Margaret Brouwer is an important composer and educator. She wrote a great deal of chamber music earlier in her career, and in later life, she has increasingly often received commissions from prominent symphony orchestras. Brouwer was born on February 8. 1940, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1962 and went on for a master's degree at Michigan State University. At this point, Brouwer was primarily a violinist, and she began her career with positions in the Fort Worth Symphony and the Dallas Symphony, but then she switched to composition, earning a doctorate in that field at Indiana University. Among her teachers were George Crumb, Donald Erb, and Harvey Sollberger. Major early works by Brouwer include 1982's Ruins of Riveaulx; that work was for electronic tape with optional visuals, but most of her works have been for conventional instruments. Brouwer joined the composition faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and from 1996 to 2008, she served as its chair; she remains active there as professor emerita. The first years of her career saw her create numerous chamber works, including the Demeter Prelude for string quartet (1997), which was later performed at New York's Steinway Hall. Brouwer earned a number of major prizes during the 2000s decade, which helped widen her reputation. She held residencies at New Hampshire's MacDowell Colony in 2001, at the Wellesley Composers Conference in 2002, and at Indiana University in 2004; in that year, she also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2006, she received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in music, and in 2010, she received a Meet the Composer commission; the result was Path at Sunrise, Masses of Flowers, which received its premiere from the Cleveland Women's Symphony. Increasingly often, such prominent ensembles as the Detroit Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and Dallas Symphony have premiered Brouwer's works. In 2011, she founded the Blue Streak Ensemble with the intention of providing performances of works by herself and others. By the early 2020s, more than 30 of Brouwer's works had been recorded on such labels as Naxos and New World Records. ~ James Manheim, Rovi