Jazz Specialist Linda Brown Joins UCI as Full-Time American Music Historian

IRVINE — Rae Linda Brown, a specialist on jazz and other American music, has joined the UC Irvine music department as its first full-time American music historian. She has begun teaching classes in the history of jazz and 20th-Century music.

Prior to her appointment as an assistant professor at UCI, Brown taught musicology at the University of Michigan in 1986 and was a UC President’s Fellow at UCLA for 1 1/2 years.

Her major area of research interest is Florence Price (1888-1953), who became known as the first black woman to compose orchestral works. Her Symphony in E Minor was played by the Chicago Symphony in 1933. Brown is writing a biography of Price.