Michael Stephen Brown Joins Pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute In Duo Recital At Duke University

The internationally lauded American pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown will be presented by the Duke University in a piano recital on Sunday afternoon, January 12, 2025, at 3 pm at Baldwin Auditorium (1336 Campus Dr., Durham, NC 27705). Mr. Brown will be joined by Lithuanian pianist, Associate Professor of the Practice of Piano at Duke University, Ieva Jokubaviciute.

Entitled "Sharing the Keys," this program will feature a mix of four-hand pieces by Schumann, Schubert, and Ned Rorem; as well as contemporary solo works by Scott Lindroth, Douglas Boyce, and Delphine Von Schauroth. The highlight of this event will be the East Coast Premiere of Mr. Brown's Four Lakes for Children, composed at the 2024 Yaddo Residency.

For more information about this concert please visit Duke University's event site, pianist Michael Stephen Brown's website, and pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute's website. The full program follows:

Schumann arr. Debussy Selections from Six Studies in Canonic Form for Two Pianos, Op. 56

Michael Stephen Brown Four Lakes for Children (East Coast Premiere)

Franz Schubert Fantasia in F minor, D.940 for four hands

Douglas Boyce III. Adaptations of Verticalities from a Popular Song

Delphine Von Schauroth Selections of Songs Without Words

Scott Lindroth Four Etudes for piano

Robert Schumann Andante and Variations for Two Pianos Op. 46

Ned Rorem For Shirley (1989) for One Piano, Four Hands

Pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown has performed as soloist 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 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.

A 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.

Lithuanian pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute's powerfully and intricately crafted performances have earned her critical acclaim throughout North America and Europe. Her ability to communicate the essential substance of a work has led critics to describe her as possessing 'razor-sharp intelligence and wit' and 'subtle, complex, almost impossibly detailed and riveting in every way' (The Washington Post) and as 'an artist of commanding technique, refined temperament and persuasive insight.'(The New York Times). In 2006, she was honored as a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship.

Labor Records released Ieva's debut recording in 2010 to critical international acclaim, which resulted in recitals in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Vilnius, and Toulouse. She made her orchestral debuts with the Chicago Symphony; in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; with the American Youth Philharmonic in 2016, and in February 2017, Ieva was the soloist with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Montevideo in Uruguay. Her piano trio-Trio Cavatina-won the 2009 Naumburg International Chamber Music Competition. Ieva's latest recording: Returning Paths: solo piano works by Janacek and Suk was also released to critical acclaim in 2014.

In the fall of 2016, Ieva began a collaboration with the violinist Midori, with recitals in Canada, at the Cartagena International Music Festival in Colombia, and in Germany and Austria. Since, they have given recitals in Japan, Germany, Austria, Poland, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, India, and Sri Lanka.

​Jokubaviciute's latest piano solo recording Northscapes will be released in 2021. This recording project weaves works, written within the last decade by composers from the Nordic and Baltic countries of Europe, into a tapestry of soundscapes that echo the reverberations between landscape, sound, and the imagination. This recording will include works by: Kaja Saariaho, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Raminta Šerkšnyte, Lasse Thoresen, Bent Sorensen, and Pēteris Vasks.

​A much sought after chamber musician and collaborator, Ieva regularly tours and appears at international music festivals including: Marlboro; Ravinia; Bard; Caramoor; Chesapeake Chamber Music; Prussia Cove in Cornwall, England; and Festival de la musique de chambre at La Lointaine in France. She has participated in the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Lubeck, Germany; the Katrina Chamber Music Festival, Aland Islands, Finland; the Oulunsalo Chamber Music Festival in Oulunsalo, Finland; the Joaquin Turina Chamber Music Festival in Seville, Spain; and Music in the Vineyards in Napa Valley, CA; the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, VT; Salt Bay Chamber Music Festival in Maine, and the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival at East Carolina University.

Earning degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and from Mannes College of Music in New York City, her principal teachers have been Seymour Lipkin and Richard Goode. Currently, Ieva is Associate Professor of the Practice of Piano at Duke University in Durham, NC having previously been on the faculty at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA. Ieva is also on the faculty at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival in Blue Hill, ME and has established herself as a mentoring artist at the Marlboro Music Festival in Marlboro, VT.

To post a comment, you must register and login.