Avie Records » Artists

Swedish Chamber Orchestra (Svenska Kammarorkestern)

Avie Records — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:18:21 +0000

The Swedish Chamber Orchestra, an orchestra of 39 full-time players, is resident at the Örebro Concert Hall. Örebro is a city of 150 000 situated 200km west of Stockholm. Here the orchestra presents a full season including touring and recording: since its inception in 1995 it has released over 100 CDs.

The orchestras tours have taken them all over the world including 4 appearances at both the Lincoln Center in New York and the BBC Proms. Also the festivals of Reingau, Salzburg, Schleswig Holstein, and Bergen, to name a few. It is a regular guest at the principal venues of for example Paris, Berlin, Venna, Copenhagen and Berlin.

Martin Fröst became Chief Conductor in 2019 and under his leadership the orchestra has undertaken a number of defining concert and recording projects.

The Swedish Chamber Orchestra is also an active commissioner of new music and has long-established relationships with composer/conductors such as Brett Dean, HK Gruber, and Sir James MacMillan. Recent commissions include Sally Beamish, Anna Clyne, Olga Neuwirth and Mark Anthony Turnage.

The Macmillan concerto featured on this recording is a commission between the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the Lincoln Center, and the Barbican Centre.

Boston Trio

Avie Records — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 14:04:22 +0000

Violinist Irina Muresanu, cellist Mihai Marica, and pianist Heng-Jin Park each have distinguished careers as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and have appeared with major orchestras and premier music festivals throughout the United States and Europe. The Boston Trio is passionately committed to furthering the exposure and performances of new music. They have premiered several works written for and dedicated to them. The trio has been invited to perform for numerous prestigious music series including the Celebrity Series of Boston, Seiji Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood, Chamber Music Society of Utica, Gualala Arts Chamber Music Series, ‘First Monday’ series at the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC), Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine, Harvard Musical Association, Concerts at the Point, Brigham Young University, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Howland Chamber Music Circle, University of Arkansas, Merkin Hall, and for a nationally televised concert from the Belgrade Music Festival at Kolarac Foundation Hall in Serbia. The Boston Trio has released several acclaimed recordings. Actively involved in the education of the next generation of musicians, the Boston Trio has held mini-residencies at the Dickinson College (Pennsylvania), Gordon College (Massachusetts), St. Olaf College (Minnesota), and Luther College (Iowa). The trio members have coached
chamber music at Tanglewood Institute of Music, Harvard University, and MIT, and served as ensemble-in-residence at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and at NEC. The Trio is committed to bringing chamber music to a broader community through outreach activities at public schools and assisted living centers. The Boston Trio’s individual members serve on
the faculties of the NEC, the University of Maryland, and MIT, and are in demand as master class teachers throughout the United States, Asia and Europe.

Marcus Thompson (viola)

Avie Records — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:54:18 +0000

Marcus Thompson, violist, has appeared as soloist, recitalist, and in chamber music series throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Far East. He has been a soloist with the orchestras of Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, and Saint Louis, the National Symphony, the Boston Pops and the Czech National Symphony in Prague. He performed Keith Jarrett’s Bridge of Light with the Atlanta Symphony, and regional premieres of John Harbison’s Viola Concerto: on the West Coast with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (with the composer conducting), in Chicago with the Chicago Sinfonietta, and in Boston with the NEC Honors Orchestra.

Thompson has received critical acclaim for his performances of the Penderecki Viola Concerto in Boston with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Symphony Orchestra and in London (UK); for the premiere of Elena Ruehr’s Viola Concerto Shadow Light with the New Orchestra of Washington; and for the premiere of Olly Wilson’s Viola Concerto with the Rochester Philharmonic. He has played Hindemith’s Viola d’amore Concerto (Kammermusik No. 6) with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Saratoga and concertos by Vivaldi at the Bravo Festival in Colorado and at Aston Magna in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

He has premiered and performed many recital and chamber works by MIT composers including Peter Child, Keeril Makan, Charles Shadle, and John Harbison, and has recorded Barry Vercoe’s iconic Synapse for Viola and Computer. His recording of the Concerto for Viola, Chamber Orchestra & Percussion commissioned from composer and organist Anthony Newman in 1985 was re-released along with concertos for five other instruments by the composer.

Thompson’s recordings with orchestra also include concertos by Hindemith, Bartók, Serly, and Bloch, along with works by Françaix, Martin, and Jongen. Recent releases include Elena Ruehr’s Shadow Light with the New Orchestra of Washington, and John Harbison’s Viola Concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Thompson has been a guest of the Audubon, Borromeo, Cleveland, DaPonte, Emerson, Fine Arts, Jupiter, Lydian, Miami, Muir, Orion, Parker, Shanghai, and Vermeer string quartets and a frequent participant at chamber music festivals in Anchorage, Seattle, Sitka, Los Angeles, Montreal, Edmonton, Rockport (Massachusetts and Maine), Rio de Janeiro, Spoleto, Amsterdam, Dubrovnik and Okinawa. He has been a frequent guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and performed with them on a Live from Lincoln Center telecast. He appears on recordings of chamber works released by Music from the Sitka Festival, Het Reizend Muziekgezelschap, and the Boston Chamber Music Society.

Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Thompson holds a doctorate in viola performance from Juilliard. He currently lives in Boston, where he is a member of the viola faculty at New England Conservatory. He has served as violist and Artistic Director of the Boston Chamber Music Society since 2009 and is the founder of the MIT Chamber Music Society and the Institute’s Emerson/Harris private study program. In 1995 he was recognized for his extraordinary teaching at MIT and named a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow and Robert R. Taylor Professor of Music, followed a decade later by his appointment as Institute Professor.

In 2022, at its 47th International Viola Congress, Thompson was awarded the American Viola Society Career Achievement Award ‘In recognition of distinguished contributions to viola performance and viola pedagogy through his influential recordings and his celebrated tenure at NEC and MIT, hosting the 1985 International Congress, and for advocacy and leadership on behalf of the viola.’

PUBLIQuartet

Avie Records — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:58:31 +0000

Applauded by The Washington Post as “a perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music,” and by The New Yorker as “independent-minded,” multi-GRAMMY®-nominated PUBLIQuartet is an improvising string quartet whose repertoire blends genres and highlights American multiculturalism. PUBLIQuartet rose on the music scene as winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild New Music/New Places award, and in 2019 garnered Chamber Music America’s prestigious Visionary Award for outstanding and innovative approaches to contemporary classical, jazz, and world chamber music. PQ’s genre-bending programs range from newly commissioned pieces to re-imaginations of classical works featuring open-form improvisations that expand the techniques and aesthetic of the traditional string quartet.

PUBLIQuartet has held artist residencies at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Sawdust, and has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to the Montreal, Newport and Detroit Jazz Festivals. Their 2016 appearance on The Colbert Report, “Requiem for a Debate” – in which they improvised a live soundtrack to the third presidential debate – not only received over a million views, but saw the Washington Post declaring them “the winner…indubitably.”

The quartet’s latest album, the GRAMMY®-nominated What Is American, released in June 2022 on the Bright Shiny Things label, explores resonances between contemporary, blues, jazz, freely-improvised, and rock-inflected languages, all of which trace their roots back to the Black and Indigenous musical traditions that inspired Dvorak’s “American” String Quartet (Op. 96). The album also includes CARDS 11-11-2020, written by Roscoe Mitchell for PUBLIQuartet, as well as works by Ornette Coleman, Rhiannon Giddens, and Vijay Iyer.

Committed to creating an inclusive performance space, supporting living composers of varying genres, and expanding the classical canon, PUBLIQuartet was the inaugural ensemble-in-residence for Carnegie Hall’s PlayUSA program in 2021-2022, working with high school music classes across the country on a large-scale creative project called Reflections on Resilience. Their innovative PUBLIQ Access program has promoted emerging composers by presenting a wide variety of under-represented music for string quartet–from classical, jazz and electronic, to non-notated, world and improvised music. Other unique projects include MIND | THE | GAP, a series of creative projects developed by PQ that weave together different styles of music via group composition, arranging, and improvisation. These unique works range from “Bird in Paris” (Claude Debussy meets Charlie Parker) to more recent extended works including Reflections on Beauty, a multimedia celebration of the life and legacy of Madam C.J. Walker featuring visual projections and narration by Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles.

Founded in 2010, PUBLIQuartet is based in New York City.

Timothy Lovelace (piano)

Avie Records — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:12:02 +0000

Pianist Timothy Lovelace heads the Collaborative Piano program at the University of Minnesota and is an active recitalist, having been featured at Rio de Janeiro’s Sala Cecilia Meireles, Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, Washington’s Kennedy Center, New York’s Merkin Concert Hall, Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts and on chamber music series sponsored by the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Minnesota and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist, he has performed with the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä. The roster of internationally-known artists with whom Lovelace has appeared includes Miriam Fried, Nobuko Imai, Robert Mann, Charles Neidich, Paquito D’Rivera, and Dawn Upshaw. For thirteen years, he was a staff pianist at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute, where he played in the classes of Barbara Bonney, Christoph Eschenbach, Thomas Hampson, Christa Ludwig and Yo-Yo Ma, among others. A proponent of new music, Lovelace has performed the works of many living composers, and he has presented premieres of works by John Harbison, Osvaldo Golijov, and Libby Larsen. He has recorded for the Albany, Arabesque, Blue Griffin, Boston Records, MSR and Naxos labels. His principal teachers were Harold Evans, Gilbert Kalish, Donna Loewy, and Frank Weinstock.