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Site SearchMichael Brown to Perform at Clarice Wilson Memorial Concert, Sunday, April 17th.
Prize-winning pianist
Michael Brown will appear at the Community Unitarian Church of White Plains, 468
Rosedale Ave., on Sunday, April 17th at 2:30 pm in a special concert in memory
of Clarice Wilson, music specialist at the White Plains Public Library from 1974
to 1999. The free concert, which is presented by the White Plains Library
Foundation, features works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Granados & Schumann.
A reception will follow the performance.
Michael Brown was born on Long Island in 1987. He began his piano studies at the age of six and compositional studies at ten.
Since 2000, Michael has been a student at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division, where he studies piano with Adam Kent. He has performed in solo, chamber music, and original composition concerts. As a two-time winner of the School's Concerto Competition, Michael will perform Gershwin's Concerto in F this spring with the Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Strasser, having performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 last year. The latter performance was featured on Robert Sherman's "Young Artists Showcase" on WQXR.
In June 2004, Michael won First Prize for the One-Piano, Four Hands Ensemble round of the Second New York Piano Competition sponsored by The Stecher and Horowitz Foundation. Michael was also the first prize winner in the Associated Music Teacher's League Scholarship Award Auditions, a prize he had won in 2001 in a younger division of the same competition.
Michael is also an avid composer whose works have been selected for
performance at the New York State School Music Association's conference in
Rochester for an unprecedented five consecutive years. He was a finalist in
ASCAP's Morton Gould Young Composer's Awards for his Piano Trio and is also a
three-time winner of the Long Island Composer's Alliance competition "Music
by and for
Students."
Michael was featured on NPR's From the Top playing George Perle's Six Celebratory Inventions, works he has performed for the composer privately and in recital. He will play them again in May 2005 as part of a 90th birthday tribute to the composer at Princeton University.
In the summer of 2004, Michael participated in the Young Artist's Composition Program at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, having attended the festival's Young Artists Piano Program in 2003. He has also attended the Luzerne Music Festival, the French Woods Festival for the Performing Arts, and the USDAN Center for the Performing Arts. Michael has played in master classes for Abbey Simon, Leon Fleisher, Tong-il Han, and María Clodes-Jaguaribe. As part of the Música por Doquier/Hispanic Music Everywhere festival, he performed in a master class for German Diez at the Americas Society.
The White Plains Library Foundation welcomes donations to its Clarice Wilson Memorial Fund to enhance the Library's music programming and collections.