News
March 2023 Strad Review
New CD Release !
"Trios from Contemporary Chicago"
The twice-Grammy-nominated, Billboard-charting Lincoln Trio — violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, cellist David Cunliffe, and pianist Marta Aznavoorian — surveys works by five of Chicago’s most highly lauded contemporary composers on an album that features three world-premiere recordings. The Lincoln Trio’s hometown heroes in this project are Shawn E. Okpebholo, Augusta Read Thomas, Shulamit Ran, Mischa Zupko, and Stacy Garrop.
Okpebholo’s music has been described as “devastatingly beautiful” and “fresh and new and fearless” (Washington Post). His three-movement city beautiful, a world-premiere recording, evokes the distinctive Chicago architecture of Jeanne Gang’s wavy, water-inspired Aqua skyscraper; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School masterpiece, the Frederick C. Robie House; and Daniel Burnham’s Beaux-Arts Union Station.
Recipient of many awards and honors, Augusta Read Thomas is “a true virtuoso composer” (The New Yorker). Her vibrant, multicolored …a circle around the sun… gives each instrument, by turns, a “starring” role in the center of a compact musical solar system.
In addition to receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1991, Ran has received almost every major honor a U.S. composer can earn. Her Soliloquy, depicting unrequited love, is based on a musical fragment from her first opera, Between Two Worlds (The Dybbuk), with the violin serving as its emotional center.
Zupko’s music has earned kudos from The New York Times, Classical Voice North America, the Chicago Tribune, and other major publications and has been championed, commissioned, and premiered by leading U.S. orchestras and chamber groups. His celebratory Fanfare 80, a world-premiere recording, opens with the hallmarks of a classic fanfare, with “antiphonal volleys” among the instruments and occasional “dance-like” passages from the piano.
“One of Chicago’s most keenly sensitive composers” (Chicago Tribune), Garrop is also among the busiest. Recent com-missions include works for The Crossing, Grant Park Orchestra, and St. Louis Symphony. Her Sanctuary, another world- premiere recording, is a deeply personal tribute to her late father. The music evokes a child’s lonely search for memories of a lost parent, followed by the joy and solemnity of a father-daughter reunion.
"This release from the Lincoln Trio is the second of two releases devoted to music from Chicago, a city that has not generally been thought of as having a style of its own in concert music, but the Lincoln Trio makes a persuasive case…This release and its companion volume are highly recommended to those wondering about the musical legacy of the Second City."
JAMES MANHEIM AllMusic.com
PANORAMIC PIANO TRIOS FROM THE CITY OF BIG SHOULDERS
The twice-Grammy-nominated Lincoln Trio — violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, cellist David Cunliffe, and pianist Marta Aznavoorian — offers engaging, rarely heard piano trios by 20th-century Chicago composers Leo Sowerby, winner of the Rome Prize and Pulitzer Prize for music, and Ernst Bacon, recipient of three Guggenheim Fellowships and a Pulitzer Fellowship.
Bacon’s Trio No. 2 for Violin, Cello and Piano (1987) receives its world-premiere recording. Hailed by The New York Times as “a Composer Known for Echoing America,” Bacon infuses the six-movement trio with American influences including marches, folksong-like melodies, and jazz rhythms, validating Virgil Thomson’s assessment of Bacon’s music as “full of melody and variety; honest and skillful and beautiful.”
Sowerby’s Trio for violin, violincello and pianoforte (1953) is “a work of tremendous integrity” that exhibits an “imposing structure, contrapuntal gymnastics, and a concern for instruments sounding as good as they can” (Classical Net). Sometimes virtuosic, sometimes reflective, the work is distinguished by an ever-evolving rhythmic and harmonic interplay between instruments
“This is an outstandingly well performed and recorded disc in which Bacon’s tenacious individualism meets Sowerby’s splendidly organised dynamism.”
JONATHAN WOOLF Music Web International
“One of the year’s standout releases: full of wonderful music, all of it well worth getting to know, and played to the hilt.”
JONATHAN BLUMHOFER The Arts Fuse
“The Lincoln Trio . . . plays magnificently, with a remarkable combination of delicate interplay and robust tone. They are fine champions for this unduly neglected music.”
PETER BURWASSER Fanfare
“These are two major works . . . big, serious, superbly written and (here) superbly played and recorded. . . The Lincoln Trio plays with ideal balances [and] their dynamic range is wide and their sonority full and satisfying.”
DAVID HURWITZ Classics Today
“…when the strings decouple in the second movement, the heavens beckon. In one breathtaking passage, cellist David Cunliffe arpeggiates under the soaring treble line of violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, while pianist Marta Aznavoorian plants pillar-like chords in the firmament.”
HANNAH EDGAR Chicago Reader
“The Lincoln Trio, consisting of violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, cellist David Cunliffe, and pianist Marta Aznavoorian, give their all, in performances of two great trios that are really in need of increased public exposure”
PHIL MUSE Atlanta Audio Club
Beethoven Project 2020
LT nominated for Grammy
NOVEMBER 2016
So excited to be nominated for a 2017 Grammy in the
Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance Category for
our CD "Trios from our Homelands"
Reviews for Homelands CD
Review Page
Reviews for Turina CD
Reviews for our Turina CD can now be found online at Classics Today and Enjoy the Music.com.
More information can be found on the Cedille website.
New CD release
OCTOBER 14, 2014
We are excited announce the release of our latest CD featuring the chamber music of Joaquín Turina. Naxos describes it as follows:
Lincoln Trio brings its “interpretative flair” (The Strad) and “masterly finesse” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) to the early 20th-century chamber music of Spanish-born, French-trained Joaquín Turina in a richly varied program of audience-pleasing works blending Spanish dance and folk influences with romanticism and French impressionism. The album offers Turina’s complete works for multiple strings and piano including what is only the second recording of his early Piano Trio in F Major.
The Lincoln Trio’s last album Notable Women, a recording of new works by prominent female composers, drew international praise. London’s The Observer called it one of the “hidden gems of 2011” and an “intriguing disc, beautifully played.” Strings called it a “provocative CD, magnificently performed.” Gramophone said, “The performances by the Lincoln Trio are models of vibrancy and control. The notables on this recording could hardly have better champions.”
Lincoln Trio earned a 2014 Grammy nomination for its role in the Naxos recording of James Whitbourn’s Annelies for soprano, piano trio, clarinet, and choir.
More information can be found on the Cedille website.
Grammy nomination for Annelies
DECEMBER 12, 2013
Congratulations to the Lincoln Trio on their 2014 Grammy nomination for Whitbourn's Annelies!
They have received a nomination in the Best Choral Performance category for their
collaboration with Arianna Zukerman and the Westmister Williamson Voices.
This work had its Chicago premiere as part of Ravinia's BGH Classics series back on February 24.
More information about Annelies can be found at www.theanneliesproject.org.
Audience-request night at Ravinia
JUNE 24, 2013
On August 15, the Lincoln Trio will do what is rarely done in the classical world: An audience-request night.
They have created a pool of 26 chamber pieces for the audience to choose from.
These works range from all-time favorites from Mozart and Beethoven to
exhilarating new works, some written just for them.
Vote here to determine their program!
Ensemble-in-residence at Merit School
JUNE 1, 2013
The Lincoln Trio is the new ensemble-in-residence at the Merit School of Music.
New Midwest management
SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
Lincoln Trio is pleased to announce their new management for the midwest:
Great Lakes Performing Artist Association
415 N. 4th Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734.665.4029
Notable Women nominated
for Grammy
JANUARY 10, 2012
Lincoln Trio's "Notable Women" CD has received a
Grammy nomination for its producer Judith Sherman.
Update: congratulations to Ms. Sherman on winning Producer of the Year (Classical) from the 54th Grammys!
The CD can also now be found on Spotify. For a full list of classical nominees for the Grammy Awards,
check out this Spotify playlist.
2011 International Tour
Check out Lincoln Trio on Facebook for their 2011 Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Germany and Colombia South America tour pictures!
LT's on Sun-Times Classical Highlights
JUNE 22, 2010
LT's new CD project with Cedille Records and Grammy Award winning producer Judith Sherman
JUNE 22, 2010
LT is excited to announce their new CD project featuring the most exciting women composers alive today. In alphabetical order:
Lera Auerbach is an award-winning poet, pianist and one of most widely performed and imaginative composers of her generation. She has been commissioned to write major works for orchestra, ballet, opera, chamber music ensemble, chorus, and the theatre. The Washington Post said last year that Auerbach “offers 18th-century forms and a 19th-century sensibility (that of the brilliant virtuoso) expressed in a 21st-century vocabulary.” Auerbach has been a composer-in-residence with the Verbier, Pacific, Lockenhaus music festivals among many others. In 1997 she was named Poet-of-the-Year by the International Pushkin Society, and was selected to be member of the Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum in 2007. Lera was born in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Urals bordering Siberia and now resides in New York City.
Stacy Garrop's music is centered on direct and dramatic narrative. The sharing of stories is a defining element of our humanity; we strive to share with others the experiences and concepts that we find compelling. Stacy has received several awards and grants among them: Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Elaine Lebenbom Memorial Award, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble’s 2006/2007 Harvey Gaul Composition Competition, the 2005 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Music Composition Prize, 2005 and 2001 Barlow Endowment commissions and Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 1999-2000 First Hearing Composition Competition.
Pulitzer Prize, Grammy Award-winning Jennifer Higdon maintains a full schedule of commissions and her music is known for its technical skill and audience appeal. Hailed by The Washington Post as "a savvy, sensitive composer with a keen ear, an innate sense of form and a generous dash of pure esprit," she is one of America's most frequently performed composers.
Laura Elise Schwendinger was the first composer to win the prestigious American Academy in Berlin Prize fellowship. Her music has been performed by some of the leading artists of our day and at many of the world’s most prestigious venues. Her setting of in Just- spring has been performed on tour by Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish, at venues including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, the National Arts Center in Canada and at the Tanglewood and Ojai Music Festivals.
Augusta Read Thomas' deeply personal music is guided by her particular sense of musical form, rhythm, timbre, and harmony. But given this individuality, her music is affected by history — in Thomas' words, "Old music deserves new music and new music needs old music." For Thomas, this means cherishing her place within the musical tradition and giving credit to those who have forged the musical paths she follows and from which she innovates. Thomas was the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from May 1997 through June 2006, a residency that encompassed nine world premieres, culminating in the premiere of Astral Canticle — one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American composers living today. During a career spanning more than fifty years, she has made lasting contributions to musical life in the United States as composer, performer, conductor, and educator.
Her works have been commissioned by major ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including the Emerson, Tokyo and Muir quartets, soloists Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, John Browning, and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Washington DC among others.
Ravinia Festival Announcement
SEPTEMBER 24, 2008
Lincoln Trio press release link at Ravinia Festival.
Tickets for the LT's Rising Stars concert (February 13, 2009) can also be purchased from the Ravinia website.
LT wins top prize in the 28th Masterplayers International Music Competition
SEPTEMBER 24, 2008
28th MASTERPLAYERS INTERNATIONAL MUSIC COMPETITION
Judges' Verdict
Best Competitor - Masterplayers Prize 2008
Lincoln Trio
Desiree Ruhstrat, violin, USA
David Cunliffe, cello, Great Britain
Marta Aznavoorian, piano, USA
Ensemble in Residence at the Music Institute of Chicago
Beethoven Piano Trio Op.11
Live Concert at the Chicago Cultural Center
Best Conductor - Bruno Walter Prize 2008
Toshihiro Yonezu, Japan
DVD Live Concert with the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra
December 5, 2007 in Ljubljana
Prokofiev:Romeo and Juliet Suite 2
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring
Richard Schumacher, President of Competition
Lugano, September 2008
LT in Strad magazine
MAY 8, 2008
The Lincoln Trio was found in the March issue of the Strad magazine for a featured review of Composers in the Loft.
