Noted Pianist Michael Stephen Brown To Return To Bard Music Festival For Two Concerts, August 5-6

The internationally lauded American pianist Michael Stephen Brown will return to the 33rd season of the Bard Music Festival for two programs.

In the program Between Two Worlds: London and Berlin, Mr. Brown will perform Romance, for viola and piano by Max Bruch and From Four Dances by Ethel Smyth. The program Entente Cordiale: Britain and France will feature Mr. Brown playing from Decorations for Solo Piano by John Ireland, Morpheus for Viola and Piano by Rebecca Clarke, and Maurice Ravel's From Miroirs for solo piano.

General admissions starting at $25 and $5 tickets for Bard students are available online through the event page. For more information, please visit pianist Michael Stephen Brown's website. Program details follow:

Between Two Worlds: London and Berlin

Saturday, August 5, 2023, 1:30 pm | Olin Hall at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY).

C. Hubert Parry Suite No. 1, for violin and piano (1907)

Max Bruch Romance, Op. 85, for viola and piano (1911)

Charles Villiers Stanford Piano Trio No. 3 in A minor, "Per aspera ad astra" (1918)

Ethel Smyth Sarabande in D Minor (1880)

Ralph Vaughan Williams Silent Noon (1904)

Orpheus and His Lute (1904)

Frank Bridge Cherry Ripe for string quartet (1916)

Sir Roger de Coverley, "Christmas Dance" for string quartet (1922)

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Clarinet Quintet, Op. 10 (1895)

Entente Cordiale: Britain and France

Sunday, August 6, 2023, 1:30 pm | Olin Hall at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY).

John Ireland Decorations (1912-13)

Rebecca Clarke Morpheus (1917)

Maurice Ravel "La vallée des cloches" from Miroirs (1904-05)

Ralph Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge (1909)

Claude Debussy Selections from Préludes, Book II (1912-13)

Frederick Delius Violin Sonata No. 2 (1923)

Arthur Bliss The Rout Trot (1927)

Herbert Howells Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 21 (1915, rev. 1936)

Praised for his "fearless performances," by The New York Times and "exceptionally beautiful" compositions by The Washington Post, pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown has also been called "one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers" by the New York Times. A frequent performer of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center series, Mr. Brown, whose artistry is shaped by his creative voice as a pianist and composer, will be featured on the Society 2023-24 season with a solo recital at Alice Tully Hall.

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 performs 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 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.

To post a comment, you must register and login.