Musical Bridges Around the World is bringing a classical music duo to the San Fernando Cathedral on Sunday, February 1st. I caught up with one of the duo, and found that their unexpected ingredient is a dash of humor.
“Hi, this is Nicholas Canellakis.”
About their San Fernando performance I asked “It’s you and Michael Brown, is it not?”
“Correct; It’s our duo, called the Canellakis-Brown Duo.”
Here’s what they’ve planned to play:
"At that concert we’re going to be playing two great sonatas for piano and cello. The first is by Richard Strauss, a fairly early piece. And then we’re going to follow that with the great sonata for cello and piano by Frederic Chopin. And then we will end that program with a Bulgarian folk tune that I arranged for cello and piano.”
In doing my research for the story I came across some amusing videos. I asked him "Now you seem to take classical music really seriously…and then not. What’s the deal with that?” He laughed, and then told m how those videos got started.
“We decided we wanted to make a promo video. And as we were doing it we started to riff on each other as we do in our regular lives. We put it out on the internet, and our friends and the little classical music community seemed to really like it, and were clamoring for some other editions.”
Thus was born a recurring classical music based comedic youtube series not unlike Between Two Ferns by Zach Galifianakis. Nicholas found the comparison appropriate.
“I like to think of it as the Between Two Ferns of Classical music.”
They’ve got a serious program scheduled for San Fernando Cathedral, but as he said…
"You never know; something may happen like that in a performance.”
For more on their San Fernando performance, go here.
