Topic: Brian Brown

Brian Brown OAM, (born December 29, 1933, Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian Jazz musician and educator. He plays the soprano and tenor saxophones, flutes, synthesizers (including the WX5 Wind Synthesizer), panpipes and a leather bowhorn designed by the late Garry Greenwood, .

Brown has performed as a soloist and with his own ensembles since the mid 1950s throughout Australia and in Scandinavia, USA, Japan, UK, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Brunei and Germany. He plays only original music. A self-taught player who emerged in the '50s as a leading figure in Australia and remained prominent through the '80s. According to Allmusic "Brown was one of first Australian musicians to develop a reputation for highly personal, individualistic style that was intense, lyrical and not simple imitation of an American great."

In early 1956 Brown returned to Melbourne from Europe and formed a new Hard Bop band with like-minded players - drummer Stewie Speer, trumpeter Keith Hounslow, schoolboy pianist Dave Martin and bassist Barry Buckley. The Brian Brown Quintet were regulars at Horst Liepolt's influential Jazz Centre 44 in St Kilda, which operated from 1955 to 1960. The band were enthusiastic ambassadors for bop, introducing Melburnians to a musical style which was still largely unheard in Australia.