Chris Brown & Kate Fenner
Kate Fenner and Hugh Christopher Brown's musical lives intertwine from their teenage years in the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir through their solo & collaborative works in New York City. Their new releases Dead Reckoning and Pacem 2 add to a repertoire spanning four decades.
Fenner's performances at MoMA this year inside the Joan Jonas retrospective, and Brown's establishment of Hotel Wolfe Island are recent landmarks of lives immersed in arts, cultural works and social justice.
Bio
Hugh Christopher Brown and Kate Fenner have been making music together since their meeting as teenagers in Toronto. During high school and years following, they recorded and toured extensively with The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, whose diaspora contributes to music far and wide.
After relocating to NYC, Brown and Fenner continued to tour and record as a duo, releasing Other People’s Heavens (1997), Geronimo (1998), O Witness (2000), Great Lakes Bootleg (2000), Resist War (2001), Burden of Belief (2002), Horses and Burning Cars (2002), Go On (2004). Magnet (2007), and Oblivion (2007). In 2005, they were commissioned to write Chansons du Salamandre, a symphonic song cycle to accompany the Merriweather-Post architectural installation in New York City, and joined B.B. King for a U.S. Tour.
Brown and Fenner’s music has been featured in choreographies by the Toronto Dance Theatre as well as Randy James Dance Company in NYC. Other works include music for the movie adaptation of Paul Quarrington’s Whale Music and Kate’s contributions to Joan Jonas’ work, including The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things.
The duo’s internet-only release Resist War has become a staple of the anti-war movement, and was added to the International Archive of Protest Songs in Glasgow.
In 2006 the family of legendary songwriter Steve Goodman asked Chris to produce a tribute album to the American icon. The result was My Old Man (O Boy, Red Pajamas), featuring contributions by Brown, Fenner and their contemporaries including Steve’s daughter, Rosie Goodman.
Kate and Chris continue to write and perform together at unexplained intervals determined by powers they have stopped questioning. They will do so always.
Live Shows
Releases
HUGH CHRISTOPHER BROWN & KATE FENNER
Chris Brown & Kate Fenner
Go On
Chris Brown & Kate Fenner
O Witness
Chris Brown & Kate Fenner
Geronimo
Chris Brown & Kate Fenner
Other People’s Heavens
KATE FENNER
Kate Fenner
Dead Reckoning
Kate Fenner
Middle Voice
Kate Fenner
Magnet
Kate Fenner
Horses and Burning Cars
HUGH CHRISTOPHER BROWN
Hugh Christopher Brown
Pacem 2: Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: “1968”
Hugh Christopher Brown
The Ropes
Hugh Christopher Brown
Pacem
Hugh Christopher Brown
Oblivion
Hugh Christopher Brown
Burden of Belief