The Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio

Combining the talents of three award-winning soloists, the Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio brings to each performance its distinctive fusion of authority and experience, energy, and passion. These three musicians comprise an ensemble that embraces the music of the future while offering fresh insights into three centuries of masterworks.

Hailed by The New York Times as “Three strong voices, locked in sequence,” the Trio was originally founded in 2001, and was joined in 2014 by the distinguished cellist Peter Stumpf.  The Trio has presented concerts throughout the US, Europe and the Middle East, with multiple appearances at The Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Baltimore’s Shriver Hall, Princeton, UCLA, Indiana and Oxford Universities, Tel-Aviv Museum, and for the Chamber Music Societies of Edinburgh, Santander, Pasadena, Phoenix, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Tucson, among others.

The Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio is frequently engaged to appear as soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with orchestras such as the Prague Chamber Orchestra, Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra, Bloomington Camerata, New Bedford Symphony and Sioux City Symphony. A performance of the Triple Concerto at the Prague Festival was praised for its “rare timbral refinement, nobility and virtuosic brilliance...among the brightest moments of this year's Festival” (Lidove noviny, Prague).  Other international festival performances have included appearances at the Jeju Island Music Festival in Korea and the Festival of the Sound in Canada.

The group is committed to new music, and has commissioned many works, including Lera Auerbach’s “Triptych: The Mirror With Three Faces”, Clancy Newman’s “Juxt-Opposition”, and “Variations on a Poem” by Michael Hersch. In the spring of 2015, the Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio performed the world premiere of Michael Gilbertson’s new concerto for trio and orchestra, “Outliers”, commissioned for the group by the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra.  

The Trio is also known for its stimulating and varied programming of the entire trio repertoire, and for performances of Beethoven’s complete cycle of works for Piano Trio, which are an ongoing part of its programming.  This year’s concertizing includes multiple presentations of this complete cycle.

The Weiss Kaplan Stumpf Trio records for Bridge Records.  This season they are recording the first volume of Beethoven’s Complete Piano Trios.  Previously, a 2015 CD project features works by Fred Lerdahl, and a 2014 release entitled “An American Tour” includes world premiere recordings of four new American trios by Lera Auerbach, Chen Yi, Clancy Newman and Paul Schoenfeld.  The Trio’s 2011 release of Brahms and Smetana trios has received wide critical acclaim – Fanfare Magazine hailed it as “absolutely one fabulous chamber music recording you cannot afford to be without. . . This may just be the best of the best Brahms B Major Trio recordings.”  Previously Bridge also presented the Trio’s recording of Paul Chihara’s trio, “Ain’t No Sunshine”, a work the group commissioned and premiered in 2006 at the Kennedy Center. 

The Trio is well known to American radio audiences through nationwide broadcasts on shows such as NPR’s Performance Today and WNYC’s SoundCheck.  An appearance on St. Paul Sunday has been broadcast nationally several times, and was selected for St. Paul Sunday's “Best of the Year” CD.