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The Eroica Trio performed Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Eroica Trio

Eroica Trio

As one of the first all-female chamber ensembles to reach the top of their field, the Eroica Trio is part of a new generation of artists who are changing the face of classical music.

The Trio comprised of Erika Nickrenz, Adela Pena and Sara Sant'Ambrogio, took its name from Beethoven's passionate Third Symphony. Italian for "heroic," eroica is a word that reflects the ensemble's approach to their art. As a critic for the San Francisco Examiner noted "It's been decades since this country has produced a chamber music organization with this much passion."

Whether they are playing the great standards of the piano trio repertoire or daring contemporary works, the three young women who make up this world-class chamber ensemble electrify the concert stage with their combination of technical virtuosity, vivid artistic interpretation, and contagious exuberance in performance. The women are all top-ranked, award-winning soloists who have performed on many of the world's great stages.

Erika, 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" and has enjoyed a solo career that has taken her across America and Canada, and to Italy, Switzerland, and Australia. She has performed at the Marlboro, Spoleto and Tanglewood Festivals.

Adela garnered first prize at the Washington International competition and has toured extensively as a soloist in the United States, Europe and South America. She has appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra, in recital at Carnegie Hall and on live European television, broadcast from Paris.

Sara's international successes include a 1986 bronze medal at the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Cello Competition in Moscow, resulting in concert tours across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Canada, and her performance in the 1991 Grammy award-winning recording of Leonard Bernstein's Arias and Barcaroles. In addition, she has enjoyed collaborating on rock CDs and movie soundtracks.

The Trio has established a unique identity by creating innovative programs that span 300 years of music. Along with a Brahms masterwork, a typical Eroica Trio concert might include the Baroque symmetries of Vivaldi, the Latin passion of Piazzolla's Tangos, and Paul Schoenfield's contemporary Café Music, with its echoes of jazz, spiritual and theatre music. The trio's members are prolific commissioners with at least one world premiere every season. This season the Eroica will give the American Premiere of Daniel Schyder's "Trio" in Atlanta's Spivey Hall.

Their performance at Midland College is one of the more than 80 concerts the trio will perform in the United States and abroad this season. Highlights of the season include tours of Spain, Italy, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.

In addition to a demanding concert and recording schedule, the Eroica Trio is committed to music education, giving concerts, master-classes and shows specifically geared toward children at elementary schools and colleges throughout the country. Each summer, the Trio performs at music festivals throughout the world. Immediately following its acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut in 1997, the Eroica Trio was offered an exclusive five-recording contract by Angel/EMI Classics Records. The Trio's self-titled debut CD, which features works by Ravel, Benjamin Godard, a commissioned arrangement of the Gershwin Preludes, and Paul Schoenfield's Café Music, was awarded NPR Performance Today's "Debut Recording of the Year" and featured in Time Out New York's "Top Ten Recordings" of 1997.

The ensemble's other disc's include: a Grammy-nominated 1998 release, concentrating on the works of Dvorak, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff.; their critically-acclaimed third recording, "Baroque," released in November 1999; a fourth album, "Pasión," released in October 2000; and a fifth album, dedicated to the music of Brahms, that was released in January 2002.

The Eroica Trio has appeared on numerous television programs including ABC's The View, CNN's Showbiz Today and Worldbeat, CBS and ABC News, CBS Saturday Morning, A&E's Breakfast with the Arts, The Oxygen Network, Bloomberg TV and Fox's The Crier Report. It has been featured in Elle, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Detour, Marie Claire, Bon Appétit, Time Out New York, Strings, Piano, Gramophone and Chamber Music and Strad magazines.

The Trio members share a unique history, having known each other since childhood. Erika and Adela began performing together at age nine. Three years later, Erika and Sara studied both piano and chamber music with Isabelle Sant'Ambrogio, Sara's grandmother. As a teenager, Adela coached chamber music with Sara's father and first teacher, John Sant'Ambrogio, principal cellist of the St. Louis Symphony. In the early years of the Eroica Trio, coaches included Mr. Sant'Ambrogio as well as Erika's father, the noted violist Scott Nickrenz. The Eroica Trio is based in New York City where its members maintain a close musical and personal friendship.

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