Bio for Tim Brace
Tim
Brace
was born in Houston,
Texas. He graduated from Jesse Jones High
School in Houston in 1969 and entered the University of Notre
Dame, majoring in engineering. After two years, he dropped out of
school and started a rock band (Circe) in Houston, playing lead
guitar and writing many of the band's songs. In 1973 he entered
the University of St. Thomas in Houston and majored in music
performance on the classical guitar, studying with Wolfgang
Justen. He also began composition study there with Tom Borling,
and played in the university's Jazz Ensemble. The spring of 1977
was spent at the International Music Center in Vienna, Austria,
studying 12-tone composition with Gunther Kahowez. While at St. Thomas,
Tim participated in guitar master classes with Pepe Romero (twice) and Manuel
Barrueco.
Tim
graduated from St. Thomas with a B.M. in music performance and a
B.A. in philosophy in 1978, receiving that university's music
department's Outstanding Graduating Senior Award. He then entered
graduate school at Dominican College in San Rafael, California,
majoring in classical guitar performance (studying with George
Sakellariou) with a minor in composition (with Jules Langert) and
special studies in Early Music on the Baroque lute (with
Catherine Liddell). After graduating with an M.M. in performance
in 1981, Tim taught music history, music theory, guitar ensemble
and "early music" at the High School
for the Performing
and Visual Arts in Houston, and concertized in the Houston area on
classical guitar
and on baroque lute.
In
1985, he entered the doctoral program in ethnomusicology at the
University of Texas, specializing in the music of China. In the
spring of 1987, he was granted a teaching assistantship and for
the next four years taught a course on the history of rock music
to undergraduates at the University of Texas. In 1987, and again
in 1989, Tim went to China to research Chinese music for his
dissertation. His first publication appeared in the summer 1991
edition of the journal Asian Music. He has taught courses in
World Music and Chinese Music at the University of Texas, and received
his Ph.D. in the summer of 1992.
During
this time, Tim also began conducting and writing for church
choirs, as well as writing sacred songs for guitar and voice and
arranging Christian hymns for solo classical guitar (see the recordings on this website).
Tim is currently Music Director at Trinity Church of Austin,
where he arranges and composes pieces for (and conducts)
the church choir, and where he regularly sings and plays guitar.
His steel string guitar is a Collings OM-2H, he has an electric guitar by Fret King, and his classical
guitar was made in 1973 by Robert Ruck. He also has a baroque lute and a vihuela da mano, but no longer actively plays either.
Tim has written or arranged more than 50 works for
classical guitar, arranged or composed more than 30 anthems or
preludes for church choir (or subsets of choir), and has written
numerous vocal and instrumental descants and solos for church and secular
performance. Scores for most of these pieces are available on this
website. He has also recorded four CDs, all of which are available from this website and Amazon.com, and from many online digital music services, including iTunes.
Most of his works for guitar, and for guitar and voice, are available at major streaming services (Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, etc.).
Tim
currently lives near Austin, Texas.
last updated May 2020