About

Pianist-Composer Michael Stephen Brown has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.”

A 2025 MacDowell Fellow and 2024 Yaddo Artist, Brown is currently composing Endangered Carnival, a large-scale co-commission premiering in 2026. Winner of the Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, he has performed as a soloist with leading orchestras such as the Seattle Symphony and NFM Leopoldinum, and in recitals at iconic venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Louvre, and Beethoven-Haus Bonn. A frequent artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brown tours internationally with his longtime musical partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and collaborates regularly with violinists Pinchas Zukerman and Arnaud Sussmann. A passionate educator, he regularly gives lectures and masterclasses worldwide, inspiring the next generation of musicians. 

Brown’s compositions have been commissioned by leading organizations and artists, including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Bridgehampton and Gilmore festivals, the Maryland Symphony, Osmo Vänskä and Erin Keefe, the SPA Trio, and pianists Anne-Marie McDermott, Jerome Lowenthal, Ursula Oppens, Orion Weiss, Adam Golka, and Roman Rabinovich, soprano Susanna Phillips, and cellist Nicholas Canellakis. Recently, he served as Composer and Artist-in-Residence at the New Haven Symphony and is a recipient of the Copland House Residency Award. His symphonic work, American Diaries, draws on words by Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and excerpts from his grandfather’s World War II diary.

Selected by András Schiff to perform on an international recital tour, Brown made debuts at Zurich's Tonhalle and New York's 92nd Street Y. He regularly appears at major festivals including Tanglewood, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Saratoga, Caramoor, Bard, Sedona, Moab, and Tippet Rise. A prolific recording artist, Connection, an album of his works featuring his Piano Concerto with the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, and Mendelssohn+ with premieres by Delphine von Schauroth are both slated for release in 2025.

A First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition and a recipient of the Bowers Residency from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Brown earned dual degrees in piano and composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald, and composer Samuel Adler. Additional mentors have included George Perle, András Schiff, and Richard Goode. Brown is also an Artist Ambassador for Creatives Care, an organization helping artists access affordable mental healthcare.

A native New Yorker, Michael lives in New York City with his two nineteenth-century Steinway D pianos, Octavia and Daria. He will not reveal which is his favorite, so as not to incite jealousy. Known for his engaging commentary on music and his colorful sock changes during intermission, audiences eagerly anticipate both his insights and his unique sense of style.

[March, 2025]

My musical life began at the age of two as I danced in front of the TV to the songs of Raffi. By age three, I had listened to Billy Joel’s Piano Man so many times that I wore out the cassette tape. At four, I realized I wanted to be the reincarnation of Mozart so I embarked upon a life of exploration, some isolation, but mostly pure and utter joy.