Pianist-Composer Michael Stephen Brown Presented By People's Symphony Concerts & Chamber Music Society Of Lincoln Center, April 5, 2025

Mr. Brown To Be Joined By Violinist Danbi Um & Cellist Nicholas Canellakis.

The outstanding American pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers,” will be joined by cellist Nicholas Canellakis and violinist Danbi Um for a trio recital presented by the People’s Symphony Concerts and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on Saturday evening, April 5, 2025 at 7:30 PM, at New York’s High School of Fashion Industries (225 W 24th St, New York, NY 10011). Part of the Mann Series of the People’s Symphony Concert, this concert will works by Beethoven, Ravel, and Schuman. The full program follows:

The concert is available to stream for $20 on Vimeo & YouTube April 7 to 12. To reserve for streaming and purchase please visit People’s Symphony Concerts’ event page. For more information, please visit Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s website, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown’s website, violinist Danbi Um’s website, and cellist Nicholas Canellakis’s website.

Praised for his "fearless performances," and called “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers” by The New York Times, pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown has also been singled out for his “exceptionally beautiful” compositions by The Washington Post.

A frequent performer of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Mr. Brown, whose artistry is shaped by his creative voice as a pianist and composer, was featured by the Society this season with a solo recital at Alice Tully Hall.  The excitement of the evening was reflected in George Grella's March 20, 2024 article for the New York Classical Review:

Precise articulation in fluid phrasing, a sense of forward motion, and just the right amount of time lingering on the most colorful sonorities, all served the intellect and charm in the music... He finished the first half with a fantastic performance of Miroirs.  Playing fleetly but with every note presented precisely, his pedaling and balance between percussive and legato articulations were perfect; one was enveloped in the sheer sound and mysteries of this wonderful piece. “Une barque sur l’océan” was deeply evocative, and “Alborada del gracioso” brought many to their feet in a premature ovation. Brown recaptured the atmosphere of the performance with a mesmerizing “La vallée des cloches.

As a guest soloist, Mr. Brown has performed with the Seattle Symphony, the National Philharmonic, and the Grand Rapids, North Carolina, Wichita, New Haven, and Albany Symphonies. He has appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Lincoln Center. He regularly collaborates with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and has been featured at numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Gilmore, Ravinia, Saratoga, Bridgehampton, Caramoor, Music in the Vineyards, Bard, Sedona, Moab, and Tippet Rise.

Mr. Brown performed at the 2023 Bard Festival and was singled out by Times critic David Allen: “Young artists excelled in all these concerts, not least the pianist Michael Stephen Brown, whose poised refinement made an early student piece by Smyth, her Sarabande in D minor, sound like a mature masterpiece.” – The New York Times, August 8, 2023

Mr. Brown recently toured his own Concerto for Piano and Strings (2020) throughout the United States and Poland with several orchestras. He has received commissions from the Gilmore Piano Festival; the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra; the New Haven and Maryland Symphony Orchestras; Concert Artists Guild; Chamber Music Sedona; Music in the Vineyards; Shriver Hall; Osmo Vänskä, pianists Jerome Lowenthal, Ursula Oppens, Orion Weiss, Adam Golka, and Roman Rabinovich.

A prolific recording artist, his latest album Noctuelles, featuring Ravel’s Miroirs and newly discovered movements by Medtner was called “a glowing presentation” by BBC Music Magazine. He can be heard as soloist with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot in the music of Messiaen, and as soloist with the Brandenburg State Symphony in music by Samuel Adler. Other albums include Beethoven’s Eroica Variations; all-George Perle; and collaborative albums each with pianist Jerome Lowenthal, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and violinist Elena Urioste. He is now embarking on a multi-year project to record the complete piano music by Felix Mendelssohn including world premiere recordings of music by one of Mendelssohn’s muses, Delphine von Schauroth.

Recipient of many awards, Mr. Brown was the winner of the 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant. Other awards include the First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Bowers Residency from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (formerly CMS Two), and the Juilliard Petschek Award. Mr. Brown is a Steinway Artist.

Mr. Brown earned dual bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano and composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald and composers Samuel Adler and Robert Beaser. Additional mentors have included András Schiff and Richard Goode as well as his early teachers, Herbert Rothgarber and Adam Kent. A native New Yorker, he lives there with his two 19^th-century Steinway D’s, Octavia and Daria.

 Nicholas Canellakis has become one of the most sought-after and innovative cellists of his generation, praised as a “superb young soloist” (The New Yorker) and for being "impassioned ... the audience seduced by Mr. Canellakis's rich, alluring tone" (The New York Times).  A multifaceted artist, Canellakis has forged a unique voice combining his talents as soloist, chamber musician, curator, filmmaker, composer/arranger, and teacher.

Recent concert highlights include concerto appearances with the Virginia, Albany, Delaware, Stamford, Richardson, Lansing, and Bangor Symphonies, the Erie Philharmonic, The Orchestra Now, the New Haven Symphony as Artist-in-Residence, and the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. He performs recitals throughout the U.S. with his longtime duo collaborator, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown, and recent appearances have included Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Four Arts in Palm Beach, New Orleans Friends of Chamber Music, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and Wolf Trap near Washington D.C.

Mr. Canellakis was recently appointed to the cello faculty of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, his alma mater. He is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with whom he performs regularly at Alice Tully Hall and on tour internationally, including London’s Wigmore Hall, The Louvre in Paris, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea, and the Shanghai and Taipei National Concert Halls. He is also a regular guest artist at many of the world's leading music festivals, including Santa Fe, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Bard, Bridgehampton, La Jolla, Moab, Chamberfest Cleveland, and Music in the Vineyards. His Artistic Directorship of Chamber Music Sedona, Arizona, where he has made a major impact through his dynamic programming and educational and community outreach, was recently extended.

Mr. Canellakis’s latest album (b)romance, recorded with Mr. Brown, featured some of his original compositions and arrangements and was released by First Hand Records in 2023. It received over one million streams on Apple Music.

He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, where his teachers included Orlando Cole, Peter Wiley and Paul Katz, and he was a student of Madeleine Golz at Manhattan School of Music Pre-College. He began his Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center career as a member of the Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two), and he has also been in residence at Carnegie Hall as a member of Ensemble Connect.

Filmmaking and acting are special interests of Canellakis. He has produced, directed, and starred in several short films and music videos, including his popular comedy web series "Conversations with Nick Canellakis.” His latest films “Thin Walls” and “My New Cello” were nominated for awards at many prominent film festivals and are currently available to stream online.

Mr. Canellakis plays on an outstanding Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume cello, from 1840.

Praised by The Strad as an “utterly dazzling” artist, with “a marvelous show of superb technique” and “mesmerizing grace” (New York Classical Review), violinist Danbi Um captivates audiences with her virtuosity, individual sound, and interpretive sensitivity. A Menuhin International Violin Competition Silver Medalist and winner of the prestigious 2018 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, she showcases her artistry in concertos, solo recitals, and in collaboration with distinguished chamber musicians.

Known for her "virtuoso interpretations that evoke the grace and depth of a musical Golden Age" by the Strings Magazine, Ms. Um's recent and upcoming engagements include appearances with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia (Kimmel Center), Ridgewood Symphony, and her Washington D.C.'s recital debut at the Phillips Collection. This season will also see Ms. Um's return to People's Symphony, Saratoga Performing Arts (SPAC), Santa Fe, North Shore Music Festivals, as well as La Musica Festival (Sarasota). 

An avid chamber musician, Ms. Um returns to Chamber Music San Francisco, the Society of Four Arts in Palm Beach, Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for both national and international tours. Ms. Um's chamber music collaborators have included Anthony Marwood, Vadim Gluzman, Pamela Frank, Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Frans Helmerson, David Finckel, David Shifrin, Wu Han, and Gilbert Kalish.  A recording artist for Avie Records, Ms.Um's debut album, Much Ado: Romantic Violin Masterworks, was released worldwide in fall of 2023. Her second album is slated for release in Feburary 2025. 

In 2018, Ms. Um made her New York recital debut at Lincoln Center presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. After winning the 2014 Music Academy of the West Competition, Ms. Um made her concerto debut in the Walton Violin Concerto with the Festival Orchestra, conducted by Joshua Weilerstein. Past concerto engagements include appearances with the Israel Symphony, Auckland Philharmonic, Vermont Symphony, and the Dartmouth Symphony. She also recently appeared in recital and in chamber music performances in such venues as the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Harris Theatre in Chicago, Wigmore Hall in London, and at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Born in 1990 in Seoul, South Korea, Ms. Um began violin lessons at the age of three. In the year 2000, she moved to the United States to study at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree. She also holds an Artist Diploma from Indiana University. Her teachers have included Shmuel Ashkenasi, Joseph Silverstein, Jaime Laredo, and Hagai Shaham. Ms. Um is a winner of Astral Artists’ National Auditions. She plays a 1683 “ex-Petschek” Nicolo Amati violin, on loan from a private collection.

For further information, please contact Hemsing Associates at 212-772-1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com.

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