GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING PIANIST MICHELLE CANN MAKES PASADENA DEBUT WITH MOZART PIANO CONCERTO NO. 23

Michelle Cann
Piano

Lauded as “exquisite” by The Philadelphia Inquirer and “a pianist of sterling artistry” by Gramophone, GRAMMY Award winning pianist Michelle Cann is one of the most sought-after artists of her generation. Recent engagements include appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, and Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal de São Paulo. She is a recipient of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and the Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and she served as the inaugural Christel DeHaan Artistic Partner of the American Piano Awards. 

Highlights of Cann’s 2025-26 season include appearances with the Colorado Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, and Ireland’s National Symphony Orchestra. She also performs the world premiere of a new piano concerto by Valerie Coleman with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Her recital appearances include Stanford Live, Music Toronto, Chamber Music Detroit, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Spivey Hall, and a recital tour in China. 

Recognized as a leading interpreter of the piano music of Florence Price, Cann performed the New York City premiere of Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestra in July 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin in February 2021. Her recording of the concerto with the New York Youth Symphony won a GRAMMY Award in 2023 for Best Orchestral Performance. She won a GRAMMY Award in 2025 for Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, recorded with soprano Karen Slack, which features 19 unpublished songs composed by Price. Her acclaimed debut solo album Revival, featuring music by Price and Margaret Bonds, was released in May 2023 on the Curtis Studio label. She has also recorded two Price piano quintets with the Catalyst Quartet as a part of the quartet’s UNCOVERED series. A champion of emerging talent, Cann and cellist Tommy Mesa recorded Our Stories, an album of new works by five living composers of color, which was released in November 2023. 

A celebrated chamber musician, Cann has collaborated with leading artists including the Catalyst, Dover, and Juilliard string quartets, Imani Winds, violinists Timothy and Nikki Chooi, soprano Karen Slack, and mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges. She regularly performs duo piano repertoire with her sister, pianist Kimberly Cann, as the Cann Duo. She has appeared as co​–​host and collaborative pianist with NPR’s From The Top, collaborating with actor/conductor Damon Gupton, violinist Leila Josefowicz, and violinist and MacArthur Fellow Vijay Gupta. Cann’s numerous media appearances include Performance Today, PBS Great Performances’ Now Hear This, and Living the Classical Life. 

Embracing a dual role as performer and pedagogue, Cann is frequently invited to teach master classes, give lecture-demonstrations, and lead teaching residencies. Recent residencies include the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and the National Conference of the Music Teachers National Association. She has recorded lessons for​ tonebase,​ the popular piano lesson platform. She has also served on the juries of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, the Kauffman Music Center International Youth Piano Competition, and the piano competition of the Music Academy of the West. 

Cann holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Paul Schenly and Dr. Daniel Shapiro, and an Artist’s Diploma from Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Robert McDonald. She joined the Curtis piano faculty in 2020 as the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies. She is also on the piano faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. 

Jeffrey Nytch
Composer

Jeffrey Nytch enjoys a diverse career as a composer, performer, educator, and thought leader. He has also runs a small business, managed a distinguished freelance career as a  composer, performed a wide range of repertoire as a vocalist and voice actor, and served five years as Managing Director of Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (“PNME”) one of the nation’s premiere new music ensembles. In 2009 he joined the faculty of The University of Colorado-Boulder, where he is Professor of Composition and serves as Director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music, one of the leading programs of its kind. 

A native of Vestal, New York, Nytch completed a dual bachelor’s degree in geology and music at Franklin and Marshall College, studying com- position with John Carbon. He went on to earn Masters and Doctoral degrees in composition from the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University, under the guidance of Composer-in-Residence Paul Cooper. He has also studied with Donald Erb at Gunther Schuller’s Schweitzer Institute of Music in Sandpoint, Idaho and has participated in master classes with Ross Lee Finney, Christopher Rouse, and Samuel Adler.

Hailed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as “both impressive and satisfying,” Nytch’s music comprises a wide range of works that have been performed throughout the United States and Europe, including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, National Sawdust, the Corcoran Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, the Soho Arts Festival, The Festival at Sandpoint, the Luzerne Chamber Music Festival, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the Breckenridge Music Festival. His compositions have been performed by such artists as Richard Stoltzman, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Ahn Trio, Verge Ensemble, the National Repertory Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, the Binghamton Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, Moravian Philharmonic, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, and many others. His works have been recorded on the MMC, New Dynamic Records, Centaur, and Koch International labels. 

Nytch has received numerous grants, awards, and commissions, including First Prize in the American Festival for the Arts American Composers’ Competition, and awards from ASCAP, the Ithaca College Choral- Composition Competition, The Morton Gould Composers’ Competition, “Meet the Composer,” the American Music Center and the Mellon Foundation. His music has been recorded by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the New York Chamber Symphony, and others. The recording of his Clarinet Concerto was listed among the Best Classical Discs of 2002 by Gramophone magazine. In 2013, the premiere of his Symphony No. 1: Formations, inspired by the geology of the Rocky Mountains and co-commissioned by the Boulder Philharmonic and the Geological Society of America, received international press for its unique combination of science with music. Recent projects include a Violin Concerto for Grammy-winning violinist Edward Dusinberre, a recording of his complete works for organ for Centaur Records with organist Joby Bell, and a prestigious MacDowell Fellowship supporting a three-week residency at the famed artist retreat. 

During his tenure with The Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Nytch partnered with Artistic Director Kevin Noe to introduce an innovative new approach to presenting contemporary chamber music, incorporating movement, theatrical lighting, spoken word, video, and costumes to create a unique “theatre of music.” The new format resulted in a 600% increase in attendance in five years, as well as a doubling of the organization’s budget. He has also held teaching posts at Carnegie Mellon University, the American Festival for the Arts, and Franklin & Marshall College. 

In addition to composing and teaching, Nytch serves as a strategic consultant to arts organizations and works with educational institutions seeking to devel- op or begin arts entrepreneurship programs. He has conducted workshops and residencies at Indiana University, The University of Michigan, The Manhattan School of Music, Northwestern University, Michigan State University, Indiana University, The University of Minnesota, Rice University, Arizona State, Louisiana State University, and others. He has lectured at numerous conferences throughout the United States and abroad, and his papers have been published in a number of scholarly journals and publications. His groundbreaking book, The Entrepreneurial Muse: Inspiring Your Career in Classical Music (Oxford, 2018), has helped define a theory of entrepreneurship in a performing arts setting. 

His stature in the field of arts entrepreneurship has been recognized internationally, including an invitation to deliver the closing Keynote address at the First International Conference on Arts Entrepreneurship in Oslo, Norway, receipt of the Excellence in Specialty Entrepreneurship Award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers, and the Sharon T. Alpi Award for Innovative Pedagogy, the highest honor bestowed by the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education.