About

Marguerite Brown is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who explores new mediums, forms, and performance practices with an emphasis on unorthodox approaches to tuning and temperament. In her compositions, algorithms often provide a framework for indeterminate parameters to unfold, where freedom of performer interpretation can contribute to a shared sense of vision.

She received first place in the 6th International Microtonal Guitar Competition (composition category) with her piece Solo (Daisy) which she performed on a guitar refretted in an original 11-limit just intonation tuning system. Marguerite was also awarded the Mivos/Kanter String Quartet Prize in 2022 for her string quartet in just intonation titled chroai: tetrachords, which Mivos Quartet performed frequently during their 2022 - 2023 season. She is currently composing a new work for the cimbalom and violin duo Lamnth as part of their 2024 LamnthLab commission, which the duo will premiere during their 2025 - 26 season.

Marguerite’s work has been performed at KM28 (Berlin), The Composers Conference (New Hampshire), Underscore Festival (Atlanta), Espacios Sonoros Electroacoustic Festival (Argentina), ClarinetFest (Denver), La Chapelle Theater (Canada), Center for New Music (San Francisco), REDCAT Theater (Los Angeles), Indexical (Santa Cruz), Wayward Music Series (Seattle), among others.

Marguerite has a BM in music composition from Cornish College of the Arts, MA from the University of California Santa Cruz, and is currently a PhD student in music composition at the University of California San Diego.