Biography
Bearthoven, a piano trio rooted in New York’s lively contemporary music community, has concentrated on breathing fresh life into the piano trio format by ordering original compositions. Across a broad stylistic range the group has performed new works, among them the jazz-tinged selections on the 2017 album Trios and the post-minimalist textures of Sarah Hennies’ Spectral Malsconcities, which they recorded in 2020. One of roughly several dozen ensembles underwritten by the New Music Impact USA Fund, Bearthoven was established in 2013.
Its personnel—pianist Karl Larson, bassist Pat Swoboda of Contemporaneous and Gutbucket, and percussionist Matt Evans of Contemporaneous and Tigue—bring markedly different musical histories to the project. Although the piano-bass-percussion configuration is standard in jazz and appears in some pop contexts, it has remained rare in contemporary classical music until Bearthoven adopted it; in their first seven seasons the members commissioned more than thirty new pieces. The ensemble treats the unfamiliar instrumentation as an asset that simultaneously offers listeners a point of reference and presents interpretive challenges. Their mission statement declares that the group “invites composers to explore their cultural relationship with the instrumentation, creating a dialogue between their compositional voice and their own associations with the piano, bass, and percussion sound palette. This approach is a provocative prompt for composers and provides the audience with a secure sonic foothold, even in the most abstract compositions.”
Post-minimalist composers commissioned and performed by the trio include Shelley Washington, Brooks Frederickson, and Ken Thomson, while more abstract voices encompass Anthony Vine, Scott Wollschleger, and Sarah Hennies. Bearthoven has appeared at the Bang on a Can Marathon, the MATA Festival, the Music/Sound Series at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York, the Princeton Sound Kitchen, and the Ciclo de Conciertos de Música Contemporanéa in Buenos Aires. The Cantaloupe Music label issued their album Trios in 2017; two years later American Dream, devoted to Wollschleger’s music, followed. In 2020 New World Records released the ensemble’s account of Hennies’ Spectral Malsconcities, coupling it with Bent Duo’s performance of another Hennies work, Unsettle.
Its personnel—pianist Karl Larson, bassist Pat Swoboda of Contemporaneous and Gutbucket, and percussionist Matt Evans of Contemporaneous and Tigue—bring markedly different musical histories to the project. Although the piano-bass-percussion configuration is standard in jazz and appears in some pop contexts, it has remained rare in contemporary classical music until Bearthoven adopted it; in their first seven seasons the members commissioned more than thirty new pieces. The ensemble treats the unfamiliar instrumentation as an asset that simultaneously offers listeners a point of reference and presents interpretive challenges. Their mission statement declares that the group “invites composers to explore their cultural relationship with the instrumentation, creating a dialogue between their compositional voice and their own associations with the piano, bass, and percussion sound palette. This approach is a provocative prompt for composers and provides the audience with a secure sonic foothold, even in the most abstract compositions.”
Post-minimalist composers commissioned and performed by the trio include Shelley Washington, Brooks Frederickson, and Ken Thomson, while more abstract voices encompass Anthony Vine, Scott Wollschleger, and Sarah Hennies. Bearthoven has appeared at the Bang on a Can Marathon, the MATA Festival, the Music/Sound Series at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York, the Princeton Sound Kitchen, and the Ciclo de Conciertos de Música Contemporanéa in Buenos Aires. The Cantaloupe Music label issued their album Trios in 2017; two years later American Dream, devoted to Wollschleger’s music, followed. In 2020 New World Records released the ensemble’s account of Hennies’ Spectral Malsconcities, coupling it with Bent Duo’s performance of another Hennies work, Unsettle.
Albums
