By John Tamilio III

Not only does Michelle Cann hold a seat in the upper echelon of stellar pianists, but she’s a great storyteller as well.

Grammy Award-winner Michelle Cann. Photo: courtesy of the artist

I had just come from preaching a sermon about Thanksgiving and how my faith tradition (Congregationalism) is the heir of the early seventeenth-century Pilgrims and Puritans. Their polity helped shape this nation’s political structure. About a century after they landed on Pilgrim Rock, they were among the early abolitionists. But, just a few decades prior to promulgating their anti-slavery stance, they hanged men and women accused of witchcraft in Salem Village. (As T.S. Eliot waxed, “Humility is endless.”) However, they are still revered today for their reverence. We prayed. We gave thanks for the blessing that pervades our lives.

And then I went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and felt even more gratitude. This Sabbath offering was the final of their fall series: a solo piano concert by the Grammy Award-winner Michelle Cann.

Go see her! Live! Trust me!

Not only does she hold a seat in the upper echelon of stellar pianists, but she’s a great storyteller as well. I have been to concerts at which a performer introduces a particular selection. That’s not the same thing as hearing a good story. Music is a story. We are a people of many stories. I could listen to Cann speak (and play) for eons. Her exposition of Liszt’s rendition of the Faustian tale of love hindered by Mephisto (the Devil) left me enthralled.

Cann has a story about herself, too. It’s about a young Black girl purchasing a copy of a Florence Price score and being moved to tears, not just by its musical elegance, but by the fact that a woman of color, someone with whom she identified, had her stunning symphonies grossly overshadowed in a field orchestrated by white men. “I thought, ‘It isn’t fair,’” Cann recalled. That girl grew up and recorded many pieces by Price: the New England Conservatory honors graduate who was born exactly 100 years before the little girl who is now a thirty-eight-year-old, performative genius — a Womanist icon who is not just in demand across the globe, but happened to have a baby five months ago!

The moment Cann took the stage in the “Frank Lloyd Wrightesque” Calderwood Hall, patrons were warmed by her smile, which is as infectious as her playing. She opened with Ballade No. 3 in A-flat major, Op. 47 by Frédéric Chopin. Before commencing, though, Cann introduced this ballade (the third and much lighter of the four by the legendary Polish composer) and its siren motif. Seated behind her, I was captivated by her fluid and graceful hand motions. At one point, she commented on the structure of the auditorium, saying it was easy to think that she was playing in her living room until she looked up. Those words paralleled my own thoughts — actually they belong to the aforementioned poet:

‘So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.’

T.S. Eliot, “Portrait of a Lady,” I. ll. 10-13.

And like Eliot’s “Pole,” Cann transmitted his Ballade “through [her] hair and finger-tips.” Her left hand maneuvered the bass clef with atomic precision while her right hand tickled the upper register of her instrument with meticulous poise.

Chopin was followed, with curious melodic logic, by Joel Thompson’s “My Dungeon Shook: Three American Preludes”, a 2020 composition inspired by the eponymous essay in James Baldwin’s 1963 collection, The Fire Next Time.  Cann said the piece was also written in homage to the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery. Cann explained the structure of the piece: Thompson used letters from the names of both men as the architectural notes for these preludes. Cann’s hands worked contrapuntally: somber melodies would meander separately around the piano’s register only to eventually rejoin.  Allusions to the “Star-Spangled Banner” surfaced from the fabric of the piece before it rumbled into a cacophony with blistering, sustained notes. The audience was held in anticipation as Cann’s hands mimicked “and the home of the…”  After a pregnant pause, “brave” was replaced by a sustained, hypnotic note suggesting, as Langston Hughes once wrote, “a dream deferred.”

Thompson’s trifold remonstration segued into Felix Mendelssohn’s Fantasie in F-sharp minor, Op. 28 seamlessly. Cann’s fingers danced across the keys of the Steinway with the speed and agility with which Eddie Van Halen tapped flourishes from his Frankenstrat’s fretboard. As Cann’s left hand pounded bass chords, her right hand sang an impeccable, pensive, propitious song.

During intermission, those in the hallway foyer could hear Cann practicing in the adjacent Green Room. Clearly, her dedication to her craft is why the Philadelphia Inquirer lauds her as “exquisite.”

The piano was repositioned 180 degrees for the second half of the afternoon, which gave me the pleasure of seeing Cann’s face. The highlight of the afternoon was Price’s Sonata in E minor. Elegant melodies bounced off equally animated bass tones. Cann’s intricate dexterity gave voice to Price’s vision — together they solidified the latter’s elevated ranking among twentieth-century composers. At times, Cann’s left hand seemed to waft the notes up to the patrons in the upper stories of the theater — so they could share and feel her passion. As she moved between romantic intervals to fiery Wagnerian climbs, the performance was capped by a standing ovation. I echo the words of the woman sitting next to me: “How can you describe such joy!” It’s not easy.

The afternoon ended with Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz, No. 1, S. 514. As the Devil spurned various lovers by firing off a frantic cackle of notes, one realized that this piece seemed to anticipate a pianist of Cann’s ability: virtuosic prestidigitation could make a page crammed with so many notes sound so pleasingly sonorous.

After a second standing ovation, Cann returned to her instrument to offer a jazz-improvised rendition of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, adding the sound of the Looney Tunes “That’s all folks!” tag at the end — a nod to Bugs Bunny, who played this familiar Liszt piece in a 1946 short. Let’s hope that isn’t true — I eagerly await Cann’s return to Boston.

John Tamilio III, Ph.D., is the Pastor of the Congregational Church of Canton, a professor of Philosophy at Salem State University, and a professional guitarist who plays solo acoustic and for the Boston-based classic rock band 3D. His playing has been applauded by David Brown (Simon & Garfunkel, Billy Joel), Jack Sonni (Dire Straits), and Carter Allen (WZLX). An aficionado of classical music, particularly the Baroque era, Tamilio’s publications are vast, covering not only music, philosophy, and theology, but the poetry of T.S. Eliot as well. He resides in Beverly with his wife Cynthia.