Rocketts Landing business owner Mark Brown is giving the gift of song – one note at a time.

Brown, founder of The Giving Notes Project and co-founder of Lost Office Collaborative, was a songwriter and musician in Northern Virginia and Nashville, Tennessee at the start of his career. 

“Writing, creating, making music with other people, was definitely my passion and what I wanted to do,” he said. “I left my big career job in D.C. and Arlington, and moved to Nashville (to pursue music).”

After leaving Nashville, Brown moved to Richmond, but wanted to keep music in his life.

“Music has always been my love,” said Brown. “(It) evolved from playing in bands, to what became The Giving Notes Project, as a way to keep music in my life in a way that was meaningful.”

The idea of the project came to Brown as he began writing songs for others in his own life. This led him to become even more fascinated with sharing the stories of others in his community. 

“It was like, ‘All right, well, what would it take to write a song that tells someone else’s story?’ Like, really take the time to invest in the story of somebody else and what they’ve gone through, whether good or bad, and celebrate them,” said Brown. 

What began as a solo project of gathering prompts and creating free songs for others has expanded to a team of a dozen songwriters giving their time and talents to translating the stories of the community into music. 

Today, The Giving Notes Project pairs people who reach out to share their stories with one of their songwriters who take the time during one-on-one sessions to get to know participants and their stories. Following these conversations, the songwriters then write, record and produce original songs for the participants, free of charge. 

“The short version is to bring other people’s stories to life through an original song and recording,” said Brown. “I think underneath that – from a songwriting perspective is it forced me and a couple of these other musicians that we recruited to get outside of ourselves, to make sure that it would truly resonate with the person whose story we’re telling.”

At the end of the process, the songwriters will also do a “song reveal” Zoom call with participants while they hear the song for the first time. 

“It’s a really beautiful moment,” said Brown.

Since its conception, the project has given songs to honor and celebrate a variety of unique individual stories, including a woman who helped her mother find refuge from war.

The Giving Notes Project is not currently a registered nonprofit, but Brown says that he hopes to one day officially register the project.

“We’ve never made any money and never intended to make money off of it,” said Brown.

Team building through music

The project has now also overlapped Lost Office Collaborative, his and fellow co-founder Christian Markow's business.

Lost Office launched in January 2024 as unique team-building experiences. The business has recently begun incorporating a creative team workshop, based on The Giving Notes Project, that has participating organizations practice team-building and connection through their group songwriting workshops. 

“For me, the process and the act of making and creating music and/or any art form… There’s something special that happens when you put people in a room together and they make music together,” said Brown. “Something that they can feel, something that they can hear, something that they’re proud of, just that overall process of creating something beautiful together. I think it brings people together in general.”