Jordan Brown (conductor)

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Jordan Lancaster Brown (born 1977) is an American conductor. He has conducted the National Symphony Orchestra, the Albano Ballet Company; the Wiener Kammeroper; and Denmark’s Odense Symphony Orchestra. Of his National Symphony Orchestra debut, the Washington Post wrote: “Brown conducted with vigor and authority…the orchestra played brilliantly for him, and the evening ended with a warm ovation.”

Jordan Lancaster Brown attended the Yale School of Music where he held the Charles Ives Fellowship and conducted the New Music Ensemble. He studied conducting with Phillip Spurgeon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Slatkin, and Otto-Werner Mueller, and attended the Salzburg Mozarteum International Summer Academy. Brown also holds degrees in Conducting and Cello Performance from the Florida State University College of Music.

Jordan Brown made his major orchestra debut in 2003 conducting the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, after twice participating in the National Conducting Institute under the guidance of Leonard Slatkin. Since his debut Mr. Brown has been in demand as a guest conductor and conductor of opera. He has also conducted the Seattle Symphony, Houston Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Nashville Symphony, and Miami's New World Symphony in rehearsal.

A devotee of the music of Carl Nielsen, he made his Scandinavian conducting debut in 2005 leading two programs with the Odense Symphony Orchestra. These concerts featured the music of Danish and Swedish composers, in the town of Nielsen’s birth, Odense, Denmark. He has also led US and regional premiers of Nielsen’s orchestral work Pan and Syrinx.

From 1998-2001 Brown was Assistant Conductor of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, for which he was responsible for a wide range of conducting tasks and also served as a member of the cello section. He also served for two seasons as assistant conductor at Cincinnati Opera, where he worked on the preparation of numerous operas and collaborated with many stars of the operatic stage.

Brown studied cello and conducting at Florida State University, and later attended Yale University as a conducting fellow and Artist Diploma student. At Yale he was responsible for conducting the concert series New Music New Haven, regularly leading premieres and collaborating with composers such as Augusta Read Thomas, Aaron Jay Kernis, and Tristan Murail on performances of their works. His further conducting studies were at the Salzburg Mozarteum University with Gerhard Markson, and in masterclasses with Otto-Werner Mueller, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Leonard Slatkin.

Jordan Brown's early musical education was unusual. He was born in Mississippi and raised in Sarasota, Florida from the age of 12. The only musician in his family, he decided on music at the age of 15 after attending a performance of Carmen at Sarasota Opera. He was first self-taught as a cellist, bassoonist, composer, and theater musician, and later began formal lessons in cello. At 17 he was first-prize winner of the Sarasota Music Guild Composition Competition for his work "Elegy for Strings," and attended the Tanglewood music festival on a cello scholarship, serving as principal cello of the Tanglewood Young Artists Orchestra that summer.

He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.