Claremont Trio

The Claremont Trio has performed widely in top chamber music in venues in its native U.S. The group mixes traditional repertory with newly composed and commissioned works in its recordings and programming. The Claremont Trio was formed in 1999 at New York's Juilliard School, where all its members studied, by twin sisters Emily Bruskin (violin) and Julia Bruskin (cello), along with pianist Donna Kwong. Kwong was replaced by Andrea Lam, but otherwise, the group's membership has remained consistent. The trio is named for Claremont Ave. on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and it remains headquartered in the area. The Claremont Trio won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 2001 and made its debut at New York's 92nd Street Y later that year. The group remains the only piano trio ever to have won the award. The ensemble's growing career was also helped along by winning the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson International Trio Award in 2003, and the following year, it released its debut album, featuring trios by Felix Mendelssohn, on the Arabesque label. Establishing its own Tria label, the Claremont Trio released an album of trios by Shostakovich and Anton Arensky in 2006. Two years later, the group moved to the Ongaku label for an album of chamber music by Beethoven, Brahms, and Ernst von Dohnányi, released at Joe's Pub in New York's Public Theater complex. The Claremont Trio has appeared at leading U.S. chamber music venues, including the Library of Congress in Washington, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and Carnegie Hall in New York, and on chamber music society series in many cities. The group has made many festival appearances, such as Ravinia outside Chicago, Mostly Mozart in New York, the Moab Chamber Music Festival, and elsewhere, and it has performed Beethoven's Triple Concerto, Op. 56, with the Nashville Symphony, Virginia Symphony, and Utah Symphony, among other groups. The Claremont Trio's programs and recordings have been divided between traditional repertory and new works, many of them commissioned by the group. During the 2017-2018 season, the trio premiered Kati Agócs' Queen of Hearts at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, and performed Eric Sawyer's Triple Concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. The Claremont Trio has issued albums on Bridge and American Modern Recordings in addition to Tria; on the latter label, it issued the album Queen of Hearts, featuring the Agócs work and five other commissions, in 2022.
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