Neave Trio

The Neave Trio has become a well-established American chamber group, with wide performances and successes in both mainstream and contemporary repertory. The group is especially notable for its wide variety of collaborations, unusual in the somewhat hermetic world of chamber music. Consisting of violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura, the Neave Trio (the name means "bright" or "radiant" in Gaelic) was formed in 2010 and immediately began to find bookings around the U.S. In New York, the group has performed at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the 92nd Street Y, and it has also appeared at the La Jolla Chamber Music Society. Performances in Boston led to the trio's designation as Best of 2014 and Best of 2016 by that city's Musical Intelligencer, which asserted that "their unanimity, communication, variety of touch, and expressive sensibility rate first tier." The Neave Trio has also performed at the Norwich Chamber Music Series in the U.K. and at two museum chamber music series in Russia. It has performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto in C major, Op. 56, with various orchestras. The group has held a large number of musical residencies for one so new, including, beginning in 2017, holding a position as Alumni Artists, Faculty Ensemble in Residence, at their alma mater, Bard College in upstate New York. Especially interesting have been the trio's collaborations, several of them multimedia in nature: these have included performances with projection artist Ryan Brady, composer Amanuel Zarzowski, and the Blythe Barton Dance Company. The trio has given the world premiere of Klee Musings by composer Augusta Read Thomas and Eric Nathan's Missing Words V. It has been slated to appear in a short film based on Astor Piazzolla's music. Likewise notable has been the trio's signing to the Chandos label, whose roster is dominated by British and European performers. The Neave Trio released its debut album, American Moments, in 2016; the album featured music by Bernstein, Korngold, and Foote. Its sophomore release was French Moments (2018), including works by Debussy, Fauré, and Albert Roussel. The group's activities in the late 2010s included a new residency at the University of Virginia. The Neave Trio returned to the recording studio in 2019 for the album Her Voice: Beach, Clarke, Farrenc. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Neave Trio issued a video of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah that racked up more than a million views. In 2022, the group issued the album Musical Remembrances, featuring trios by Rachmaninov, Brahms, and Ravel.
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