After being homeschooled through middle school, Josh Brown (a.k.a. Meth Borrison) had the bright idea to learn a musical instrument. The closest one happened to be his mother's old clarinet, hidden in the closet, languishing in its peeling, leopard-print case. That leopard-print case would lead him to play with the local high school band, which led him to enroll full-time in public high school.
Josh's academic and artistic achievements led him to Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned a Bachelors of Humanities & Arts in Technical Writing and Music Technology through the interdisciplinary BXA program. Contemporary opera quickly became a natural medium for his love of language and music. For his senior capstone and fifth-year project, Josh commissioned and produced a total of nine new operas from Pittsburgh-based composers and librettists—many of whom were first-time opera-makers.
After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, Josh's love of theatre led him to Actors Theatre of Louisville's Professional Training Company as the 2019–2020 Sound Design Apprentice. This experience was cut short when the mayor called to shut down the 43rd Humana Festival of New American Plays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This happened on Josh's 24th birthday, while he was leading a sound check with The Bengson's for the world premiere of Jeff Augustin's Where the Mountain Meets the Sea.
Now, Josh spends his time schmoozing, rubbing elbows, and gossiping with the best and brightest of New York's up-and-coming theatre-makers. He has been a Composition Fellow with American Opera Projects' 2023–2025 cohort of Composers & the Voice and a 2025–2026 Artist in Residence with Nancy Manocherian's The Cell Theatre in Chelsea, NY. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with his dog, Beef Wellington "Welly" Brown.
Josh's theatrical work has been developed and produced by American Opera Projects, Thompson Street Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Boston Opera Collaborative, The Tank, Strange Trace, New Opera West, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and La Jolla Playhouse. As a composer, he has attended Sydeboob Duo's Composers Salon (2026), Hypercube's CubeLab (2021), the Fresh Inc Festival (2020), the São Paulo Contemporary Composers Festival (2019), the International Computer Music Conference (2018), and the Charlotte New Music Festival (2017, 2018).
