Noted musicians to perform Saturday at Shelter Island Friends of Music concert
The arrival of spring on the weekend of March 21 will be music to the ears of Islanders, and the latest free concert offered by Shelter Island Friends of Music will provide even more to lift the spirits.
On Saturday, March 21 at 3 p.m. at the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church, cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown will present a vibrant and wide-ranging program featuring works by Chopin, Ligeti, Brahms, and Gershwin, as well as an original composition by Michael Stephen Brown.
Partners in music for over 15 years, the Canellakis-Brown Duo are celebrated for their engaging, multi-disciplinary approach to performance.
Canellakis and Brown are longtime artists with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the duo has appeared internationally across Europe, Cuba, the Far East, and throughout the United States. Recent engagements include Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, 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, where they served as guest curators. Brown, a prolific composer and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, has written numerous works for the duo, including the recent concerto Vortex for Cello and Strings.
Canellakis and Brown also produce and star in a comedy web series called “Conversations with Nick Canellakis,” in which they conduct satirical interviews with stars of the classical music world.
Admission is free, and while there is no charge for entry, donations are appreciated to support future concerts. For more information, please visit sifriendsofmusic.org.
Five Things You’ll Learn at the Canellakis-Brown Duo Concert
By James Marshall
Come to the Canellakis-Brown Duo cello and piano concert, presented by Shelter Island Friends of Music, on Saturday, March 21, at the Presbyterian Church, at 3 p.m.
Here are five things you’ll learn while enjoying this free concert:
1. 19-year-old Chopin’s writing for the cello and piano in one of his rare chamber music and non-piano-only compositions.
2. A Hungarian composer’s solo cello sonata banned by the Communists as too modern.
3. Camille Saint-Saëns’s “The Swan,” arguably one of the most iconic pieces ever written for cello and piano.
4. What George Gershwin sounds like on the cello in a new arrangement by the performers of the Three Preludes, originally for solo piano.
5. A wildly rhythmic piece based on a Bulgarian folk tune from American jazz musician, Don Ellis — you’ve definitely never heard an up-tempo number before in 33/16 time!
All are invited to a reception after the concert to meet the artists.
