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Press Releases
Renowned Pianist Michael Stephen Brown To Participate In 2024 Music@Menlo Summer Festival For Three Concert, July 21-26, 2024
The internationally acclaimed American pianist Michael Stephen Brown, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers,” will return to the 2024 Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival for three concerts on July 21, 25 and 26, 2024.
On July 21, 2024, 4 p.m. PDT, Mr. Brown will be joined by his colleague, violinist Kristin Lee, in a concert exploring the interplay between French and American music, at the Stent Family Hall at Menlo School (50 Valparaiso Ave, Atherton, CA 94027.) This concert is part of Music@Menlo’s Carte Blanche Concerts and will highlight programs curated by the artists. The repertoire features compositions by pioneering female composers Lili Boulanger and Amy Beach, as well as works by Debussy, Ravel, Bloch, and Gershwin. Here is the detailed program:
Next, on July 25, 2024, 7 p.m. PDT, at the Stent Family Hall at Menlo School, Mr. Brown will participate in a chamber music entitled “Vienna to Paris” and perform Mozart’s Quintet in E-flat major for Winds and Piano, K. 452, as well as Françaix’s L’heure du berger for Winds and Piano, Op. 20. The program will also include works by Haydn, Fauré, and Ravel. This program will be repeated on July 26, 2024, 7 p.m. PDT, at the Spieker Center for the Arts at Menlo School. This concert will also be livestreamed on the Music@Menlo website. The full program follows:
Also featured in this concert are clarinetists Jose Franch-Ballester and Tommaso Lonquich, flutist Sooyun Kim, oboist James Austin Smith, pianist Gilbert Kalish, Chelsea Wang, and Wu Han, cellist David Finckel and David Requiro, violinist Chad Hoopes and Kristin Lee, bassoonist Peter Kolkay, and hornists David Byrd-Marrow.
General admission of $95 and $35, $25 livestream access, and discounted tickets for audience members under 30 can be purchased on Music@Menlo’s website. For more information please visit pianist Michael Stephen Brown’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 19th-century Steinway D’s, Octavia and Daria.
For further information, please contact Hemsing Associates at 212-772-1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com.
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