About Conor
Composer
Conor Abbott Brown (he/they) is a clarinetist and composer who grew up in Altona, Colorado and Paris, France. They started playing the clarinet when they were 8 years old. The clarinet led Conor to explore musical traditions from all over the world. He saw the Klezmatics in concert and fell in love with klezmer. At age 11, his clarinet teacher, Carol Robinson, introduced him to Romani music via the film Latcho Drom and encouraged him to begin composing. Conor went to the Balkan Music & Dance Workshop for three summers which led him to play clarinet in a Balkan brass band for dance parties across Colorado. His dad Kevan played the baritone horn in the band.
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At age 14, Conor joined the Denver Young Artists Orchestra (instead of the high school ski team, since they also practiced on Saturdays) and began competing in concerto competitions playing pieces of Western classical music such as Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. He decided to study music and dance in college and, at the age of 18, began attending Bard College and the Bard College Conservatory of Music. As the culminating project of their composition degree, Conor wrote a clarinet concerto for their teacher, classical/klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer, which David performed with the American Symphony Orchestra. Also while at Bard, Conor formed progressive metal band Fifth Veil and travelled to Türkiye to study with members of KardeÅŸ Türküler, a group who perform music from many different West Asian cultures.
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In their 20s, Conor composed music for orchestras and worked as a sound engineer and music producer, then went back to college and received masters and doctoral degrees in music composition from The University of Colorado at Boulder, where they taught courses in music technology. Conor was commissioned to write a piece celebrating Finland’s 100 year anniversary of independence which was performed in Helsinki, Washington D.C., and New York City.
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Now in their 30s, Conor is writing and producing music for films and creating orchestral arrangements for pop and film music stars, such as Ellie Goulding and Colin Stetson, so that the artists can perform their music with orchestras. Conor also plays clarinet in Egemen Kesikli’s band Turkish Massage Owl performing folk music from West Asia.
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Conor enjoys many non-musical activities. They hike and scramble up mountains and recently completed a long-standing goal of climbing all 67 publicly-accessible peaks in Boulder County, where they live. Conor also plays the card game Magic: the Gathering (where he’s infamous for inventing off-the-wall combo decks), attends modern dance performances, likes to identify plants in the wild, and is always on the lookout for restaurants serving the best baingan bharta.