Chamber Music and
American Composers

Chamber Music

Chamber music has always been an important aspect of Wehr’s career. The Sartory Trio, with violinist Charles Stegeman and cellist Jennifer Langham, was the resident chamber ensemble at Duquesne University from 1991-94 and toured cross-country for Community Concerts. Important engagements included London’ s Wigmore Hall, Tannery Pond Festival in New Lebanon, New York, St. Bart’ s Festival in the French West Indies, Princeton University, South Shore Music Festival in Southport, Connecticut and the International Concert Series in Red Bank, New Jersey.

Wehr has collaborated with the Moscow, Chilingirian and Quapaw String Quartets, as well as the following:

• Bassoonists – Richard Beene, Leonard Hindell, Frank Morelli, Philip Pandolfi, and Mark Romatz;

• Cellists – Zuill Bailey, David Bakamjian, Colin Carr, Kim Cook, Samuel Cristler, Kate Dillingham, Steven Elisha, David Goldblatt, Sadao Harada, Claudio Jaffe, James Kirkwood, Rafael Leon, Adam Liu, Anne Martindale Williams, Emile Miland, Clancy Newman, David Premo, Misha Quint, Steven Shumway, Mariusz Skula, Mark Tanner, Steven Thomas, John Walz and Dennis Parker;

• Clarinetists – Igor Begelman, Curt Blood, Todd Palmer, Ron Samuels, and Jonathan Gunn;

• Double bass – Micah Howard, Nicolas Tsalainos, Jeffrey Turner, and Judy Yaldatel;

• Flutists – Julius Baker, Jennifer Conner, Kelly Kazik, Rebecca Keen, Rhiann Kenny, Barry McVinney, Barbara O’Brien, and Wendy Rolfe;

• Hornists – William Caballero, Zachary Smith, James Thatcher, David Wakefield, Jessica Wiskus, Brian Kennedy, and Greg Miller;

• Oboists – Scott Bell, Robin Driscoll, Doris Goltzer, James Gorton, Alex Klein, and Peter Stempe;

• Organist – Andrew Shenton

• Pianists – Cynthia Raim, Natasha Snitkovsky, and Helene Wickett;

• Saxophone – James Houlik and Caroline Taylor

• Violinists – Martin Agee, Elizabeth Baker, Nancy Bean, Viviane Bertolami, Andres Cardenes, Larissa Elisha, Laura Frautschi, Jennifer Garner, Kevin He, Galina Heifetz, Julian Hallmark, Jaroslaw Lis, Janna Lower, Edith Markman, Michael Markman, Dennis O’Boyle, Giora Schmidt, Stephen Shepard, Susan Shumway, Rachel Stegeman, Kyoko Takezawa, Eric Tanner, Linda Wang, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Gary Levinson and Laura Motchalov;

• Violists – Frank Brieff, Paul Coletti, Marylene Gingras-Roy, Randolph Kelly, Linda Kirkwood, Vincent Lionti, Donald McInnes, Seth Mausner, Victoria Miskolczy, Roger Myers, Matthew Rombaum, Nanci Severance, Sally Shumway, Clara Takarabe, and Richard Young;

Wehr won the Chamber Music Prize at the 1986 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City.

US Composers

Music of composers from the United States has figured importantly in Wehr’s career. His first recording, released worldwide by Chandos in 1988, was “20th-Century American Piano Music” with music by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Vincent Persichetti, John Pozdro, and Zvonomir Nagy.

Commissions and premieres by Joe Utterback, Victoria Burkhard, Francis McBeth, Sarah Dawson, David Cutler, Curt Cacioppo, David Stock and Jay Riese have complemented performances of music by Samuel Adler, Paul Creston, Lukas Foss, George Gershwin, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Alan Hovhannes, Charles Ives, Scott Joplin, David Korevaar, Lowell Liebermann, Edward MacDowell, George Perle and Richard Toensing.