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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. 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 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 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 (scores available on www.magnoliaarts.com). 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 his Magnolia Arts website.
Tim currently lives near Austin, Texas, with his wife of 12 years.
