Steans Piano Trio

Description

Ravinia Steans Music Institute is one of the world’s highest regarded summer artistic training destinations for young professional classical and jazz musicians—and it’s also an incubator for long-lasting collaboration. Three alumni of RSMI’s Piano & Strings Program—violinist Eunice Kim, cellist Oliver Aldort, and pianist Xiaohui Yang—became the Steans Piano Trio in 2019, named in honor of their 2015 meeting place. Following their inaugural performance at Ravinia, they returned to Chicago in 2021 for WFMT radio’s 70th Anniversary Day of Celebration. All three enjoy thriving individual careers as well: Aldort has been assistant principal cellist of the Boston Symphony since 2015, and Kim a member of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra since 2016. Yang, the co-winner of the 2017 Naumburg Competition, is a touring soloist who has appeared with the Louisiana Philharmonic and Milwaukee and New Jersey Symphonies and is a collaborative pianist for RSMI Piano & Strings. Now back on the Bennett Gordon Hall stage, the Steans Trio will showcase their range with music by Haydn, Ravel, and Shostakovich. Haydn’s C-major trio contains some of his most virtuosic piano music and a finale filled with witty banter, while Shostakovich’s Second Trio is steeped in eerie, emotive elegy. Across his sole contribution to the trio combination, Ravel traverses time and tone with orchestral-level orations of his voluminous instrumental verse.