Who: Associate conductor of Omaha Area Youth Orchestras
Age: 30
Hometown: Chicago
Education: Master's of music, orchestral conducting, Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University; and bachelor's degree, music performance, Northwestern University
Career: Previously a cover conductor for the Baltimore Symphony
Conductor Brandon Keith Brown says he's thrilled to be teaching music to children in the metro area.
The 30-year-old Brown spent the summer studying one of the world's greatest orchestras, the Vienna Philharmonic, on a fellowship in Austria. Then he started his new job, in August, as the associate conductor of Omaha Area Youth Orchestras.
"I'm so lucky," he said. "I've got bright, talented, engaged kids that I get to work with every week. Every week."
His enthusiasm for the program, which serves 550 metro-area youth, was apparent at the All-Orchestra Concert Oct. 23 at the Holland Performing Arts Center. Young musicians may still be learning their instruments and youngsters may be less able to follow a conductor's nonverbal cues, but Brown doesn't mind.
"It is my mission that I prepare new audiences and new musicians," he said. "It's the duty of every musician, especially conductors who are stewards of orchestral institutions."
Brown is a recent graduate of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he studied under Gustav Meier and earned a master's of music degree in orchestral conducting. He served as cover conductor for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for two years. He also worked with an after-school tutoring program, which was good preparation for working with youth in Omaha, he said.
Brown described a music career as a calling. "If you're going into music it's because you can't imagine anything else," he said. "I started composing when I was 9 years old so my fourth-grade music teacher would work with me after school and play my compositions on the piano."
He began playing the violin through a school program at age 10. He continued to study the violin in high school and completed his last years of high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
He studied two years at the Oberlin (Ohio) University Conservatory of Music and completed his bachelor's degree in music performance at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He is a violinist and French horn player.
"Music is the most efficient means of communication," Brown said. "Music is able to rise above words. It is more fluid, direct and meaningful. Conducting allowed me to serve as a catalyst for the composer by having my hands directly on the sound. There is no filter. You get to go right to the heart of the matter."
Over the years Brown attended many conducting workshops, including the Omaha Symphony Conductor Symposium, and worked with such conductors as Leonard Slatkin, James Depreist, Murry Sidlin, Leonid Korchmar and Thomas Wilkins.
The Matacic International Competition of Young Conductors in Zagreb, Croatia, selected Brown in October as one of its 16 semifinalists. He was the only American recognized at the competition.
"I do love to travel: seeing new places, meeting new people and seeing how other people do things," Brown said after his return from Croatia.
Coffee is another personal interest of the conductor. "I'm a big coffee drinker," he said. "I love espresso and I like trying new types of coffee."
Contact the writer:
402-444-1052, jane.palmer@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
