Anne Brown

In the autumn of 2001 she was awarded Norway's Council of Cultures Honorary Award.

Born Annie Wiggins Brown in Baltimore, Maryland, she was the daughter of a prominent physician, Dr Harry F. Brown, the grandson of a slave. Her mother was of African, Cherokee and Scottish-Irish descent. Along with her three sisters, she was taught and encouraged in music by her mother. Hopes of developing her musical talents were dashed when a local Catholic school refused her entry on the grounds of her color. She encountered similar discrimination some years later when she applied to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, but was finally admitted to Morgan State College and Columbia University Teachers' College. All three of her marriages ended in divorce. Brown remained in Oslo until her death. In 1999 she was elected an honorary citizen of Baltimore, the town where, 70 years earlier, she had been denied a musical education on account of her skin color.

A native of Baltimore, Brown was rejected in her attempt to enroll at the Peabody Institute, a leading conservatory in her hometown. In 1998, she received the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to American Music from the Peabody Institute.

Has lived in Oslo, Norway since 1948, after meeting and eventually marrying Norwegian olympic ski-jumper Thorleif Schjelderup.