Elizabeth Brown (born 1953) is an American contemporary composer and performer, known for music described as otherworldly, which employs microtonal expression, unique instrumentation and a morphing, freewheeling language.

[6][7][8][9] She has written extensively for flute, unconventional instruments such as the Partch complement and theremin, and the traditional Asian shakuhachi and đàn bầu; she combines them in original ways that mix Western and Eastern, ancient and modern, and experimental and conventionally melodic sensibilities.

[10][11][12] Composer and critic Robert Carl calls Brown a "gentle maverick" whose avant-gardism bends and subverts traditional tropes with an unironic, unpretentious manner "that is fresh and imaginative, but never afraid of beauty, nor of humane warmth.

[31][32][33][25] While on an orchestra tour of Japan during this period, Brown discovered the shakuhachi, an ancient Japanese bamboo flute whose varied, subtle tones she has likened to the private music in her head.

[13][5] She gravitates toward instruments with distinctive, weightless timbres and the capacity for subtle inflections and wavering pitches, which glide in and out to blur or dissolve seemingly "normal" melodies and harmonies.

[24][37][1] Composer and critic Kyle Gann calls her approach a "smooth, introverted surrealism," blending stream-of-conscious non-sequiturs, strange conceits and quotations (of Classical, standards and folk music) into elegant wholes that draw listeners into complicity rather than provoking them.

[7] "Arcana" (2004, commissioned by Toby and Itzhak Perlman) features an Eastern-flavored flute accompanied by recorded theremin and "homemade" drones, creaks, and scratches that evoke tender (a toy shop or dollhouse) and slightly spooky themes (secrets, mysteries, elixirs, intrigue).

[5][44] Critics such as The New York Times's Bernard Holland compare its approach to Charles Ives and the repetitive phrases of Janacek, while noting Brown's characteristic "clouds of unreconciled fragments" (e.g., a stray, poignant passage of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" on clarinet).

[1][46][47] The fifth piece, "Figures in a Landscape" (1995) opens with harmonies recalling Aaron Copland, before creating what Kyle Gann calls "an inescapably eerie scene" by juxtaposing a straight-pitched piano with a wavering violin line like "a warped 78 rpm record.

[2][50] Brown's first shakuhachi composition, "Migration" (1990), combines the instrument with a string trio in a dreamlike, spare sonic landscape that recalls traditional Japanese music and theater while retaining a sense of European melody and harmony; reviews suggest the work, a memorial to a friend, evokes both familiar and alien, tragedy and transcendence.

[1][4] The hallucinatory "Seahorse" (2008, also on Mirage) contrasts the propulsive physicality of Partch instruments with Brown's ethereal, floating theremin, evoking the title creature's marine odysseys with throbbing and wheezing, underwater-like sounds.

[60][61] A meditation on progress and labor exploring the effects of the advent of electricity on a young rural woman, it was inspired by Brown's Mississippi farming predecessors and historic pamphlets distributed by the Alabama Power Company.

[20] A Bookmobile for Dreamers (theremin and recorded sound) is a video/opera exploring reading, libraries, culture and imagination through a dialogue between Brown's dreamlike playing and the rambling title vehicle, rendered in Osterburg's whimsical style.

[64][65][23] In addition to her work with Lothar Osterburg, Brown has collaborated with artist Lorie Novak on the multimedia installations Collected Visions (1992, 2000), which explore female identity, memory and intergenerationality through projected photographs and music.