Steven Brown

Formed in 1977 within San Francisco, Tuxedomoon assembled Steven Brown, Blaine Reininger, Peter Principle, and Winston Tong, who together shaped an approach that aligned closely with the Ralph Records sensibility already embodied by the better-known Residents. After joining Ralph, the group issued Half-Mute in 1980 and Desire the following year, a stretch when the label invested heavily in cryptic advertisements placed in mainstream magazines previously closed to independent imprints. Not long afterward, Brown and his colleagues moved to Europe to concentrate on experimental pursuits, beginning with extended stays in Rotterdam and Brussels.

Later recordings surfaced across assorted labels, among them the expansive 1982 work “Ghost Sonata,” characterized as “an opera without words” yet left without a release for nearly ten years. Reininger departed in spring 1983, after which the remaining members continued with Holy Wars, Ship of Fools, and finally You. In 1988 Brown, Reininger, and Principle reassembled a version of the band, and from that point onward they have reconvened to perform and record under the Tuxedomoon name whenever circumstances align.

Brown launched his solo path in 1983 through a sequence of notable pairings with Benjamin Lew on the Crammed Discs imprint. Music for Solo Piano, issued by Crepuscule in 1984, marked his first entirely independent effort. Intellectual themes run through this body of work, evident in tributes to German film director Rainer Fassbinder and in a score drawn from Edward Albee’s Zoo Story. Subsequent pieces took inspiration from the writings of Jean Genet and William Burroughs as well as the sonnets of British poet John Keats. Brown settled in Mexico City in 1993, where he has worked with the ensemble Nine Rain while sustaining ongoing Tuxedomoon activities.