Music in the Park Series: Tommy Mesa and Michelle Cann

Overview

Cuban-American cellist Tommy Mesa is one of today’s most charismatic, innovative, and engaging performers. Mesa is the recipient of the 2023 Sphinx Medal of Excellence Award, the First Prize winner of the 2016 Sphinx Competition, and winner of the Astral Artists 2017 National Auditions. Mesa joins forces with pianist Michelle Cann to offer this compelling recital of works from their debut album of 2023 “Our Stories”, that aims to raise the voices of composers that are traditionally underrepresented in classical music. Anchoring this imaginative program are two substantial sonatas from the early 20th century by Debussy and Shostakovich, alongside works by Nadia Boulanger, Kevin Day and Andrea Casarrubios.

Mesa has made solo appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, The Cleveland Orchestra, and The Philadelphia Orchestra. During a 2022-23 tour across the United States and Brazil with the Sphinx Virtuosi, he gave the world premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s cello concerto Divided.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, pianist Michelle Cann made her orchestral debut at age fourteen and has since performed as a soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Cann regularly appears in solo and chamber recitals throughout the U.S., China, and South Korea, and currently holds the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music.