Canellakis Brown Duo

Program

About

Cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown, comprising the Canellakis-Brown Duo, 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 US. 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 Four Arts in Palm Beach, Wolf Trap in Washington D.C., and Music@Menlo in Palo Alto, where they were featured as guest curators.

Both artists maintain active solo careers, performing recitals and concertos each season. Canellakis made his Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium debut as soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra and Brown is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and was a 2018 Emerging Artist of Lincoln Center. They regularly perform at leading music festivals both as soloists and together, including Bard, Ravinia, Bridgehampton, Santa Fe, La Jolla, Moab, Music in the Vineyards, and Chamber Music Sedona, where Canellakis is the Artistic Director.

Brown, a prolific composer, has written a variety of works for Canellakis, most recently a concerto called Vortex for Cello and Strings. Canellakis has composed and arranged several works for the duo across a variety of musical styles. Their compositions will be featured on their upcoming duo album (b)romance, which will be released on First Hand Records in 2023.

Canellakis is also an accomplished filmmaker. He and Brown have produced and starred in a comedy web series called “Conversations with Nick Canellakis,” in which they conduct satirical interviews with stars of the classical music world.

When not performing, they often engage in heated games of scrabble which test the limits of their friendship, but always brings them back together stronger.