Karen Slack & Michelle Cann

2025 Grammy Winners

“… gorgeously mezzo-like … velvety sumptuousness.” —BBC Music Magazine 

“A pianist of sterling artistry.” —GramophoneMark Steinberg, violin | Serena Canin, violin | Misha Amory, viola | Nina Lee, cello

Karen Slack, soprano | Michelle Cann, piano

This duo didn’t just win a GRAMMY for Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price. With Price, they created history. Never before had the Best Classical Solo Vocal GRAMMY been awarded for music composed solely by a Black woman. Watch their interview at the GRAMMYs on YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp1NkgOsZOo 

Praised for her “sizeable voice that captured all of the vacillating emotions” (New York Times), soprano Karen Slack has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera, where she made her debut in the title role of Verdi’s Luisa Miller, Lyric Opera of Chicago, where she is Artist-in-Residence, Washington National Opera, and San Francisco Opera. She has had leading roles in the world premieres of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Damien Geter’s Loving vs. Virginia. Slack had a featured role as the Opera Diva in Tyler Perry’s movie and soundtrack For Colored Girls. She appeared during CMC’s 2022–23 season with the Pacifica Quartet. 

Called “a pianist of sterling artistry” by Gramophone, the world’s leading classical music magazine, Michelle Cann has performed as a soloist with the Chicago and National Symphonies, Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal de São Paulo. Cann’s recording of Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with the New York Youth Symphony won the 2023 GRAMMY for Best Orchestral Performance. She has performed with Chamber Music Cincinnati and/or the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in each of the past five seasons.