Emerald City Music Presents Pianist-Composer Michael Stephen Brown & Cellist Nicholas Canellakis In Recital, Seattle & Olympia, WA, April 11-12, 2025

The internationally lauded Canellakis-Brown Duo – pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown and cellist Nicholas Canellakis – will be presented by the Emerald City Music in two recitals on Friday evening, April 11, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. PDT, at 415 Westlake (415 Westlake Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109), and on Saturday April 12, 2025 at 7:30 p.m. PDT at The Minnaert Center for the Arts (2011 Mottman Rd SW, Olympia, WA 98512).

 

Entitled An Evening of Music and Film with Canellakis-Brown Duo, will feature an eclectic program of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saëns, Paganini, as well as the Duo’s own original compositions and folk arrangements. The Washington Post called the Duo “a pair of adventurous young talents who play with their antennae tuned to each other.” For up to fifteen years, the Duo has been honing its unique musical voice and presenting programs celebrating the standard literature, little-known gems, and original works and arrangements. The program follows:

 

 

General admission from $49 to $69 and $10 student tickets are available for purchase online on Emerald City Music’s website. For more information please visit the Canellakis-Brown Duo’s website, pianist Michael Stephen Brown’s website, and cellist Nicholas Canellakis’ website.

 

Cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown have been uniting their multi-disciplinary talents and honing their unique musical voice for over fifteen years. They bring their affectionate, brutally honest, and infectious rapport to the stage while presenting programs celebrating the standard literature, little-known gems, and original works and arrangements.

 

Their recent engagements include Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City, New Orleans Friends of Music, Rockport Music, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, ArtPower in San Diego, the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Wolf Trap in Washington D.C., and Music@Menlo in Palo Alto, where they were featured as guest curators. They both are longtime artists of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

 

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.

 

 

 

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

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