Join us on Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 3:00 pm for a return engagement by the award-winning Merz Trio.

The Merz Trio appears by special arrangement with Concert Artists Guild (CAG). Through mentorship and performance opportunities, CAG helps exceptional young artists establish their careers and make a positive impact on the world through music.

• Program
• About the Merz Trio
• About the Artists
  • Brigid Coleridge
  • Julia Yang
  • Amy Yang
• About the Concert
  • Reservations

Program

About the Merz Trio

Hailed as “entrancing” (BBC Music Magazine) and “artists in the deepest sense of the word” (CutCommon), Merz Trio, winners of the Naumburg, Concert Artists Guild, Fischoff and Chesapeake Competitions, and recipients of a Salon di Virtuosi Career Grant, have been lauded for their “stunning virtuosity … fresh and surprising interpretations” (Reading Eagle), and “perfection of intonation and ensemble” (Hudson Review).

Merz Trio are passionately committed to reshaping the narrative of classical music through vibrantly dynamic programming and wide-ranging interdisciplinary collaboration. Their narrative programming style juxtaposes classical standards, new music, and their own arrangements of familiar and forgotten works, fluidly interwoven and guided with speaking from the Trio’s members. Their interdisciplinary collaborations include ongoing projects with directors Emma Jaster and Jon Levin, dancer Caroline Copeland, and Sandglass Puppet Theater.

The Trio are equally known for their more immersive integrations of music and text in performance, ranging from their recital-theater piece built around Shakespeare’s Macbeth (“Those Secret Eyes”), to their debut album interweaving Ravel’s Trio with short pieces, poems, and diaries of the era (“Ink,” August, 2021), to be presented in a live concert format (“Ink Spills”) for the 2021-2022 season. Finally, in their prolific arranging, the Trio are committed to uplifting overlooked voices from history, ranging from Hildegard von Bingen to Lili and Nadia Boulanger, from Joséphine Baker to Irish folk melodies.

This coming season, Merz Trio look forward to debuts at Tippet Rise, Duke Performances, CM Dallas, Coleman Chamber Music Association, the New Orleans Friends of Music and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Recent debuts have taken them to Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Chamber Music Houston, Philadelphia CMS, and the Schubert Club (St. Paul, MN), among other notable performances.

Merz Trio have been encouraged in their explorations by numerous institutional homes around the world: New England Conservatory, Yellow Barn, Snape Maltings, Avaloch Farm Institute, the Naumburg Foundation, the Lake Champlain, Olympic, and Chesapeake Music Festivals, and the Fischoff Competition, as well as many other venues and hosts around the US, Australia, the Netherlands and the UK.

Merz Trio operate as a nonprofit organization under Project Merz, Inc. and are currently represented by Concert Artists Guild.

About the Artists

Brigid Coleridge

Brigid Coleridge is an Australian violinist and poet currently based in the US. She is a founding member of the award-winning Boston-based piano trio, the Merz Trio, with whom she has most recently been in professional residence at the New England Conservatory of Music. With the Trio, Brigid is a regular invitee to the Olympic, Lake Champlain and Chesapeake Festivals and has undertaken residencies at Yellow Barn, Snape Maltings and Avaloch Farm Institute. The trio received the 2021 Naumburg Competition First Prize, and their first album “Ink” debuted in 2021 at #2 in the Classical charts. Notable concert debuts for the 2022/2023 season included the Concertgebouw and Carnegie Hall.

As a recitalist, Brigid has performed in Australia and internationally in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Jordan Hall, the Kennedy Center and the Purcell Room. Highlights include a tour of Holland and an artist residency undertaken for Yellow Barn Festival in the US. Brigid’s recital projects often focus on her interest in music, literature and theatre, displaying a multidisciplinary engagement with the works she presents. She is particularly interested in exploring the theatrical possibilities of performance.

Brigid holds a doctoral degree in music from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she worked on Beethoven’s late Mass, the Missa Solemnis. In addition, Brigid holds an Artist Diploma and a Masters Degree in Performance from the Royal College of Music, London. She graduated BA/BMus from the University of Melbourne following studies in English Literature, French Language and Violin Performance. Important music mentors include Donald Weilerstein, Daniel Phillips, Maciej Rakowski and Mark Mogilevski.

Brigid is also a published poet whose work has appeared in Australian and international publications. She is the winner of the 2023 Gwen Harwood Prize for Poetry.

Julia Yang

Praised for “her sense of joyful virtuosity” (South Florida Classical Review) as a concerto soloist, Julia Yang is a dynamic and versatile cellist, founding member of the Merz Trio and former member of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and the New World Symphony.

As a soloist, Ms. Yang was featured in spring 2019 on Performance Today as a Young Artist in Residence and has garnered top prizes at numerous competitions such as the Lennox International Competition and the Union League of Chicago’s Young Artist Competition. She has performed as a concerto soloist with orchestras including the New World Symphony Orchestra, Central Florida Symphony Orchestra, and Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra.

An avid chamber musician, Julia has been noted for her “ecstatic solos” (Reading Eagle), “deep tone,” and “precision,” (South Florida Classical Review) and has performed throughout the United States and internationally in Europe, Australia and Canada. Festival appearances include Marlboro, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Yellow Barn, Perlman Chamber Music Program, Britten-Pears’ Young Artist residencies, and Poland’s Krzyzowa-Music. Her solo and chamber performances have been broadcast throughout the United States as well as in Germany, and she can be heard on CD with the Aldeburgh Strings (Linn Records).

As an orchestral leader, Ms. Yang has toured as principal cellist of the New World Symphony, and has performed as principal under conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Susanna Malkki, James Gaffigan, John Adams, and Leonard Slatkin and many others in halls ranging from New York’s Carnegie Hall and Boston’s Symphony Hall to D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Miami’s New World Center and Arsht Center.

Amy Yang

Praised by the Washington Post as a “jaw-dropping pianist who steals the show…with effortless finesse,” pianist Amy Yang joined forces with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä playing Schumann’s Piano Concerto at Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center in 2023. Additionally, she gave the world premiere of Richard Danielpour’s “Four Portraits” for solo piano at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she is a faculty member and the Associate Dean of Piano Studies and Artistic Initiatives.

Her commitment to artistry and leadership is expressed on and off stage, as she appears as soloist, chamber musician, and pedagogue passionate about empowering young artists who will uphold our art form. She has appeared as a soloist with the Houston Symphony, and presented recitals for Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Texas Music Festival, Kosciuszko Foundation and Coastal Concerts. She has premiered and recorded music by Caroline Shaw, Avner Dorman, Michael Hersch, Ezra Laderman, and commissioned works from Alistair Coleman, Edward Babcock, and Hua Yang. Among the countless joyful moments of sharing the stage are treasured recitals with Roberto Díaz, Yefim Bronfman, Miriam Fried, Richard Goode, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Bomsori Kim, Patricia Kopatchinskaya, Tessa Lark, Anne-Marie McDermott, Tito Muñoz, Paul Neubauer, Tara Helen O’Conor, David Shifrin, Joseph Silverstein, Arnold Steinhardt, Philippe Tondre, Michael Tree, Peter Wiley, Danbi Um; the St. Paul and Mahler chamber orchestras; Third Coast Percussion; A Far Cry; and the Dover, Jasper, and Aizuri string quartets.

She has performed in venues such as Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Recital Hall; at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Aldeburgh, Bravo! Vail, Chelsea, Olympic, and Ojai music festivals; Verbier Academy; Cal Performances; Caramoor; IMS Prussia Cove; Music from Angel Fire; and Chamber Music Northwest, among others. An episode on her by Emmy® Award-winning producer Jim Cotter’s Articulate show aired on PBS in 2021.

Ms. Yang is an alumna of the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, and the Yale School of Music, where she received the Parisot Award for Outstanding Pianist and the Alumni Association Prize. Her past teachers include Li Qing, Timothy Hester, Claude Frank, Robert McDonald, and Peter Frankl. Ardent to champion young voices on this pedagogical legacy, her own students have soloed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and entered Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Bard Conservatory, Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music, Eastman School of Music, Peabody Institute, and Indiana University. She has given masterclasses at UCLA, Mannes College of Music, University of Oklahoma, The Suzuki School, and for New York Youth Symphony. She won the 2018 Musical Fund Society prize and the Kosciuszko National Chopin Piano Competition.

When not serving the various keyboards related to her roles, her intentionally incognito presence may be revealed by a quivering Micron pen as she sketches from the back of concert halls. The work of a lifetime is where she hopes to question, explore, and linger every day.

About the Concert

This performance begins at 3:00 pm. Join us an hour earlier for a pre-concert discussion about the music on the program. After the performance, you’ll have an opportunity to meet the artists and learn about their backgrounds, interests, and career plans.

The address of the venue is 103 North Road, Wakefield, Rhode Island 02879. Driving time from Providence, Newport, Westerly, and southeastern Connecticut is under an hour, and Amtrak’s Kingston Station is only five miles away.

Map and Directions

We ask each adult guest attending the concert to make a $40 contribution at the door. We accept cash, personal checks, and credit cards. Checks should be payable to “Core Memory Music”. Children under 18 are welcome to join us free of charge.

Reservations

If you’d like to attend this concert, send us an email with the full name of each person in your party. If seating is still available, we’ll confirm your reservation.

If you can’t attend the concert in person, you’re welcome to listen to our audio livestream (no reservation required).

Seating capacity for this concert: 25