in New Haven, June 2023. In Press.
Recording. Chronograph records, funded by a $10,600 grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. In progress. Original compositions by Jeremy Brown for trombone, saxophone, flute, piano, bass and drums.
2022
New Recording. Saxophone Legacy, with Jack Wilkins et al. Chronograph Records.
New Recording. Free improvisation with Joe Morris. Magnitudes. Released on the Fundacja Słuchaj record label (Poland) https://sluchaj.bandcamp.com/album/magnitude
New recording of Canadian saxophone music for Redshift Records. Emergence. Works by La Palme, Eagle, Pon, and Ho.
(Artist-In-Residence) Invited Artist-In-Residence at Washington State University, Pullman Washington, April 2022. Concerto soloist with the W.S.U. Wind Ensemble performing Rush by Kenneth Fuchs.
(Virtual conference) Invited guest lecturer for the Calgary Public Library “The Latest Research In Jazz Patronage.” March, 2022.
(Virtual conference) Selected to perform at the International Conference for Saxophone Performance and Pedagogy. (Florida, U.S.A.) Paper presentation, “The Virtuoso Teacher, Some Thoughts on Smart Teaching.”
2021
Book. The Wind Band Music of Henry Cowell, (published hard cover in 2018 is released in softcover) College Music Society Sourcebooks and Monographs in American Music, Routledge.
(Virtual conference) Selected to perform at the International Conference for Saxophone Performance and Pedagogy. (Florida, U.S.A.) U.S.A. premiere of Momentum (2018) by David Eagle.
(Host, virtual conference) Hosted the North American Saxophone Alliance Region Nine Conference at The University of Calgary, March 18-20. One hundred twenty attendees from across the U.S.A. and Canada. All of the UCalgary saxophone studios performed as soloists. I performed Dusk by Vincent Ho, a world premiere.
(Virtual conference) Guest speaker/lecturer on the Wind Band Music of Henry Cowell for the University of Florida Conducting Symposium, January 21-22.
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