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Bay Area composer and performer Chris Brown has spent the last twenty years pursuing music in the cracks between many traditions and styles. Beginning as a classical pianist, he was influenced by studies of Indonesian, Indian, and Afro-American and Cuban musics, and then took off on branches provided by the American Experimentalists in inventing and building a personal electronic instrumentation. He has been active as a pianist in performing and recording the music of composers such as James Tenney, Henry Cowell, Christian Wolff, William Brooks, David Rosenboom, Luc Ferrari, and Terry Riley.

Collaboration and improvisation have been primary in the development of Chris Brown’s music for various traditional instruments and interactive electronics. He has had commissions for such pieces from the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, among others. He was a member with percussionist William Winant, saxophonist Larry Ochs, and electronic musician Scot Gresham-Lancaster of the pioneering group "Room", which explored the intersection of composition, improvisation, and electronics. Between 1986-97 he was also a member of "The Hub", an ensemble of computer musicians who developed "Computer Network Music", a genre whose sound arises from the interdependency of multiple computer-music systems. Recordings of his music and performances can be found on the Tzadik, Artifact Recordings, Music and Arts, Sound Aspects, Centaur, New Albion, Black Saint Records, and Elektra/Musician labels.

Since 1985 he has also been active as an educator, first at the San Francisco Art Institute, and since 1990 as a faculty member at Mills College in Oakland, where he is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM) and Associate Professor of Music.

Chris Brown's most recent works involve extending the Computer Network Music into new performance venues. An installation called "Talking Drum", which involves networked computers spread throughout a large space that are programmed as interactive drum-machines, has been produced in Montreal, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and in Groningen, Holland. This piece was awarded an Honorable Mention by the Prix Ars Electronica in 1996. A new series of concert works named "Inventions" have emerged from the polyrhythm generating software used in "Talking Drum." He has also worked with music programmer Mike Berry in supporting the development of the "Grainwave" live synthesis software for the Macintosh. A live interactive piece using Grainwave that linked performers from the U.S. and Germany called "Eternal Network Music" was performed in November, 1999 as part of the "net_condition" exhibition at ZKM, Karlsruhe,