Marcellus Brown is visiting professor of music in bands at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
He is also director of bands emeritus at Boise State University, where, under his leadership, the band program became one of the most outstanding wind band programs in the northwest. During his tenure, the Boise State University Symphonic Winds performed at the College Band Directors National Association National Conference at the University of Washington and at the 81st American Bandmasters Association Annual Conference in Reno, Nevada.
Brown has done extensive work as a guest conductor, clinician, and adjudicator throughout the United States as well as in Canada and Australia. He served a two-year term as president of the College Band Directors National Association Northwest Division and was elected to a two-year term to serve on the board of the National Band Association. He currently serves on the selection panel for the National Band Association William D. Revelli Composition Contest.
Prior to his appointment at Boise State University, he served as director of bands and professor of trumpet at Chicago State University and Augustana College.
Brown has been director of the Treasure Valley Concert Community Band since fall 1992. In 2007, he accepted the position of conductor for the Treasure Valley’s Hymns of Thanksgiving Orchestra. In addition, he established the Boise State University Summer Chamber Music Camp, which encourages and promotes the performance of chamber music for secondary school students and champions great composers from the past and contemporary composers (jazz, pop, Broadway, and motion pictures) from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Brown holds a Master of Music in Trumpet Performance degree and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Michigan, where he took conducting classes with Elizabeth Green. He did doctoral work at the University of Illinois, where he was a graduate assistant in the University Band program and studied conducting with Harry Begian.
While director of bands at Boise State, Brown was the recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award and the Faculty/Staff Larry G. Selland Humanitarian Award, and one of 10 faculty to receive two Top-Ten Student Scholar Awards. In December 2022, he was honored with the National Band Association’s Al and Gladys Wright Distinguished Legacy Award.