Courtney Brown

Courtney Brown is a composer, performer, tango dancer, and software developer. She has long harbored aspirations of becoming an Edward Gorey heroine, but her attempts have thus far been foiled. In lieu of her unlikely but tragic demise, she makes strange dark music and fiddles with electronics.

Her work focuses on the connection between movement, embodiment, and music, ranging from the composition of instrumental music to the creation of musical robots and novel music interfaces to working with dancers and choreographers. She has been featured in many venues in the U.S. including the Chosen Vale Trumpet Seminar, SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States), NYCEAMF (New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival), Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn, Vox Novus' 60X60, Dartmouth Festival of the New Musics, and she has toured her solo cabaret, Every Night I Lose Control, throughout the east coast experimental music including venues such as The Tank in NYC, the Red Room in Baltimore, and she was also an associate artist-in-residence at Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smryna Beach, FL.

She founded and curated the 7ate8 performance series at Modified Arts Gallery, Phoenix, AZ in 2012 and the performance series Sidewalk Tzara in Boston in 2008-9. She is the current director of the Laptop Orchestra of Arizona State, teaching, programming, and composing works for the ensemble. Courtney also founded and performed accordion, voice, guitar, and live electronics with the experimental groups The Woo Brown Duo (2009-11) and Electrocab (2006-8). She has collaborated with many dancers and choreographers, including Nu Dance Theater and Insurgio Stage Project, and as a member and founder (sound director, dancer) of the D&spair (Dance & Sonic Performance Art Improvisation Research) Club (2012). She is also an accomplished Argentine tango dancer, performing and having taught beginning Argentine tango lessons with SalsaNoke in Virginia, and at milongas (tango social dance events) that she organized at Modified Arts, as well as composing works for interactive tango milongas and performances. She also was the software developer for the audio engine of DJ Scratch Academy's Mix, software for amateur DJs and beat-matching along with developing software for her own work.

She is a graduate of Dartmouth’s Electro-Acoustic Master’s Program and holds a B.S. in Music (concentration in soprano voice) and Computer Science from Loyola University New Orleans. She is currently a doctoral student in Digital Media and Performance at Arizona State University, and has been chosen as a recipient of the 2013-14 Fulbright Student Award to create interactive tango milongas in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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Download Music Composition/Performance C.V.

Download Digital Audio/Software Development C.V.

Email: courtney [at] somethingfurry [dot] com