Pianist and Composer Michael Stephen Brown Joins Suòno Artist Management Roster

Pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown has joined the artist roster of Suòno Artist Management, effective April 1, 2023. Brown will be represented by Marianne LaCrosse, Founder and CEO, who will also represent Brown's duo with cellist Nicholas Canellakis (the Canellakis-Brown Duo).

Brown says, "I have known Marianne LaCrosse since my student days at Music@Menlo-she is a visionary arts leader with a creative mind."

Brown is one of the busiest musicians on the international scene today. In March 2023 alone, he performed a solo European recital tour receiving rave reviews at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and the Chopin Museum in Mallorca, and performed a five-concert U.S. tour with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He recorded the first album of his project showcasing the piano works of Felix Mendelssohn alongside world premieres by one of his muses, Delphine von Schauroth. In 2023-24, he presents a solo recital in Alice Tully Hall presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Of his recent Beethoven-Haus Bonn debut, General-Anzeiger wrote: "Brown played captivatingly, with superior virtuosity."

Brown's artistry is shaped by his creative voice as a pianist and composer. Winner of the 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, he has recently performed as soloist with the Seattle Symphony, The National Philharmonic, and the Phoenix, Grand Rapids, North Carolina, Wichita, New Haven, and Albany Symphonies. Brown recently toured his own Concerto for Piano and Strings (2020) around the United States and Poland with several orchestras. He has presented recitals at Carnegie Hall, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Lincoln Center. A frequent artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brown opened the Society's 2022 season with Bach and Mendelssohn concertos, and made his European concerto debut as soloist with the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra. Brown was selected by András Schiff to perform on an international recital tour with debuts including Zurich's Tonhalle and New York's 92nd Street Y. He regularly tours with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and has appeared at numerous festivals including Tanglewood, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Gilmore, Ravinia, Saratoga, Bridgehampton, Caramoor, Bard, Sedona, Moab, and Tippet Rise.

Brown was the Composer and Artist-in-Residence at the New Haven Symphony for the 2017-19 seasons and a 2018 Copland House Residency Award recipient. He has received commissions from many organizations and some of today's leading artists, including the Gilmore Piano Festival; the Maryland Symphony Orchestra; Concert Artists Guild; Osmo Vänskä; cellist Nicholas Canellakis; and pianists Jerome Lowenthal, Ursula Oppens, Orion Weiss, Adam Golka, and Roman Rabinovich.

Brown was a First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and was a winner of the Bowers Residency from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He earned dual degrees in piano and composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald and composer Samuel Adler. Additional mentors have included András Schiff and Richard Goode.

A native New Yorker, he lives in New York City with his two nineteenth century Steinway D pianos, Octavia and Daria. In his spare time, he learns Italian, carves stumps into coffee tables, and plays a lot of Mendelssohn.

For more information, please visit michaelbrownmusic.com.

About the Canellakis-Brown Duo

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.

Canellakis and Brown, who "play with their antennae tuned to each other" (The Washington Post), are both longtime artists with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. They have performed together virtually all over the world, including the Baltics, the Greek Islands, Cuba, the Far East, and venues all over the U.S. 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 Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Wolf Trap in Virginia, and Music@Menlo in Silicon Valley, where they were featured as guest curators.

Their latest album, titled (b)romance, will be released on First Hand Records in 2023.

About Suòno Artist Management

Suòno Artist Management is a boutique agency in the San Francisco Bay Area representing some of today's leading musicians. Founded in December 2022 by Marianne LaCrosse, the artist roster includes the Jasper String Quartet, recipient of Chamber Music America's Cleveland Quartet Award; international prize-winning violinist Rachell Ellen Wong; Twelfth Night, a Baroque ensemble who will make their Carnegie Hall debut in 2024; Iranian-Pakistani-American flutist Amir Farsi; Seattle-based Renaissance vocal group, Byrd Ensemble; and internationally acclaimed Boarte Piano Trio.

Photo credit: Anela Bence Selkowitz