Crusell & Walton
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Program
Bernhard Henrik Crusell Quartet in D major for Clarinet, Violin, Viola, and Cello, Op. 7 (C. 1821)
William Walton Quartet in D minor for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello (1918–21, REV. 1955, 1974–75)
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Michael Stephen Brown
Ani Kavafian
Paul Neubauer
Nicholas Canellakis
Sebastian Manz
Michael Stephen Brown is a composer and pianist hailed by the New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers.” He has appeared as soloist with the Seattle Symphony, American Symphony Orchestra, The Orchestra Now, Phoenix Symphony, and Poland’s NFM Leopoldinum, and performs at major festivals worldwide. The recipient of the 2026 Andrew Wolf Award, Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, he was recently in residence at MacDowell and Yaddo. Recent highlights include a recital at Alice Tully Hall with CMS and collaborations with longtime artistic partner Nicholas Canellakis, as well as Pinchas Zukerman, Kristin Lee, and Arnaud Sussmann. His first album devoted entirely to his own music, Twelve Blocks, was released in 2026 to critical acclaim. Current projects include The Carnival of Endangered Wonders and the score for Angeline Gragasin’s film Look But Don’t Touch. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, Brown lives in New York City with his two 19th-century Steinways, Octavia and Daria.
Violinist Ani Kavafian enjoys a prolific career as a soloist, chamber musician, and professor. She has performed with many of America’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony. In the 2019-20 season, she continued her longtime association as an artist of the Chamber Music Society with appearances in New York and on tour. Last summer she participated in several music festivals, including the Heifetz International Institute and the Sarasota Chamber Music, Bridgehampton, Meadowmount, Norfolk, and Angel Fire festivals. She and her sister, violinist and violist Ida Kavafian, have performed with the symphonies of Detroit, Colorado, Tucson, San Antonio, and Cincinnati, and have recorded the music of Mozart and Sarasate on the Nonesuch label. She is a Full Professor at Yale University and has appeared at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall numerous times with colleagues and students from Yale. She has received an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions award and has appeared at the White House on three occasions. Her recordings can be heard on the Nonesuch, RCA, Columbia, Arabesque, and Delos labels. Born in Istanbul of Armenian heritage, Kavafian studied violin in the US with Ara Zerounian and Mischa Mischakoff. She received her master’s degree from The Juilliard School under Ivan Galamian. She plays the 1736 Muir McKenzie Stradivarius violin.
Last summer, violist Paul Neubauer premiered a new viola concerto by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich with conductor JoAnn Falletta at the Brevard Music Center. This season, he will record and perform the work with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2025, he released two albums on First Hand Records featuring the final works of two great composers: an all-Bartók album including the revised version of the Viola Concerto, and a Shostakovich recording that includes the monumental Viola Sonata. Appointed principal violist of the New York Philharmonic at the age of 21, Neubauer has appeared as soloist with the New York, Los Angeles, and Helsinki Philharmonics; the Chicago, National, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, and Bournemouth Symphonies; and the Santa Cecilia, English Chamber, and Beethovenhalle Orchestras. A two-time Grammy nominee, Neubauer is artistic director of the Mostly Music series in New Jersey and serves on the faculties of the Juilliard School and Mannes College.
Nicholas Canellakis has become one of the most sought-after and innovative cellists of his generation, praised in the New Yorker as a “superb young soloist.” Recent highlights include solo debuts with the Virginia, Albany, Bangor, and Delaware symphony orchestras; concerto appearances with the Erie Philharmonic, the New Haven Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra; Europe and Asia tours with CMS; and recitals throughout the US with his longtime duo collaborator, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, he is a regular guest artist at many of the world’s leading music festivals. Canellakis is the Artistic Director of Chamber Music Sedona in Arizona and is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music (where he was recently appointed to the cello faculty) and New England Conservatory.
Clarinetist Sebastian Manz has performed as a soloist with major European orchestras, including the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he has appeared at venues such as the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Beethovenhaus Bonn, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. He has collaborated with artists like Danae Dörken, the Danish String Quartet, the Amaryllis Quartet, and the Schumann Quartett. At age 22, Manz won first prize in the clarinet category at the ARD International Music Competition, a prize that had not been awarded for 40 years, as well as the coveted Audience Prize. He is the principal clarinetist of the SWR Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart. His recordings include A Bernstein Story, which won the 2020 Opus Klassik award; clarinet concertos by Nielsen and Lindberg; and a recital of works by Brahms and Schumann with pianist Herbert Schuch. His double album, Quasi Cool, showcases his stylistic versatility as a clarinetist and arranger. He is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program.