Pianist Michael Stephen Brown To Return To Bard Music Festival In August

American pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown is invited back to the Bard Music Festival for a concert on August 10, 2024, 1:30 pm at Olin Hall at Fisher Center at Bard (Manor Ave, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504).

Entitled "Berlioz and His World," the 34th Bard Festival in 2024 will explore the many strands of Berlioz's contributions and his crucial role in the musical life of nineteenth-century Europe and of today. Mr. Brown will participate in Program Two: Anxieties of Influence: Models, Teachers, and Classmates and perform Carl Maria von Weber's Invitation to the Dance, Op. 65. This is a piano piece which was later orchestrated by Berlioz for his French adaptation of Der Freischütz-and operatic excerpts by his early composition teacher Jean-François Le Sueur, fellow Prix de Rome winner Ambroise Thomas, and Italian opera composer Gaspare Spontini, whom Berlioz dubbed "the genius of the century."

The full program follows:

Hector Berlioz Le montagnard exile

Hector Berlioz Songs

Luigi Cherubini Etude No. 2

Anton Reicha String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 49, No. 1

Carl Maria von Weber Invitation to the Dance, Op. 65

Elias Parish Alvars Introduction and Variations on Themes from Bellini's Norma, Op. 36

Jean-François Le Sueur Aria

Gaspare Spontini Aria

Ambroise Thomas Aria

Mr. Brown will be joined by colleagues: Jana McIntyre, soprano; Rebecca Ringle Kamarei, mezzo-soprano; Tyler Duncan, baritone; Noël Wan, harp; Erika Switzer, piano; Balourdet Quartet; and others.

General admission from $40 to $55 with $4.5 service fee is available for purchased on Bard Music Featival's website. For more information please visit pianist Michael Stephen Brown's website.

A frequent performer of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Mr. Brown 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.

 

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