Lysander Piano Trio

With major prizes and engagements in top American venues, the Lysander Piano Trio ranked as one of the fastest-rising U.S. chamber ensembles during the 2010s decade. The group is noted for its advocacy of contemporary music as well as traditional trio repertory. The Lysander Piano Trio was formed in 2009 at the Juilliard School in New York, where its members were students. The group accompanied Juilliard president Joseph Polisi to Mexico and performed there. In 2010, cellist Michael Katz joined the trio, and since then, its membership has been stable, also including violinist Itamar Zorman and pianist Liza Stepanova. The trio members studied with Ronald Copes of the Juilliard String Quartet, Joseph Kalichstein of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, and pianist Seymour Lipkin, and also took a master class from pianist Alfred Brendel. It did not take the group long to win significant prizes, including top honors at the 2010 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the 2011 Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition, and the 2011 Arriaga Chamber Music Competition. The Lysander Piano Trio has appeared at Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Terrace Theater Kennedy Center in Washington, and Kohl Mansion in San Francisco, among other major chamber music venues, and the group is a frequent guest at university halls such as the Clark Memorial Library at the University of California at Los Angeles. The group has also appeared at the Copenhagen Summer Festival and toured Israel under the auspices of the Schubertiade Festival. In addition to performing traditional trio repertory, the Lysander Piano Trio has taken an active role in commissioning new works such as Gilad Cohen's Around the Cauldron, Reinaldo Moya's Ghostwritten Variations, and Jennifer Higdon's Love Sweet for soprano and piano trio. In 2014, the Lysander Piano Trio released After a Dream, featuring trios by Haydn, Schubert, Ravel, and Joaquín Turina. The group released a pair of albums on the First Hand Records label in 2020, Mirrors, and the EP Jakub Ciupinski: The Black Mirror.
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