Margaret Brouwer’s music has been hailed by the New York Times as “bewitching…with no obvious concessions toward styles of the day.” The Roanoke Times has called it “lyrical, accessible, powerful,” and the American Record Guide, “a marvelous example of musical imagery.” Brouwer’s percussion concerto, Aurolucent Circles, will be premiered by Evelyn Glennie and Gerard Schwarz with the Seattle Symphony on November 8, 9, and 10, 2002. Also this season, Brouwer has been selected to compose the Ohio Bicentennial commissioned work that will be

premiered by the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in February. Other commissions this season include a work for The Roanoke Symphony, for which she received an NEA grant, for the Vedehr Trio, and for the Exquisite Corpse. The Cleveland Museum of Art presented a concert of Margaret Brouwer’s chamber music on June 6th, 2001 in which two of four works performed, Light and Under the Summer Tree were premieres. The Cleveland Plain Dealer called the concert a “radiant meeting of the old and the new,” revealing “…the gifts of a composer whose music blends superb craftsmanship with a poetic sensibility.” Other premieres in the 01/02 season included Mandala for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and Quartet, for Franklin Cohen, principal clarinet of the Cleveland Orchestra. Brouwer’s Diary of an Alien and Skyriding were heard in a Prelude Concert of the National Symphony Orchestra on June 2, 2001. Other performances last season included Demeter Prelude by the Cavani String Quartet, Crosswinds by the Aurora String Quartet on San Francisco’s Composers, Inc. concert series, Horn Sonata by Richard King, principal with the Cleveland Orchestra, Quartet at the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, MA, and Diary of an Alien at the National Flute Association Convention in Washington, D.C. Brouwer’s SIZZLE was premiered by the Women’s Philharmonic of San Francisco in September 2000, on a concert which also included her Symphony No. 1. Brouwer was in residence at the Wellesley Composers Conference in 2002 and at the MacDowell Colony in 2001, and was a Norton Stevens Fellow there in 1999.

Head of the composition department and the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition at The Cleveland Institute of Music, Brouwer was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize in composition in September 1999. A CD of her chamber music entitled Crosswinds (CD#821) was released in June 1999 by CRI. Says American Record Guide of the CD, “Brouwer has a gift for both lyricism and humor…beautiful work, attractive and interesting.” Her music is published exclusively by Carl Fischer and is recorded on CRI, Crystal, Centaur and Opus One labels. Honors include grants from the NEA, Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, Meet the Composer, Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the Indiana Arts Commission, as well as residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Charles Ives Center for American Music. Brouwer’s music has also been performed by such musicians and ensembles as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Richard Stolzman, the Cavani, Audubon, and Cassatt String Quartets, Leon Bates, Dinosaur Annex, Continuum, the Saint Louis, Long Beach, Akron, and Wichita Symphonies, the Poznan (Poland) and Women’s Philharmonics, ISCM at Merkin Hall, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and the 20th Century Consort. Brouwer’s teachers have included Donald Erb, George Crumb, Harvey Sollberger and Frederick Fox.