Program and Artist Biography

An acknowledged leader in the field of new music, the Verdehr Trio for over 30 years has concentrated on molding and defining the personality of the violin-clarinet-piano trio. The trio has created a large repertoire by commissioning over 200 new works from some of the world's most prominent and exciting composers—known and unknown, young and old, from this country and abroad.

A handful of earlier trios by Bartok, Berg, Krenek, Khachaturian, Milhaud, Poulenc, Stravinsky, and Ives showed the potential tonal and musical possibilities of this grouping. Now, with more than 230 total works in this genre, the violin-clarinet-piano trio has become a viable chamber music medium whose substantial literature may be recognized together with other major mediums, such as the piano trio, woodwind and brass quintets, and the piano quartet. The trio has rediscovered and transcribed 18th- and 19th-century pieces for inclusion in its concert programs.

The Verdehr Trio has performed in 17 European countries, the former Soviet Union, South and Central America, Asia, and Australia, and throughout the United States, at major concert halls including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, Vienna's Brahmssaal, the Sydney Opera House, London's Wigmore Hall, Auditorio de Madrid, Dvorak Hall in Prague, the IRCAM Centre in Paris, and Leningrad's Philharmonic Chamber Hall. The trio has also played at festivals including Spoleto, the Prague Spring Festival, the Vienna Spring Festival, Warsaw Autumn, and the Grand Teton Music Festival, and at numerous international clarinet festivals. Recently the trio received a Creative Programming Award from Chamber Music America.

The group has also commissioned trio concertos from Buhr, David, Ott, Skrowaczewski, and Wallace and performed these with Vienna's Tonkunstler Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony, Prague Chamber Soloists, the Vancouver CBC Orchestra, and the Grand Rapids and Flint, Michigan, orchestras as well as with the National Orchestra of Spain and the Grand Teton Festival Orchestra. Most recently, double concertos for violin and clarinet by James Niblock, William Wallace, Dinos Constantinides, Paul Chihara, Ian Krouse, and Richard Mills have been completed.

To complement its commissioning efforts, the Verdehr Trio has embarked upon three projects to make the repertoire known and accessible to musicians. The first is a series of CD recordings of the new works written for the trio: The Making of a Medium CD series on Crystal Records. The second and parallel project is The Making of a Medium video series, hosted by Martin Bookspan and consisting of half-hour programs featuring prominent composers and their works written for the Verdehr Trio, available from the Instructional Media Center at Michigan State University in cooperation with the Michigan State University Press. A third project, The Making of a Medium music publishing series, has recently been inaugurated in cooperation with the Michigan State University Press. The Verdehr Trio is in residence at Michigan State University.