Emily Freeman Brown

Emily Freeman Brown, Music Director and Conductor of the Bowling Green Philharmonia and Opera Theater at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, is the 2026 winner of the Alice M. Ditson Conductor's Award given by Columbia University in New York. Established in 1945, Howard Hanson, Director of the Eastman School of Music was the first awardee; other recipients include Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas and more. Dr. Brown is only the third woman to receive this national award. 

In 2016 Dr. Brown was made Professor of Creative Arts Excellence at BGSU. Brown has led ten CDs on Albany Records with the Bowling Green Philharmonia. In 2018, the 100th Anniversary year of the BG Philharmonia, the orchestra performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in Detroit’s Orchestra Hall. The BG Philharmonia has performed under her baton at the Ohio Music Educators Association in Cincinnati and Cleveland. Dr. Brown is the author of the book Dictionary for the Modern Conductor (Rowman & Littlefield).

The first woman to receive a doctorate in orchestral conducting at the Eastman School of Music, Ms. Brown has appeared as conductor with orchestras in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America including the Rochester Philharmonic, the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, the Syracuse and Toledo Symphonies, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Eastman Virtuosi, Skaneateles Music Festival, Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Orchestra and Göttinger Symphonie Orchester (Germany), ​​the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony of Chile and the Bartók Ensemble, both in Santiago, the Sibiu State Philharmonic Orchestra (Romania), the Macedonia National Symphony Orchestra, the National Soloists Orchestra in Astana, and Conservatory Symphony Orchestra of Almaty (Kazakhstan), the American Festival of the Arts (Houston), Interlochen and Chautauqua summer music institutes and the all-state orchestras in Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Missouri, Washington and Minnesota. Dr. Brown was in residence at the Boston University, School of Music conducting a performance of Hadyn’s Creation in Symphony Hall in 2018. In 2010 she was in residence at the University of North Texas, conducting the School’s Symphony Orchestra and leading classes in orchestral conducting. She taught a summer conducting course at the Free University of Berlin for nine years in addition to conducting master classes at the Conservatory of Music in Riga, Latvia, Santiago, Chile and many others. During the fall of 2021 Dr. Brown taught graduate conducting at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Ms. Brown has recorded for Naxos, Linn and Opus One Records, including ten disks on Albany/Parma Records with the Bowling Green Philharmonia under the title The Voice of the Composer; New Music from Bowling Green that have been widely heard and featured in an internationally syndicated radio program under the same name. In addition to her book, Dr. Brown has published articles in the BACH journal and the Journal of the Conductors Guild. She served as President of the Conductors Guild and continues as a member of the advisory board.

Ms. Brown studied conducting and cello at the Royal College of Music in London, England where she was twice winner of the Sir Adrian Boult Conducting Prize. Her major teachers have included Leonard Slatkin, Herbert Blomstedt, Franco Ferrara, David Effron and James Dixon.