Christopher Auerbach-Brown
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Christopher Auerbach-Brown (b. 1970) is an American composer. He received his B.M. in Composition from Ithaca College where his major teachers were Dana Wilson and Gregory Woodward. He went on to complete his MM in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied with Donald Erb.
Mr. Auerbach-Brown was awarded an ASCAP Young Composers’ Award in 1996 for his Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano. The Trio also received its New York premiere in September of 1999 at Carnegie Hall (in Weill Recital Hall) as part of the "Vector 5" contemporary music series; in addition, he received a grant from Meet the Composer for his participation in this concert. In 1998 he was the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters to "composition students of great promise."
Mr. Auerbach-Brown was a co-founder and conductor for "Composers in the Shape of a Pear," a Cleveland-based contemporary music group whose mission was to expose new music to audiences outside of the traditional academic environments. The "Pear" presented concerts several times a year at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and other local venues included the Beck Center for Performing Arts and the Cleveland Music School Settlement. The Pear has also collaborated with such local notables as the Cavani String Quartet, who gave the world premiere of Mr. Auerbach-Brown’s String Quartet at Weill Recital Hall in December of 1997.
In the Cleveland area, Mr. Auerbach-Brown is active as an educator, teaching music theory and composition at the Cleveland Music School Settlement,as well as teaching classes in the Liberal Arts department at the Cleveland Institute of Art. His classes at CIA focus on the connections between contemporary music and sound art with the visual arts. He also gives presentations on his synesthesia, in which he sees colors and shapes, and feels textures and temperatures, while listening to music.
Mr. Auerbach-Brown is also a member of the Cleveland Composers' Guild and the American Composers Alliance. His works have been performed on ACA's yearly Festival of American Music, most recently by the Sirius String Quartet. His most recent commission is from the Cleveland Institute of Art, a percussion work composed for their commencement ceremony in May 2005. He is also a contributing editor to the New Music Connoisseur.
