Cello Lessons

Marcie Brown likes to put the cello into types of music where it isn't ordinarily found. In addition to playing the standard orchestral and chamber music of a classical musician, she improvises, plays jazz standards and writes her own original compositions. Her work sparkles with Latin, Indian, Italian gypsy, Caribbean and African influences. Between 2002 and 2004 she performed over five hundred shows with the Cirque du Soleil “O” show in Las Vegas. She was a member of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra for the 2004 season. In 2005, Marcie Brown headed the strings department at the Oakland School for the Arts. Ms. Brown currently performs in the San Francisco Bay Area with a variety of ensembles, including the Enchanté String Quartet, Ramana Vieira and her Portugese Fado Ensemble, and the new and exciting group Agave!, which combines strings and guitar in original compositions and jazz standards.

Born into a musical family in Detroit, Michigan, Marcie Brown began studying piano at the age of five and started playing the cello at eight. Her father was a conductor and violist, and her brothers and sister all played string instruments. She earned a master’s degree in classical music at the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Tchaikovsky Competition Award-winner Nathaniel Rosen. She worked as a freelance musician for eight years in New York City, picking up the electric bass and performing regularly with musicians from various countries, such as Trinidad, Jamaica, Haiti, Italy and Cuba. Ms. Brown also sang with an a-capella doo-wop group, Spank. Her first novel, Four Part Harmony, is based on this experience.

The search for a broader musical horizon took her to the University of Massachusetts, where she worked on a second master’s degree in jazz improvisation and composition with Dr. Yusef Lateef. “As soon as I began to improvise, I felt free,” says Brown, “The written music had me tied down in a way, and with my discovery of improvisation, it was like somebody handed me some wings.”

Ms. Brown has performed with the Florida Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Houston Pops Orchestra and the Ali Akbar Khan Classical Indian Orchestra. As an improviser she has worked with the Archie Shepp Jazz Quintet, the John Blake Jazz Quartet and with her own Marcie Brown and Friends Jazz Quintet. She is a member of Yusef Lateef’s twelve-piece world music ensemble, called The World at Peace, which has performed in New York City, Los Angeles as well as Verona, Italy, where it was a backup band for Sting. Ms. Brown has done shows with Ray Charles, Dizzie Gillespie, Andrea Bocelli, and Luciano Pavarotti.

She has recorded several CDs with Yusef Lateef. One is a trio CD entitled Suite Life, and the other is a two-disc compilation entitled The World at Peace. Her first solo CD, Love Will Never Die, is a short album of original ballads on which she sings and plays the piano and cello. Her CD Night of a Thousand Rains employs Brown on cello and vocals, brother Terry on piano and guitar, Paul McCandless on reeds, Bill Douglass on bass and John Blake on violin. Night of a Thousand Rains has been featured on KCEP in Las Vegas and on KPFA in Berkeley. “The melodies are gorgeous…” said Jazz Now Magazine. “Marcie and Terry Brown have created an eclectic album of surpassing beauty,” wrote New Age Retailer.

As an educator, Ms. Brown launched a program in improvisation for strings in the jazz department at the University of Maine. She has given workshops in improvisation at the University of Arizona, the University of Connecticut, the University of Las Vegas, and she was guest artist and workshop leader at the Koflach Summer Music Festival in Koflach, Austria. She also offers master classes in improvisation for middle school and high school students wherever she is performing.

Brown has published articles for Jazz Now Magazine, American String Teacher's Journal, In-Alameda News and the Alameda Journal. She is a member of the American String Teachers Association, the American Federation of Musicians and the International Association of Jazz Educators.

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