The AMEF Recognition Award is presented yearly at Music Conference Alberta. This prestigious award was established to recognize music educators (kindergarten through college, in private and public schools and studio teachers) who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of music education in Alberta.

Colleagues, students, friends or other community members are encouraged to make a submission to recognize a deserving individual that has pursued excellence in music education in any genre.

Dr. Jeremy Brown recently retired as Professor of Music from the University of Calgary. An award-winning teacher, he received the 2024 University of Calgary (Professor) Teaching Award, the 2014 Faculty of Arts Teaching Award, and the 1999 Student’s Union Teaching Excellence Award.  He was nominated again for the Student’s Union Teaching Award in 2017 and was named Ambassador of Canadian Music by the Canadian Music Centre (2009). He was nominated as Outstanding Conductor and Educator at the 2025 YYC Music Awards and was a recipient of the David Peterkin Award from the Alberta Band Association (2008).

His recordings and performances have received critical acclaim, including Emergence (Redshift Records), which won Outstanding Classical Recording of the Year at the 2023 YYC Music Awards. His recording of original jazz compositions, Intersections, won the 2025 YYC Music Awards Jazz Recording of the Year, and Prevail, with the Calgary Wind Symphony, won the YYC 2025 Classical Recording of the Year.

He performs as a wind band conductor, a jazz, classical and free improviser on the saxophone and flute, and is a book author and composer.  He has served as Artistic Director and conductor of the Calgary Wind Symphony for 26 years; performed as soloist (2015) and conducted (2017) the National Youth Band of Canada; and founded the National Concert Band of Canada as artistic director.

A prolific author, he recently published Perspectives on Jazz Patronage (Routledge, 2026), which introduces jazz patronage as its own art form. The Wind Band Music of Henry Cowell (Routledge, 2018) includes definitive recordings of Cowell’s band music with the winds of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Dr. Brown. He was also series editor and lead compiler of the inaugural Royal Conservatory of Music Saxophone Series (Frederick Harris Music, 2014), a multi-volume saxophone anthology with graded repertoire, etudes, technical studies, and orchestral excerpts.