Director, Tuba Euphonium Fest
Velvet Brown is the David P. Stone Endowed Professor for the School of Music at Penn State and the Associate Director of its School of Music for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Also, she is an Artist Faculty member at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.
Brown enjoys a career as professor, international soloist, composer/arranger, chamber ensemble performer, recording artist, conductor, and orchestral player. She has performed and taught in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Finland, France, England, Hungary, Slovenia, Russia, Japan, Cuba, Canada, and the United States. Brown is currently the principal tubist of the New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra. Brown was honored to be principal tuba with the Hope and Harmony Ensemble which recorded a video of fanfares for the 2021 Presidential Inauguration conducted by Marin Alsop.
She has served as principal tuba with the River City Brass band, guest principal with the Lahti Philharmonic in Finland, the Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Women’s Philharmonic Orchestra, and as substitute or additional tubist with the Saint Louis Symphony and Fort Wayne Philharmonic.
Velvet Brown has been an invited solo artist or tuba solo artist adjudicator at the International Tuba and Euphonium Conferences since 1998. She has also served as guest conductor for festivals in the United States in Maine, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania as well as abroad in Austria, Finland, Italy, Slovenia, Japan, and Canada. Brown is a founding member of Boston Brass and is founder and current member of Stiletto Brass Quintet, Monarch Brass Quintet and Brass Ensemble, the Quintet of the Americas, and the Pennsylvania Brassworks.
Moreover, she is also a founding board member of the International Women’s Brass Conference. Velvet also serves as the Artistic Director of the Chromatic Brass Collective.
She has released five solo CDs and has collaborated on several other recordings as a soloist and ensemble member, such as Stiletto Brass Quintet featuring Doc Severinsen, trumpet, on one of her original compositions, Testimony (Howard Johnson and Gravity) as lead tuba, and a solo tuba jazz recording, Lonnie’s Lament with the Cleveland Jazz Ensemble. Velvet Brown is a Buffet/Crampon Performing Artist, performing on the MW 2250 and 2182 F tubas, and the MW 2000 and MW 3450 CC tubas. She is also a performing artist for Denis Wick mouthpieces, mutes, and accessories.