2008 Fischoff Grand Prize Winner

The N-E-W Trio
Andrew Wan violin, Gal Nyska cello, Julio Elizalde piano
“...a performance by Juilliard’s N-E-W Trio, communicated a warm subjectivity, intensity, and consciousness of [the music‘s] shifting colorscape . . . Ravishing.” - The Washington Post

Over the past year, the N-E-W Trio has emerged as one of the nation’s most promising young ensembles after winning the Gold Medal and Grand Prize at the 35th Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition at the University of Notre Dame, the 61st Coleman National Chamber Music in Pasadena, California and first prize at the 2nd Plowman National Chamber Music Competition in Columbia, Missouri. The trio has given performances in New York, Maine, New Jersey, California, and Missouri.
The N-E-W trio has been presented by the Juilliard School Chamber Music series at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, the Krieisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and Bösendorfer New York. In April 2007, the N-E-W Trio was honored to perform at the memorial for famed political historian Arthur Schlesinger at the Cooper Union’s Great Hall in New York City, where speakers such as Lauren Bacall, Henry Kissinger, Senator Edward Kennedy, and former President William Jefferson Clinton participated.

2007-08 Season highlights include two performances at the Grace Rainy Rogers Auditorium at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as part of author David Dubal’s lecture series on Beethoven and Schubert. The N-E-W Trio was chosen to represent the Juilliard School at the 2008 Conservatory Project held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C. in February. The trio will return to perform at the Kennedy Center in April for the inaugural concert of the Pro Musica Hebraica organization alongside the Fischoff and Naumburg award-winning Biava String Quartet and violinist Itzhak Perlman.

The N-E-W Trio derives its name from the initials from each member’s last name. The trio’s members are currently pursuing graduate and doctoral degrees at the Juilliard School. As soloists, each member has won the Juilliard School concerto competition. The members of the N-E-W Trio have collaborated in performance with distinguished instrumentalists such as Cho-Liang Lin, Jane Coop, Andrew Dawes, Bonnie Hampton, Kathleen Winkler, and the Juilliard String Quartet. Committed to the music of the twenty-first century, the trio commissioned Juilliard School composer Michael Brown for his second piano trio, which received its premiere performance in March 2007. In addition to regular performances, The N-E-W Trio has participated in the Gluck Community Service Fellowship at the Juilliard School, performing twelve concerts a season in hospitals, retirement homes, shelters and inner city schools throughout the year.