Biography

I was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, and grew up in Williamsburg, the restored 18th century town. In 1977 I went to New York to attend Cooper Union, where I majored in photography. While in school I began writing songs and hanging out at various music clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. It was there that I met other aspiring songwriters such as Suzanne Vega, Jack Hardy, David Massengill, John Gorka, and Shawn Colvin. In 1982 I was the co-founder (with Jack Hardy) of the Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a record/magazine promoting new songs and songwriters.

During the 80's I concentrated much of my attention on photography--documenting the streets and landscape of the city--and in 1985, I began to photograph along the former Iron Curtain border and the Berlin Wall. That project, which I continued to work on till after the fall of East Germany and the Soviet Union, has been exhibited in several one-man shows, and prints from the series have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

After a few years away from music, I once again began writing and performing songs. In 1991 I recorded an album simply titled "Brian Rose." The music runs from full band arrangements, produced by Suzanne Vega, to spare acoustic guitar and violin. Over the years I have written 200 or more songs, 40 or 50 of which I still stand by. Whether one calls what I do rock or folk is not particularly important. What is essential is that the music, played with a band or solo, starts with the idea of a song as a complete thing in itself.

In 1993 I married Renee Schoonbeek, a Dutch urban planner. I travel frequently between New York and Amsterdam both for music and photography. Most recently I have been photographing the landscape on the periphery of Amsterdam. The working title of the project is "Amsterdam on Edge." Most recently my photographs were exhibited at De Balie, a cultural center in Amsterdam.


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Website by Eric Szczerbinski - EricS10332@aol.com