Bio
Sound Sovereign/Brown is a composer, vocalist, and holistic healing practitioner with an inherent co-thread in decolonization and social justice work - mainly through land-based, embodied, spiritual-psychological pathways.
Rooted in ritual, Sound's music includes sacred chant-based chamber pieces, orchestrated song landscapes, improvisational solo and collaborative practices, and a bit of singer-songwriter flavor. All of which explore relationship between the wordless, mantra, lyrical language, and prayer.
Sound is a member of Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, the Resistance Revival Chorus, and is the vocal director for Treya Lam. A valued member of the Bobby McFerrin CircleSongs community, Sound has studied with Bobby McFerrin and his faculty annually, and performed guest facilitation in 2017/2018.
Performances have included Lincoln Center, AfroPunk, Summerstage, Joe's Pub, Carnegie Hall, the Sant’Anna Arressi Jazz Festival in Sardinia-Italy, Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco Jazz, the Rubin Museum, Winter JazzFest NYC, Detroit Institute of the Arts, Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Apollo Theater.
Projects have included In the Mouth of this Dragon and Compass Song with Mendi & Keith Obadike; the modern opera Binibon with composer Elliott Sharp; Tonya Pinkin's Truth and Reconciliation of Womyn; choreographer Stefanie Batten Bland's Patien(ce); Derek McPhatter's afrofuturist LGBTQ musical, Bring the Beat Back; and the musical podcast series, The Misadventures of Clown Zer0, co-created by the NY NeoFuturists' Nicole Hill, Connor Sampson, and Colin Summers.
A recipient of the 2022 NYFA NYC Women's Fund Grant, Sound is currently working on a debut solo album entitled Data and the Disciple vol. 1, scheduled for release and live concert premiere in spring 2023.
~
You are warmly welcome to use whatever pronouns are most natural to you when referring to Sound,
as long as:
- all related verbs are conjugated in the 3rd person singular (i.e. "is," "does," "has," etc)
- it is done with clean intention
You are also warmly invited to explore with the non-gendered singular pronouns of:
the, thim, ther(s)
and/or
ve, ver, vis // ve, vim, ver(s)
