Junction Trio
Three renowned visionary artists of the next generation combine talents in this eclectic new piano trio, Junction. Violinist Stefan Jackiw, recognized for musicianship that combines poetry and purity with an impeccable technique, returns with pianist Conrad Tao and cellist Jay Campbell. Tao, who appears worldwide as a pianist and composer, has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by the New York Times. Approaching both old and new works with the same curiosity and emotional commitment, Campbell has been called “electrifying” by the New York Times. Recent concerts of the trio have included performances at Washington Performing Arts, Portland Ovations and the Royal Conservatory in Toronto.
Violinist Stefan Jackiw is recognized as one of his generation’s most significant artists, captivating audiences with playing that combines poetry and purity with an impeccable technique. Hailed for his playing of "uncommon musical substance" that is “striking for its intelligence and sensitivity” (Boston Globe), Jackiw has appeared as soloist with the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, among others.
This season Stefan Jackiw will perform Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall with Mikhail Pletnev, before embarking on a multi-city tour with the Russian National Orchestra. He will also appear in recital with acclaimed pianist Jeremy Denk performing Ives Violin Sonatas, including performances at the 92nd Street Y in New York, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. In Europe, Stefan makes his debut at Berlin's Konzerthaus and returns to Amsterdam's Concertgebouw with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. And in Asia, Stefan appears for the first time with the Tokyo Symphony at Suntory Hall under the direction of Krzysztof Urbanski, and returns to the Seoul Philharmonic under Mario Venzago. He will also tour Korea playing chamber music with Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica.
Last season, Stefan toured Australia playing Mendelssohn with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and appeared with the Detroit Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Forth Worth Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony, Philharmonische Orchester Heidelberg, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia de la Coruna, Dortmunder Philharmoniker, and Tampere Philharmonic. He also returned to the Aspen Festival performing Lutoslawski's Partita alongside Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5. In March 2014 he gave the world premiere of American composer David Fulmer’s Violin Concerto No 2 “Jubilant Arcs”, written for him and commissioned by the Heidelberg Festival with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie under Matthias Pintscher.
In recent seasons, Jackiw made his Carnegie Hall recital debut performing Stravinsky, Brahms, Strauss and the world premiere of a new work for piano and violin by David Fulmer. Other recent highlights include performances with the St. Louis Symphony under Nicholas McGegan, and with the Rotterdam Philharmonic under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Stefan's recent return engagements include performances with the Indianapolis Symphony under Krzysztof Urbanski, the Pittsburgh Symphony under Juraj Valcuha, and the Kansas City Symphony under Michael Stern.
Stefan has recorded for Sony the complete Brahms sonatas, hailed by Fanfare as “now the recording of the Brahms sonatas to have”. He is also a member of Ensemble Ditto – a wildly popular Korea-based chamber music group, with a mission to introduce new audiences to the chamber music repertoire. Ensemble Ditto plays to sold out halls across the country, presenting works from Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven to George Crumb, Steven Reich, and John Zorn.
Stefan made his European debut at age 14 to great critical acclaim, playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra. His sensational performance was featured on the front page of London’s Times, and the Strad reported, “A 14-year-old violinist took the London music world by storm.” Stefan has also performed abroad with the London Philharmonic, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Ulster Orchestra of Ireland, the Seoul Philharmonic, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.
Stefan is also an active recitalist and chamber musician. He has performed in numerous important festivals and concert series, including the Aspen Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, and Caramoor International Music Festival, the Celebrity Series of Boston, New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Washington Performing Arts Society and the Louvre Recital Series in Paris. As a chamber musician, Stefan has collaborated with such artists as Jeremy Denk, Steven Isserlis, Yo-Yo Ma, and Gil Shaham. He is a regular participant at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music and Bard Music Festivals. At the opening night of Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in New York, Stefan was the only young artist invited to perform, playing alongside such artists as Emanuel Ax, Renée Fleming, Evgeny Kissin, and James Levine.
Born in 1985 to physicist parents of Korean and German descent, Stefan Jackiw began playing the violin at the age of four. His teachers have included Zinaida Gilels, Michèle Auclair, and Donald Weilerstein. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, as well as an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory, and is the recipient of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. He lives in New York City.
Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer, and has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by the New York Times, a “thoughtful and mature composer” by NPR, and “ferociously talented” by TimeOut New York. In June of 2011, the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars and the Department of Education named Tao a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts awarded him a YoungArts gold medal in music. Later that year, Tao was named a Gilmore Young Artist, an honor awarded every two years highlighting the most promising American pianists of the new generation. In May of 2012, he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Tao’s 2017-18 season includes his Lincoln Center debut with a solo recital including a work by American composer Jason Eckhardt, a residency with the Utah Symphony performing both Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” and Prokofiev’s “Piano Concerto No. 2”, and debut engagements with the Atlanta Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and Seattle Symphony. Tao will both perform in his own recital and have a new work composed for Paul Huang and Orion Weiss performed at Washington Performing Arts Society, and opens the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra’s season with the world premiere of a new commissioned work, Over. Additionally, a new multimedia work, Ceremony, developed with vocalist Charmaine Lee, will receive its premiere at Brooklyn’s Roulette.
Outside of the U.S., Tao has been re-invited to perform with the Berner Symphoniker and Mario Venzago in Switzerland, and will also make his debut with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and James Gaffigan. He will also return to Italy with the Orchestra Verdi Milano and Vladimir Fedoseev, and Malaysia with the Malaysian Philharmonic and Eiji Oue.
This busy season comes after recent performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Stéphane Denève (Conrad’s SPAC debut), Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival with Carlos Kalmar, and premieres of his commissions by the Pacific Symphony, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, and Jaap van Zweden and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Conrad also had an on-stage performance role in the world premiere of David Lang’s the loser at BAM and an acclaimed recital in Unison Media’s Crypt Sessions series.
In June of 2013, Tao kicked off the inaugural UNPLAY Festival at the powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn, which he curated and produced. The festival, designated a “critics’ pick” by Time Out New York and hailed by the New York Times for its “clever organization” and “endlessly engaging” performances, featured Conrad with guest artists performing a wide variety of new works. Across three nights encompassing electroacoustic music, performance art, youth ensembles, and much more, UNPLAY explored the fleeting ephemera of the Internet, the possibility of a 21st-century canon, and music’s role in social activism and critique. That month, Tao, a Warner Classics recording artist, also released Voyages, his first full-length for the label, declared a “spiky debut” by the New Yorker’s Alex Ross. Of the album, NPR wrote: “Tao proves himself to be a musician of deep intellectual and emotional means – as the thoughtful programming on this album…proclaims.” His next album, Pictures, which slots works by David Lang, Toru Takemitsu, Elliott Carter, and Tao himself alongside Mussorgsky’s familiar and beloved “Pictures at an Exhibition”, was hailed by The New York Times as “a fascinating album [by] a thoughtful artist and dynamic performer…played with enormous imagination, color and command.”
Tao’s career as composer has garnered eight consecutive ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards and the Carlos Surinach Prize from BMI. In the 2013-14 season, while serving as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s artist-in-residence, Tao premiered his orchestral composition, “The world is very different now”. Commissioned in observance of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the work was described by the New York Times as “shapely and powerful.” Most recently, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia commissioned a new work for piano, orchestra, and electronics, An Adjustment, which received its premiere in September 2015 with Tao at the piano. The Philadelphia Inquirer declared the piece abundant in “compositional magic,” a “most imaginative [integration of] spiritual post-Romanticism and ‘90s club music.”
Tao was born in Urbana, Illinois, in 1994. He has studied piano with Emilio del Rosario in Chicago and Yoheved Kaplinsky in New York, and composition with Christopher Theofanidis.
Armed with a diverse spectrum of repertoire and eclectic musical interests, cellist Jay Campbell has been recognized for approaching both old and new works with the same probing curiosity and emotional commitment. His performances have been called “electrifying” by the New York Times; “gentle, poignant, and deeply moving” by the Washington Post; and on WQXR by Krzysztof Penderecki for “the greatest performance yet of Capriccio per Sigfried Palm”. A 2016 recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, Jay made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 2013 and worked with Alan Gilbert in 2016 as the artistic-director for Ligeti Forward, a series featured on the New York Philharmonic Biennale at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2017, he will be Artist-in-Residence at the Lucerne Festival with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, where he will give the Swiss premiere of Michael Van der Aa's multimedia cello concerto Up-Close, and the world premiere of a new concerto by Luca Francesconi, conducted by Matthias Pintscher in Lucerne's KKL Auditorium and the Cologne Philharmonie.
Dedicated to introducing audiences to the music of our time, Jay has worked closely with some of the most creative musicians of our time including Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, Matthias Pintscher, John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, and countless others from his own generation. His close association with John Zorn resulted in the 2015 release of Hen to Pan (Tzadik) featuring all works written for Campbell, and was listed in the New York Times year-end Best Recordings of 2015. Forthcoming discs include George Perle's cello concerto with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot (Bridge), a disc of Beethoven, Debussy, Stravinsky and Pintscher (Victor Elmaleh Collection), and a collection of works commissioned for Campbell by David Fulmer (Tzadik). Equally enthusiastic as a chamber musician and teacher, Campbell is a member of the JACK Quartet, a piano trio with violinist Stefan Jackiw and pianist Conrad Tao, has served on faculty at Vassar College and has been a guest at the Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, Moab, Heidelberger-Fruhling, DITTO, and Lincoln Center festivals.
