Michael Stephen Brown & Nicholas Canellakis to Perform Piano-Cello Duo Recital at Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall

The internationally lauded American pianist/composer Michael Stephen Brown, hailed by The New York Times as "one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers," will be presented by the Ames Town & Gown Chamber Music Association in a piano-cello duo recital on Friday evening, December 1, 2023 at 7:30 pm CST at the Martha-Ellen Tye Recital Hall at the Iowa State University (300 Union Dr., Ames, IA 50014).

Mr. Brown will appear with the noted cellist Nicholas Canellakis as the Canellakis-Brown Duo. For up to fifteen years, the duo has been honing their unique musical voice and presenting programs celebrating the standard literature, little-known gems, and original works and arrangements. Full program follows:

Lukas Foss Capriccio

Camille Saint-Saëns Romance, Op. 36

Edvard Grieg Sonata in A Minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 36

I. Allegro agitator

II. Andante molto tranquillo

III. Allegro molto e marcato

~Intermission~

Clara Schumann Romance from Piano Concerto, Op. 7

Claude Debussy Beau Soir

Michael Stephen Brown Prelude and Dance (2017)

Nicholas Canellakis Romance à GF (2022)

Niccolò Paganini Variations on One String "Moses" by Rossini

Don Ellis/arr. Canellakis Bulgarian Bulge

General admissions from $35 are available online on the Ames Town & Gown Chamber Music Association's website. For more information, please visit pianist Michael Stephen Brown's website, and cellist Nicolas Canellakis' website. Mr. Brown will also participate in an educational program and meet with composition major students from the studio of Professor Christopher Hopkins at Iowa State University.

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.

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, and composer/arranger.

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 is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with which he performs regularly in 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, Hong Kong, Moab, Chamberfest Cleveland, and Music in the Vineyards. He was recently renewed as the artistic director of Chamber Music Sedona, in Arizona, where he has made a major impact through his dynamic programming and educational and community outreach.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, 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.

Mr. Canellakis's next album with Michael Stephen Brown, (b)romance, featuring some of his original compositions and arrangements, will be released by First Hand Records in 2024.

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 film, "Thin Walls," was nominated for awards at many prominent film festivals, and is currently available on Amazon Prime.

Mr. Canellakis plays on an outstanding Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, from 1840.

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