Billy Bang, William Parker and the San Francisco group Cultural Odyssey. Upon completing his military service as a Captain in 1980, he returned to San Francisco to pursue his career as a professional musician with groups Cultural Odyssey, United Front and others. Brown was an early collaborator with the 1980s Asian American Jazz Movement, an outgrowth of the Bay Area’s progressive jazz scene allied with Third World student politics in the late 1960s-70s. He toured and recorded internationally with United Front, and performed with the San Francisco Symphony in the premiere of Anthony Davis’ “Wayang V” in 1984. Brown also taught drums and percussion at the New College of California in San Francisco with fellow faculty members saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Andrew Hill, and trumpeter Eddie Henderson. Brown moved to New York in 1985 to perform in Anthony Davis’ opera, “X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X” at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia. He received a scholarship to attend Rutgers University and was the first graduate of their Masters in Music in Jazz Studies program in 1987, studying drumming with Ed Blackwell and Keith Copeland, and composition with Noel DaCosta. While living in New York, he performed with Kenny Barron, Art Farmer and George ‘Big Nick’ Nicholas, and performed in Europe with David Ware, Leo Wright, Peter Kowald, Butch Morris, Mark Helias and Tim Berne. Brown subsequently chose to attend the University of California, Berkeley as a Ford Predoctoral Fellow to study with composer/ethnomusicologist Olly Wilson, African music with CK Ladzekpo, Japanese and North Indian music with Bonnie Wade, and American Indian music with Robert Black. Brown was awarded two research fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution in 1988 and 1989, exploring the origins of the jazz drum set and the newly acquired Duke Ellington collection. In 1989, he participated in the Jazz In July residency program at UMass-Amherst to study with Max Roach, Billy Taylor, Bobby Thomas and Yusef Lateef. In 1992, Brown accepted employment as a music specialist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, where he also founded and toured with the Smithsonian Jazz Trio with fellow musicians Sir Roland Hanna and Keter Betts. While in California he performed with John Handy, Julius Hemphill, Billy Taylor, Calvin Keys and steel pan virtuoso Len ‘Boogsie’ Sharpe. Brown toured internationally with the Sirone Sextet, Jon Jang’s Pan-Asian Arkestra, and Mark Izu’s Circle of Fire, recording