Lincoln Trio

The Lincoln Trio is a leading U.S. chamber ensemble with a notably diverse repertory featuring contemporary music and works from outside the western world. The group has recorded for the Cedille and Naxos labels. The Lincoln Trio was formed in 2003 at the Music Institute of Chicago and named for the state of Illinois, colloquially the "Land of Lincoln" (U.S. president Abraham Lincoln). The members are violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, cellist David Cunliffe, and pianist Marta Aznavoorian. All three members have international careers on their own; Ruhstrat has toured Europe and performed at the White House, while Cunliffe has performed with top British orchestras and is a member of the Balanescu Quartet, and Aznavoorian has appeared at such major concert halls as the Chicago Symphony Center, the John F. Kennedy Center, and the Sydney Opera House. A win at the 2008 Master Players International Competition in Venice, Italy, and a 2011 Young Performers Career Advancement Award bolstered the trio's growing career, as did a pair of album releases on the Cedille label, In Eleanor's Words (featuring music by Stacy Garrop) and Notable Women. Both in performance and on recordings, the Lincoln Trio has favored a notably diverse repertory. The group has commissioned and performed many new compositions, including seven trios by members of the Chicago Composers Consortium. Other collaborators include Conrad Tao, Laura Elise Schwendinger, and Juan Antonio Cuéllar. The Lincoln Trio has also worked with the Chinese Fine Arts Society and the Korean Sejong Cultural Society, which commissioned three works based on Korean themes that were premiered and recorded by the Lincoln Trio in 2013. The trio has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and at the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial in Springfield, Illinois, with President Barack Obama in the audience, among other major venues. In 2013, the Lincoln Trio appeared on the album James Whitbourn: Annelies, which set texts from The Diary of Anne Frank. That album earned a Grammy Award nomination, as did the group's 2016 release Trios from Our Homelands. By the early 2020s, the trio had issued more than ten albums, including 2021's Trios from the City of Big Shoulders and 2022's Trios from Contemporary Chicago. The Lincoln Trio is in residence at Chicago's Merit School of Music.
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