JENNIFER WILLIAMS BROWN
Assistant Professor of Music

641-269-4421
Bucksbaum 264
brownjen@grinnell.edu

Jennifer Williams Brown (musicology) is a specialist in the history and performance of Baroque music, particularly 17th-century Italian opera.  Her edition of Francesco Cavalli’s opera La Calisto, published in 2007 by A-R Editions, has received numerous performances around the world, including the Amherst Early Music Festival, Chicago (Music of the Baroque), Montréal (Opéra McGill), Princeton University, and Bremen (Hochschule für Kunste).  In 2003 and 2004, she was awarded research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Delmas Foundation for her book-in-progress on 17th-century opera production.  She is currently editing Cavalli’s Scipione Affricano for The Operas of Francesco Cavalli, to be published by Bärenreiter.  Her publications include articles in a collection of essays on Cavalli, The Cambridge Opera Journal, The New Grove Dictionary of Music, The Journal of Musicological Research, The Viking (Penguin) Opera Guide,Seventeenth-Century Music.

Brown received her B.Mus. in music history from the University of Illinois and her M.A. and Ph.D. in musicology from Cornell University.  She joined the music faculty of Grinnell College in the fall of 2005; she teaches music history and directs the Collegium Musicum.  Prior to arriving at Grinnell, she taught at the Eastman School of Music, the University of Rochester, and Louisiana State University, where she directed the Collegium Musicum for seven years.  She studied harpsichord with George Hunter (Univ. of Illinois), Christopher Kite (Guildhall School of Music, London), and Malcolm Bilson (Cornell) and continuo accompaniment with Arthur Haas (Eastman). 

Ms. Brown is also a specialist in historical dance (Renaissance, Baroque). She studied Baroque dance in Boston with Ken Pierce and Margaret Daniels and directed dances for several historical theatre productions in Boston, Ithaca, and Rochester. She taught three courses on historical dance at the Eastman School of Music and University of Rochester, and has given numerous workshops and guest lecture-demonstrations. In 2007 she was dance director and co-music director (with John Rommereim) of Grinnell’s production of The Beggar’s Opera, for which she prepared a new musical edition.

[ last updated 1/31/08 ]

( Close )