Michelle Cann Made It to the Curtis Institute Faculty Helping Others Along the Way: Extraordinary Pianist is Acknowledged for Her Achievements
Michelle Cann’s journey from Florida to the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music is a remarkable story of perseverance and incredible talent. Cann was born into a family that nurtured her musical aspirations, but, as a person of color, finding her way in the overwhelmingly white world of classical music presented special challenges.
In 2020, Cann was named the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies at the Curtis Institute, her alma mater. She has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and has been a featured performer at festivals around the country, most recently at Pianofest in the Hamptons where she is one of the celebrated alumni.
Having achieved personal success, Cann now wants to lift up others. She is committed to helping diversify classical music. Not only does she promote overlooked great Black composers like Florence Price, Cann has made it a priority to help young people of color navigate the often-daunting competitiveness of classical music.
On March 17, 2022, the prestigious Sphinx Organization will honor Cann for her musical accomplishments and her work to help the less fortunate with its Medal of Excellence. The medal comes with a $50,000 career grant.
Michelle Cann’s Family Provides a Nurturing Foundation
Cann grew up in Florida, where her parents still live.
“I had a lot of inspiration within my own family,” Cann said. “My father was a music teacher and he got his master’s degree in music education. He's been a phenomenal teacher of kids. He taught K through 12 throughout his life. He taught so many ensembles and different styles, and that affected me in a very big way because I did more than just piano.”
As a girl, Cann also played the violin, as well as trombone in her father’s band.
“Much to my dismay, my father pushed me into tuba,” Cann said. “Being a typical teenage girl, I did not think that was going to win me any popularity contests.”
Cann’s decision to focus on piano was inspired by her sister, a concert pianist who received her master’s degree from the Eastman School of Music.
“She's six years my senior, so I had her to look up to and emulate,” Cann said. “I wanted to be like my big sister, as well as my father and my mother, who is also quite talented musically. My mother was the disciplinarian who made sure that our household ran like a well-oiled machine. They all contributed to my experience in some way.”
After graduating high school, Cann attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Paul Schenly and Daniel Shapiro. Even though Cann was studying at one of America’s most prestigious music schools, she was plagued by self-doubt.
“I was doubting my own abilities to survive,” she said. “Quite frankly, I didn't see many people who looked like me that were successful. I was thinking, boy, I have so many battles to overcome. So, I also did a biology minor. I love biology, and I figured if music didn't work out for me, I could go that way.”
After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she received her undergraduate and master’s degrees, Cann said she was still grappling with a sense of not being good enough.
“I was at another crossroads,” Cann said. “It's a difficult career and there's a lot of pressure. As I was finishing my fifth year at CIM, I was feeling that I don't learn pieces fast enough. I don't learn them perfectly and I'm still making mistakes. Even though I had achieved a lot, I hadn't achieved enough.”
A Confidence Boost at Just the Right Time
Cann was also not in a financial situation to take out more student loans. So she decided to pursue an artist’s diploma at school that offered free tuition. She had a teacher in mind she wanted to study with, Robert McDonald, who taught piano at Juilliard and Yale.
“I had heard good things about him,” Cann said. “I went to New York City to Juilliard, and had a lesson with him. He was very complimentary, but he was honest with me, and said, that the Juilliard artist diploma program was very hard to get into. He also taught at Curtis and said that Curtis is also very competitive. He was always a very honest person, and it wasn't to make me feel bad. He just thought this might be a stretch.”
McDonald’s warnings did not dissuade Cann.
“I realized, ok, I'm just going to have to try that much harder,” she said. “And I threw everything into it because I thought this was my last hurrah. I practiced harder than I ever have. I just pushed in every possible way.”
After a grueling four days into the audition process, the day before the final round, Cann received an email that gave a serious boost to her self-confidence.
“It was from the Yale School of Music offering me a free artist diploma program,” Cann said. “I felt I now have an option that would work for me because I also really liked the teacher at Yale. So, Curtis, like me or not, I don’t care. I was just going to play my best, and you take me or you don’t because I have another option. It gave me a sense of relaxation and confidence for that final round.”
Cann, obviously gave a satisfactory performance because she was accepted into Curtis, her first choice. In an ironic fairy tale ending, Cann, who had serious doubts about her ability to get into Curtis, now serves on its faculty.
Michelle Cann Studies at Curtis While Helping Others
While in her first year at Curtis, Cann found time to direct a children’s choir for an organization called Play on Philly.
“It’s based on the Il Sistema program that started in Venezuela,” Cann said. “Gustavo Dudamel, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is one of the most famous graduates of that program. It’s all about taking kids off the streets, so that as soon as they’re out of school, they’re in these wonderful music programs.”
Cann says that working with Play on Philly showed her the profound impact she could make on the next generation of classical musicians.
“I would do my Curtis classes, and then I would go up to West Philadelphia and work with the kids in the choir, and I made these connections. The children changed me. I’ll be honest. I saw these kids who were hungry for musical knowledge. Children want to be inspired. They want to learn.”
Although she now serves on the faculty of Curtis, Cann says that also teaching children, especially those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, will always be a part of her life.
Discovering an Overlooked Composer
Cann also has a passion for bringing much-needed attention to composers of color, especially those of the past who were ignored by a white classical music establishment.
In 2016, the Dream Unfinished Orchestra in New York City was putting together a program to honor black female composers and to have black female artists perform their works. The orchestra reached out to Cann.
“They said they would love for me to play a concerto by Florence Price,” Cann said. “I was completely in the dark. Who is this Florence Price? What is this concerto? I didn’t know anything. They sent me the music, and I looked her up. I remember giving this concerto a preliminary read-through, and I couldn’t believe how amazing it was.”
Price was an African-American composer born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887. A naturally brilliant musician who gave her first piano recital at the age of four and composed her first work at 11, Price enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music, passing herself off as Mexican to avoid racial discrimination against Blacks. Her music, which often shows the influence of African-American spirituals, has been largely overlooked until recently, when its excellence is finally being recognized.
This past February, Cann gave the Philadelphia premiere of Price's Concerto in One Movement with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
“It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life,” Cann said. “I want to get more of this music recorded, so that it’s out there. That way, when people look up Florence Price or Margaret Bond or William Grant Still or composers of today, like Jessie Montgomery, they can actually hear their music.”
Adding Color to Classical Music
Championing African-American composers isn’t the only way Cann wants to help diversify classical music. She believes the most important thing is start at the source, the children. She learned from her experience with Play on Philly that having the right teacher can make all the difference in whether a child goes on to have a successful music career.
“I love being involved in training children of color from a young age, the ones who really want it,” she said. “There are many hungry students, especially in piano, who want to learn, but whose parents might not have money for the most expensive lessons or best teacher. I want to be a part of breaking that down. I have a student whose family did not have money, and I was able to bring him in as a student and charge less money and was able to work with him. It’s amazing how far he’s come over the years.”
Cann says she especially wants to teach children how to deal with the competitive nature of a classical music career.
“No musician of color wants to be the token person,” Cann said. “They want to feel like they earned it. But you have to start from a young age and you have to be taught properly. It’s not that parents in communities of color don’t care about their kids or don’t want what’s best for them, they just don’t always know what to do. And even if they know, if their income doesn’t match what these teachers charge, then how can they even go that way?”
One senses that as the brilliant and generous-hearted Michelle Cann continues to go from success to success, she’s going to take a lot of people with her.
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