Faculty Profile
Dana Brown
NMS Piano Faculty
Dana Brown, pianist, has a multi-faceted career which includes solo playing, accompanying, conducting, coaching and teaching. He has been heard at the Tanglewood Festival, the Ravinia Festival, and many times on WFMT Radio as a collaborator, in addition to performances on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight”, Light Opera Works of Evanston, L’Opera Piccola, the Chicago Cultural Center and the Chicago Humanities Festival. As a coach, he has been on the faculty of Northwestern University, the Intermezzo Young Artists Program, the Opera and Music Festival of Lucca, Italy, and the Taos Opera Institute in Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico. He is now co-artistic director of a new summer program for emerging singers, the Up North Vocal Institute, held in Boyne, Michigan.
He was the coach for the 2008-2011 seasons of the Civic Music Association’s Support Our Singers Program in conjunction with the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Wisconsin District. He is also a staff pianist for the Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago; at Lyric he has played in the lessons and masterclasses of Marilyn Horne, Renata Scotto, Renée Fleming and Sir Andrew Davis.
As a solo pianist, he is a past national winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artist Competition, and has been the featured soloist in concerti of Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Gershwin with Midwestern orchestras. He represented the state of South Dakota, appearing with the Beethoven Society “Pops” Orchestra as soloist in the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto, in Washington, DC.
He is an Associate Professor of Opera and Vocal Coaching at CCPA, where he has taught and coached since 2001. At CCPA he musically directs opera, coaches graduate and undergraduates in the vocal performance programs, and teaches singer-specific classes in diction, art song literature and business practices. Several recent productions at CCPA include Puccini/Gianni Schicchi, Bernstein/Candide and Trouble in Tahiti, Argento/Postcard from Morocco, Gilbert and Sullivan/The Mikado, Ravel/L’Heure Espagnole and L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Poulenc/Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Britten/Turn of the Screw and Albert Herring, and Rorem/Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters. Along with colleague Scott Gilmore, he is one of the music directors of CCPA Operafest, now in its sixth year.
In June 2013, Dr. Brown was the keynote speaker and performer at the opening convocation of the Texas Music Teachers Association Convention. Another highlight of 2013 was performing at the 80th birthday party of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with soprano Patrice Michaels.
He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where he studied with renowned accompanist Martin Katz. He currently studies piano with Mary Sauer, Principal Keyboard Artist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.