Margaret Brouwer

Margaret Brouwer, b. 8 Feb. 1940 in Michigan.
USAmerican composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Sreak Ensemble chamber music group.
Margaret Brouwer has earned critical accolades for her music's lyricism, musical imagery and emotional power. Brouwer’s honours include an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Meet The Composer Commissioning/USA award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Ohio Council for the Arts Individual Fellowship, Cleveland Arts Prize, Lebenbom Award, Ettelson and International Women’s Brass Conference prizes and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Ford Foundation, John S. Knight Foundation, Cleveland Foundation and Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. Her music has been called “devoid of slickness…true to a vision” (New York Times), “inhabiting its own peculiarly bewitching harmonic world” (New York Times), and “a marvelous example of musical imagery.” (American Record Guide).
The Music Division of the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center established a Margaret Brouwer Collection in 2015. Her scores, manuscripts, papers, and recordings will be available for research by scholars, composers and performers. Margaret Brouwer was named one of "The Best of Female Classical Composers" on Naxos' album POWER TO THE WOMEN. Dr. Brouwer served as Head of the Composition Department and holder of the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music (1996 – 2008). She was NEA Composer in Residence with the Roanoke (VA) Symphony (1992-1997) and Composer-in-Residence at Washington and Lee University (1988-1996). Residencies have included those at the MacDowell Colony where she was a Norton Stevens Fellow, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Charles Ives Center for American Music. Recordings of Brouwer’s music can be found on the Naxos, New World, CRI, Crystal, Centaur, and Opus One labels.
Brouwer studied at Oberlin College, graduating in 1962, and received her master's degree from Michigan State University. Having started her musical career as a professional violinist with the Fort Worth Symphony and Dallas Symphony, she went on to earn her DMA in composition from Indiana University. Her teachers have included Donald Erb, Harvey Sollberger, Frederick A. Fox, and George Crumb. From 1996 to 2008 Brouwer served as head of the composition department and holder of the Vincent K. and Edith H. Smith Chair in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She is now professor emeritus at CIM.
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. She served as Composer-in-Residence at Indiana University in 2004.
In 2004 Brouwer was named a Guggenheim Fellow. In 2006, she received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award in music. In 2010 she received a Meet The Composer Commissioning/USA award to compose Path at Sunrise, Masses of Flowers which was premiered by the Cleveland Women's Symphony.
In 2011, Brouwer founded Blue Streak Ensemble, a mixed chamber group devoted to performing her work and the works of other living composers, alongside arrangements of core repertoire. With Blue Streak Ensemble, Brouwer launched the 'Music by the Lake' series, with summer performances around the northern Ohio Lake Erie region. Brouwer's Violin Concerto was performed by Michi Wiancko with both the South Carolina Philharmonic and Columbus Georgia Symphonies.
Her students have included composers Peter Gilbert and Joseph Hallman.