Masterworks V, April 26, 2008

    Eroica Trio                            Jay Greenberg, composer

                           Photo credit: Nina Choi      

The Eroica Trio, www.eroicatrio.com, appearing with the East Texas Symphony Orchestra on April 26th, has been described as "dramatic and emotional” and with “musical merits that earn them their foothold on the very highest rung of the profession”.  They have established a unique identity by creating innovative programs that spans 300 years of music and continually thrill audiences with the sweet sounds of traditional classical composers and, at the same time, are champions of contemporary music by some of this century’s composers such as Mark O’Connor and Kevin Puts. 

The Trio became noticed in 1997 as part of the "Distinctive Debuts" series at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Eroica received rave reviews at this touring series created to showcase rising stars in Classical music.  They were offered an exclusive five-record contract by Angel/EMI Classics Records and their debut album was awarded NPR Performance Today's "Debut Recording of the Year".  The ensemble's second disc, "Dvorak/Shostakovich/Rachmaninoff" released in the fall of 1998 was nominated for two Grammy®Awards. To date they have released seven recordings and all have been received with much acclaim.

In addition to demanding concert and recording schedules, the Eroica Trio is committed to music education.  They spend time giving concerts, master classes and special children's shows at schools and colleges throughout the country. They also find time to perform each summer at various music festivals throughout the world, including the Hollywood Bowl, Aspen, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, and Spoleto, Italy.

The three young ladies that make up the Eroica are all top-ranked soloists of their own right.  Pianist Erika Nickrenz, who made her concerto debut at New York's Town Hall at the age of 11, was a featured soloist on the PBS series Live from Lincoln Center. In 2003, she performed and rang the opening bell for New York Stock Exchange as part of Steinway's 150th anniversary celebration. Australian born Susie Parks, violist, made her solo debut at the age of five and holds her Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music.  She has concertized around the world from Indianapolis to Australia to Korea to New York City.  Cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio's (www.sarasantambrogio.com)  began cello studies with her father, John Sant’Ambrogio, and at age 16 was invited on full scholarship to study with David Soyer at he Curtis Institiute of Music and three years later was invited to study at The Julliard School.  Her international successes include winning a medal at the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Violoncello Competition in Moscow.  This led to tours across North America, Europe, and the Middle East. It ended in a recital at Carnegie Hall which was broadcast on national television. Sant'Ambrogio has won a Grammy®Award for her recording of Leonard Bernstein's "Arias and Barcaroles." In addition, she has enjoyed collaborating on rock, pop and jazz CDs and movie soundtracks.

During the 2007-2008 season, the Eroica Trio will celebrate its 20th Anniversary Season.  They will travel to many of the smaller presenters that supported them in the early years of their careers.  East Texas is fortunate to be included in this anniversary season and to be a part of the premiere of the commissioned work, Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano by 16 year old composer Jay Greenberg, www.jaygreenbergmusic.com.

At the age of 16, American composer Jay Greenberg already has built a substantial and ever-expanding catalogue of original works that explore and renew the traditional forms of classical music, from solo piano pieces and sonatas to full-scale symphonies. In addition to his achievements, his burgeoning career is already yielding some remarkable “firsts” – he is the youngest composer ever signed to exclusive contracts with IMG Artists and with Sony Classical. The first CD release under his distinctive new agreement with Sony Classical includes the premiere recordings of his Symphony No. 5 – with José Serebrier conducting the London Symphony Orchestra – and his Quintet for Strings, with the Juilliard String Quartet and cellist Darrett Adkins.

The public first heard Greenberg’s story in a 60 Minutes interview in 2004, in which Samuel Zyman – who has taught literature and materials of music to Greenberg at the Juilliard School of Music – said that young composer’s potential puts him in the company of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Saint-Saëns, music’s most illustrious young prodigies. (To read more of the interview go to www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/24/60minutes/main657713.shtml.) Greenberg’s works already have been played by orchestras across the United States including the Pittsburgh and New Haven Symphony Orchestras. A premiere performance of the Quintet for Strings at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC is being planned for later this year.

“How do you react when you encounter an early compositional gift so extraordinary that you can’t even begin to comprehend it?” Zyman wrote in The Juilliard Journal in 2003. “How do you explain to others a compositional talent so exquisitely developed at such an early age that you can barely believe it yourself? What would you do if you personally met an eight-year-old boy who can compose and fully notate half a movement of a magnificent piano sonata in the style of Beethoven, before your very eyes and without a piano, in less than an hour? How do you let the world know that the same boy, at age 10, composed a probing, original viola concerto in three movements, fully orchestrated, in just a few weeks?”

Typically of a young artist, Greenberg has little to say in explaining his creative process or describing his music. In conversation, his self-confidence and his intelligence are leavened by a sharp, playful sense of humor – the perfect means of deflecting questions about his methods. He has recently begun maintaining a catalogue of his works dating from 1999, when he began to apply himself seriously to composing. Greenberg believes there were a few earlier pieces of which he has no record, but his catalogue is already rich in full-scale compositions – in addition to five symphonies, more than a dozen piano sonatas and a wide variety of solo piano pieces, he has composed string quartets and other chamber music, three piano concertos, and concertos for the violin and the viola. In 2001, he began using a computer for composing, which enabled him to work at a much faster pace.

“I don’t usually work them out on paper,” Greenberg says simply of his composing process. “They tend to work themselves. Generally, fairly quickly.”

Born in 1991 in New Haven, Connecticut, Jay Greenberg began playing the cello when he was three years old, and he later taught himself how to play the piano. His first formal lessons in theory and composition began when he was seven; three years later he enrolled as a scholarship student in both the college and pre-college divisions of New York’s Juilliard School of Music. Greenberg’s teachers there have included Zyman, Ira Taxin, Samuel Adler, Ernest Baretta, Lance Horn and Kendall Briggs. He says he has also learned from the writings of contemporary composers, such as Stravinsky’s Poetics in Music and the Norton Lectures that Leonard Bernstein delivered at Harvard University in 1973, as well as Aaron Copland’s essays and texts on music and composition.

His Overture to 9/11 received first prize in the composition competition at the Juilliard pre-college division in 2003, and he won ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers awards in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Among Greenberg’s most recent commissions are Short Stories for Tenor Saxophone, Percussion and Orchestra, performed at Alice Tully Hall by the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York, and Hexalogue for Winds and Piano, premiered at the Swannanoa Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina.