“Elizabeth Brown writes the only music I know of in which the flute might be playing ‘London Bridge is Falling down’ while the cello is sliding through a long glissando underneath, yet nothing feels incongruous. There’s a kind of imaginary quality to her music.
It’s as if not only each piece but each passage is based on some strange conceit: a bird sings while a pianist plays Mozart and a cellist shakes like a bowl full of Jell-O. Each conceit morphs into the next in a stream of non-sequiturs, and yet every juncture is smoothly blended, no seam visible. It’s elegant, quiet, thoughtful, well-crafted music, and as bizarre as hell. Imagine walking into a Magritte painting: fish protrude from the vase instead of flowers, the chairs are bolted to the ceiling, but the wallpaper is lovely and the furnishings tasteful.
That’s a little what listening to Elizabeth Brown is like.”
— Kyle Gann, Chamber Music Magazine
New Album
Sylvan Winds: Resonant Worlds
Featuring Pentalogue by Elizabeth Brown
Albany Records (2025)
Buy / Stream Album
“To celebrate their 47th season, New York-based Sylvan Winds showcase a quartet of new quintets that tease the brain with their brilliant use of the genre and delight the ear with their transfiguring beauty.
In Pentalogue, written during the pandemic, Elizabeth Brown even seems seduced herself while leading the quintet, like Alice, into a wonderland of sounds inhabited by half-remembered Baroque and Classical themes and rhythms capped off by a movement called ‘Of Mice and Mahler’. The short recap of the entire suite that follows shines its facets of hope like sonic gemstones.”
— Laurence Vittes, Gramophone
February, 2026
Listen / Watch
Tall Grasses
for shakuhachi choir
Pentalogue
for wind quintet
A Bookmobile for Dreamers
for theremin, electronic sound, and video
Atlantis
for theremin and classical guitar played with slide
Firmament
for solo violin
Just Visible in the Distance
for string quartet