Voyage Through the Americas

Gilles Vonsattel, Michael Brown, pianos | Nicholas Canellakis, cello | Ian David Rosenbaum, percussion

Sunday, January 9, 2022 | 3:00pm

We are following the CDC Guidelines for the safety of our patrons. If concerts are impacted in any way due to COVID we will let you know via email. Do contact us if you have any concerns.

Sedona Performing Arts Center
995 Upper Red Rock Loop Rd, Sedona, AZ 86336

A celebration of the rich tapestry of musical influences across North and South America, “Voyage Through the Americas” will showcase the works of eight iconic composers: U.S. classical music pioneers Copland and Barber; boundary pushers Gershwin and Bernstein; Latin American masters Villa-Lobos, Ginastera and Golijov; and the King of Ragtime Scott Joplin. Featuring the unusual combination of two pianists, cello, and percussion, this program will take audiences on a sizzling journey through both hemispheres.

This project is supported in part by the NEA.

About the artists

Gilles Vonsattel

A “wanderer between worlds” (Lucerne Festival), “immensely talented” and “quietly powerful pianist” (New York Times), Swiss-born American Gilles Vonsattel is an artist of extraordinary versatility and originality. Comfortable with and seeking out an enormous range of repertoire, Vonsattel displays a musical curiosity and sense of adventure that has gained him many admirers. Recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the Naumburg and Geneva competitions as well as the 2016 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, he has in recent years appeared with the Boston Symphony, Tanglewood, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, while performing recitals and chamber music at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Ravinia, Tokyo’s Musashino Hall, Wigmore Hall, Bravo! Vail, Music@Menlo, the Gilmore festival, the Lucerne festival, and the Munich Gasteig. His 2014 New York solo recital was hailed as “tightly conceived and passionately performed…a study in intensity” by The New York Times.

Michael Brown

Hailed as “one of the most refined of all pianist-composers” (International Piano), Michael Brown is known for a unique and innovative artistry that often interweaves the classics with his own compositions and other contemporary works. A winner of the 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Brown was selected by legendary pianist and conductor András Schiff to perform on an international solo recital tour. As an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he regularly performs at Alice Tully Hall and on tour, as well as with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis. Brown is a prolific recording artist whose albums include a 2018 release of Mendelssohn and Beethoven on First Hand Records and an all-George Perle CD.

Nicholas Canellakis 

Considered one of the most talented and sought-after cellists of his generation, Nicholas Canellakis frequently performs as a soloist with orchestras around the world, alongside duo partner Michael Brown, and at famed classical music festivals. Canellakis is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center who made his Carnegie Hall concerto debut with the American Symphony Orchestra in 2015. After assuming the coveted position of Artistic Director of Chamber Music Sedona in 2018, Canellakis has been striving to advance the organization’s reputation as one of the leading presenters of chamber music in the U.S.

Ian David Rosenbaum

Since making his Kennedy Center debut in 2009, percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum has garnered widespread praise for his “excellent” and “precisely attuned” performances (The New York Times). In 2012, he joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two as only the second percussionist selected in the program’s history. Rosenbaum’s recent performance highlights include The Industry’s world premiere production of Galileo, a ten-city West Coast tour with Sandbox Percussion, and the world premiere of there is no one, not even the wind by John Luther Adams with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Program

Aaron CoplandEl Salón México
Leonard BernsteinThree Meditations from Mass for cello, piano, and percussion
Samuel BarberSouvenirs for Piano, Four Hands, op. 28
Osvaldo GolijovMariel for Cello and Marimba
Heitor Villa-LobosA maré encheu and O Polichinelo
Alberto GinasteraPampeana no. 2, Rhapsody for Cello and Piano, op. 21
Scott JoplinSolace: A Mexican Serenade and The Ragtime Dance
George GershwinCuban Overture for Piano, Four Hands, and Percussion