Composer-pianist MICHAEL STEPHEN BROWN, hailed by The New York Times as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers,” is a 2025 MacDowell Fellow and 2024 Yaddo Artist. He is currently composing Endangered Carnival, a four organization co-commission premiering in 2026. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center, he has performed with major orchestras and venues worldwide, is an artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and regularly tours with Pinchas Zukerman. Brown’s compositions have been commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Gilmore and Bridgehampton festivals, 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. Two albums of his music including his Piano Concerto with the East Coast Chamber Orchestra will be released in 2025. A native New Yorker, Michael lives in New York City and Wallkill, NY with his two nineteenth-century Steinway D pianos, Octavia and Daria.
