Bassist, composer, educator and actor John Brown is a native of Fayetteville, North Carolina, and currently resides in Durham, NC. He is a graduate of the School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

John joined Duke University’s music department as an adjunct instructor in 2001, becoming assistant professor of the practice of music and director of the Duke Jazz Program in 2003. That same year he founded Jazz @ the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, a weekly live jazz jam session open to campus and community, now driven by student leadership in the Duke University Union.  He began his tenure as Duke’s first full-time Vice Provost for the Arts on July 1, 2020.