An Afternoon of Music, Movies and Comedy

Nick Canellakis, cello and filmmaker | Michael Stephen Brown, pianist and composer | Special guest: Arabella Oz, actress

Sunday, April 12, 2026 – 3PM

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

Program

Films and Music to be announced from the stage.

Ready to have some fun? Cellist and Chamber Music Sedona Artistic Director Nicholas Canellakis- well known for his alternate identity as a comedic filmmaker- and Michael Stephen Brown- known not only as a piano soloist and chamber musician but also as an exciting composer- invite you to an unforgettable concert experience blending music, comedy, and film. Their massively popular short movies (which have amassed millions of views online), along with their witty onstage rapport, are woven into a thrilling program that includes Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saëns, Gershwin, Don Ellis, and their own original compositions and folk arrangements. The hilarious actress Arabella Oz guest stars for an afternoon unlike any other.

Canellakis-Brown Duo

Cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown, comprising the Canellakis-Brown Duo, have been uniting their multi-disciplinary talents and honing their unique musical voice for over fifteen years. They bring their affectionate, brutally honest, and infectious rapport to the stage while presenting programs celebrating the standard literature, little-known gems, and original works and arrangements.

Canellakis and Brown, who play with their antennae tuned to each other” (The Washington Post), are both longtime artists with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. They have performed together virtually all over the world, including the Baltics, the Greek Islands, Cuba, the Far East, and venues all over the US. Recent engagements include Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York City, New Orleans Friends of Music, 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 in Palo Alto, where they were featured as guest curators.

Both artists maintain active solo careers, performing recitals and concertos each season. Canellakis made his Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium debut as soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra and Brown is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and was a 2018 Emerging Artist of Lincoln Center. They regularly perform at leading music festivals both as soloists and together, including Bard, Ravinia, Bridgehampton, Santa Fe, La Jolla, Moab, Music in the Vineyards, and Chamber Music Sedona, where Canellakis is the Artistic Director.

Brown, a prolific composer, has written a variety of works for Canellakis, most recently a concerto called Vortex for Cello and Strings. Canellakis has composed and arranged several works for the duo across a variety of musical styles. Their compositions will be featured on their upcoming duo album (b)romance, which will be released on First Hand Records in 2023.

Canellakis is also an accomplished filmmaker. He and Brown have produced and starred in a comedy web series called “Conversations with Nick Canellakis,” in which they conduct satirical interviews with stars of the classical music world.

When not performing, they often engage in heated games of scrabble which test the limits of their friendship, but always brings them back together stronger.

Nick Canellakis, cello and filmmaker

Nicholas Canellakis has become one of the most sought-after and innovative cellists of his generation, praised as a “superb young soloist” (The New Yorker) and for being “impassioned … the audience seduced by Mr. Canellakis’s rich, alluring tone” (The New York Times). A multifaceted artist, Canellakis has forged a unique voice combining his talents as soloist, chamber musician, curator, filmmaker, composer/arranger, and teacher.

Recent concert highlights include concerto appearances with the Virginia, Albany, Delaware, Stamford, Richardson, Lansing, and Bangor Symphonies, the Erie Philharmonic, The Orchestra Now, the New Haven Symphony as Artist-in-Residence, and the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. He performs recitals throughout the U.S. with his longtime duo collaborator, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown, and recent appearances have included Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Four Arts in Palm Beach, New Orleans Friends of Chamber Music, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and Wolf Trap near Washington D.C.

Canellakis was recently appointed to the cello faculty of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, his alma mater.

Canellakis is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with which he performs regularly in Alice Tully Hall and on tour internationally, including London’s Wigmore Hall, The Louvre in Paris, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea, and the Shanghai and Taipei National Concert Halls. He is also a regular guest artist at many of the world’s leading music festivals, including Santa Fe, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Bard, Bridgehampton, La Jolla, Moab, Chamberfest Cleveland, and Music in the Vineyards. He was recently renewed as the artistic director of Chamber Music Sedona, in Arizona, where he has made a major impact through his dynamic programming and educational and community outreach.

Canellakis’s latest album (b)romance, featuring some of his original compositions and arrangements, was released by First Hand Records in 2023 and has received over one million streams on Apple Music.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory, his teachers included Orlando Cole, Peter Wiley and Paul Katz, and he was a student of Madeleine Golz at Manhattan School of Music Pre-College. He began his Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center career as a member of the Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two), and he has also been in residence at Carnegie Hall as a member of Ensemble Connect.

Filmmaking and acting are special interests of Canellakis. He has produced, directed, and starred in several short films and music videos, including his popular comedy web series “Conversations with Nick Canellakis.” His latest films “Thin Walls” and “My New Cello” were nominated for awards at many prominent film festivals and are currently available to stream online.

Canellakis plays on an outstanding Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume cello, from 1840.

Michael Stephen Brown, pianist and composer

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.