Michelle "Cann" Do It All

Lauded as “a pianist of sterling artistry” by Gramophone,  Michelle Cann is one of the most sought-after artists of her generation. As one of the Grant Park Music Festival’s artists-in-residence this summer, she will perform before an audience of 10,000 concert-goers, play an intimate recital for 200 patrons, and lead a piano masterclass for four aspiring musicians.

She returns to the stage of Millennium Park’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion to perform Ravel’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto with the Grant Park Orchestra conducted by Jeri Lynne Johnson, in a program that also includes Florence Price’s sweeping Symphony No. 3.

Cann herself has been recognized as a leading interpreter of the piano music of Florence Price. She opened the Festival’s 2022 season with Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement, a rediscovered work that had been lost for 75 years.

Last year, she and soprano Karen Slack won a GRAMMY Award for their album, Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price. Cann and Slack, the Festival's two 2026 artists-in-residence, will give an intimate recital of Price’s works on the stage of the Pritzker Pavilion, with the glass doors closed.

To round out her artist-in-residency with the Festival, Cann will be coaching piano students from the Music Institute of Chicago, Merit School of Music, and New Music School of Chicago as part of the Festival’s Visiting Masters series.