GRAMMY Award-winning pianist and composer Alex Brown is one of the most versatile musicians of his generation. Hailed by The New York Times for his "crystalline touch and worldly approach," Brown draws on classical, Latin, jazz, and contemporary traditions with a singular voice as both a performer and composer.
A member of Paquito D'Rivera's ensemble since 2007, Brown has played a central role in several GRAMMY-winning and nominated projects spanning jazz and classical music. He was a co-recipient of the 2023 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Compendium for Passion for Bach and Coltrane, alongside Jeff Scott, Imani Winds, and Harlem Quartet, and has performed on GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY winning and nominated projects with Brian Lynch, Dafnis Prieto, and Paquito D'Rivera.
Brown has performed with a wide range of leading artists, including Yo-Yo Ma, Christian McBride, Sean Jones, Cho-Liang Lin, Valerie Coleman, Armando Manzanero, Warren Wolf, Miguel Zenón, New York Voices, and Chris Thile (on Live from Here). In 2016, he was a featured soloist in Rhapsody in Blue with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto in Mexico City. He has appeared at major festivals and venues around the world, including Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Hollywood Bowl, and Newport Jazz Festival. His recordings as a leader include Pianist (2010), The Dark Fire Sessions (2021), and Island to Island (2025), a co-led project with steel pannist Victor Provost.
As a composer and orchestrator, Brown blends his classical training and improvisational background with a modern, borderless perspective. His orchestrations and arrangements have been performed by Cynthia Erivo, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Bobby Broom and the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, and Chad Lefkowitz-Brown's Global Big Band. Recent commissions include a three-movement big band suite for the Afro Bop Alliance as well as his New Orleans Suite for oboe and piano, written for Lyrica Baroque. He wrote the string arrangements for Kendrick Scott's Unearthed, featuring Harlem Quartet, and collaborated with rapper Andre Nickatina on his Reimagined by Symphony project. He also frequently composes music for film and television.
Born in 1987 and raised in Columbia, Maryland, Brown earned a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Performance from the New England Conservatory and a Master of Music in Studio Jazz Writing from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. He currently serves on the faculty at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and The New School, and has also taught at the Frost School, Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute, and NYO Jazz. He has led master classes at Berklee College of Music, Connecticut College, George Washington University, and Harvard University. Brown is a Yamaha Artist.