Brian Brown

The music on Spirit of the Rainbow (MD 3085) and Wildflowers (MD 3051) is a manifestation of his personal expression. As a performer, and through his work as Head of Improvisation Studies at the Victorian College of the Arts (a post from which he later retired), he did as much as anyone to foster an Australian identity in music.

A multi-instrumentalist, Brown played tenor and soprano saxophone, flute and alto flute, pan pipes, synthesisers, bells, and even the leather bowhorn made by Tasmanian sculptor Garry Greenwood. A feature of the Australian jazz circuit from the 1950s, he was best known for original compositions that drew on traditional and experimental jazz and crossed into world music, classical music and opera.

Wildflowers (MD 3051) (1984) blended sounds of the Australian bush with free jazz. As an educator he was remembered for urging students to break with convention. Founding head of the jazz and, later, improvisation studies programme at the Victorian College of the Arts, he pressed them to look beyond American models and find an individual, more Australian sound.

‘He was an amazing man, a very open-minded individual who had amazing ideas about contributing to music by working in your own original voice,’ said former student Alex Pertout.

Music Council of Australia’s Richard Letts wrote that Brown was ‘enormously influential in setting jazz in Melbourne on its distinctive course’ and that ‘his legacy can be heard every night of the week in music venues across Melbourne and beyond’. His philosophy shaped creative music-making Australia-wide.