I am Michael Kannen and I play cello. I have enjoyed a long, varied and extremely gratifying career in music. My joy comes from connecting to people through music and, happily, my career has afforded me abundant opportunity to do so.

A pinnacle for me was my time in the Brentano String Quartet. I was a founding member of Brentano and making music with the three other magnificent musicians in that group was the essential experience of my career. During my time in the group we received several awards, including the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award. We played in some of the most beautiful concert halls in the world, including Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the Sydney Opera House.

Soon after Brentano I joined the Apollo Trio and played with my brilliant colleagues in that group for over fifteen years. Currently I am in the Cooperstown Quartet – another group of magnificent and beloved colleagues with whom I not only play concerts, but also teach each summer at the Taos School of Music.

Most musicians will tell you that it is the amazing people with whom you collaborate that forms the richest part of a life in music. Three great artists must be singled out for their outsized influence on my music making: flutist Paula Robison, violinist Sergiu Luca and the legendary pianist Leon Fleisher. But even a partial list of artists with whom I have played speaks for itself in telling how fortunate a musical life I have led: Jessye Norman, Itzhak Perlman, Hilary Hahn, Daniel Phillips, Donald Weilerstein, Pamela Frank, Mitsuko Uchida, Kenneth Cooper, David Krakauer, Jörg Widmann, and Steven Isserlis. 

Teaching chamber music has been at the very center of my musical life. For twenty-two years I was the Director of Chamber Music at the Peabody Conservatory, where I continue to teach to this day. Perhaps my proudest accomplishment was being awarded the Johns Hopkins Excellence in Teaching Award in 2019.

After decades of playing on concert stages throughout the world, I have come to get my greatest satisfaction from playing in small venues for small groups of people who seek musical comfort and uplift: in shelters, prisons, hospitals, hospices and in people’s living rooms – any where the connection is direct, immediate and visceral. For me, these experiences are at the very heart of why I am a musician.