Bill Apollo Brown

Bill Apollo Brown is an American composer, pianist, and teacher, who has studied composition, theory, history, classical and jazz piano, and trombone.|

Bill has composed music for orchestras, jazz orchestra, chamber music, jazz ensembles, chorus, and dance. The Pittsburgh Symphony under the direction of Clifford Taylor performed his first symphonic composition, at Temple University, in the summer of 1973. He has had numerous commissions by dancers and choreographers. Bill served as musician with The Ailey School as a pianistic accompanist, where he was a faculty member from 1999 to 2014.

Bill has formed and played in various jazz piano trios, quartets, and ensembles. Compositions such as the fast samba Orange et Chocolat, the childlike waltz of Kelly's Wish, the Joni Mitchell tribute Amsterdam, and the ethereal The Light from the Angel, attracted listeners to the Bill Brown sound. The effervescent samba/swing of April in New York quickly became a signature work and a favorite among listeners.

In 1993, he was commissioned to write an orchestral piece for Orchestra New England for their season finale. The commissioned symphony Among the Trees, was premiered in May 1994 in New Haven, conducted by music director Jim Sinclair.

Bill was invited to join composer Deborah Fischer Teason in a collaborative effort under a grant from Meet the Composers, to teach music and lyrics to inner city kids of the  Bridgeport Schools. Brown and Teason orchestrated the songs written by the students for chorus, jazz band, Orff ensemble and full symphony orchestra. The highly-publicized and enthusiastically-received world premiere of Comin' from the Block featured over 150 student-performers from 6 different schools accompanied by a full-staffed Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Gustav Meier at the Klein Memorial Hall, in March of 1999.

Other commissions followed, among them the string quartet Roses, which was commissioned in 2001 by the National Music Teachers’ Association of Connecticut, and performed at the school of music at Yale University, in November of that year.

Bill was accepted into the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop in New York. From the fall of 2000 to the summer of 2006, he completed several new works for jazz orchestra. Among them is the symphonic jazz piece Passacaglia, which was performed at Merkin Hall by the BMI New York Jazz Orchestra during their annual concert in July of 2004. From 2004 to 2007, three of Bill’s chamber works, The Conjure Woman Speaks, The Calling: The Light, and Liana’s Gypsy Dances, have had their premiere through PULSE concerts, a federation of award-winning composers.

Mr. Brown received a MA in music composition from CUNY City College, where he studied composition with distinguished professor David Del Tredici. He also earned an Advanced Certificate Graduate Degree in Music Education at CUNY Brooklyn College. In August of 2019, Mr. Brown was invited to teach as an Adjunct/Lecturer at The Aaron Copland School of Music, at CUNY Queens College, where he teaches courses in the Music Education Department.

Mr. Brown has taught music at the performing high school, Educational Center for the Arts, in Connecticut, and at various schools in New York City. In the spring of 2021, Mr. Brown was offered a teaching position at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

Presently Mr. Brown is working on a new commercial recording project featuring his composition, Dans les jardins des pierres sacrées, In the Gardens of Sacred Stones, which was performed by the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, in the vibrant city of Ostrava, East of the Czech Republic.