Albers Trio, accompanied by pianist Pei-Yao Wang, to perform March 7

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. ? The acclaimed and youthful Albers Trio will perform at the Middlebury College Kevin P. Mahaney ‘84 Center for the Arts Concert Hall on Friday, March 7, at 8 p.m. Pianist Pei-Yao Wang will accompany the trio and their program will include selections from Brahms, Beethoven and Martinu. Violist Rebecca Albers performed at Middlebury last season in a program of chamber music with Wang. Laura Albers, on violin, and Julie Albers, on cello, complete the trio.

From their twos to their 20s the Albers sisters have been captivating audiences with musical styles as diverse as their distinctive personalities and features. From their early performances on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colo., the sisters have gone on to perform at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the National Theatre in Taipei, Severance Hall in Cleveland, and the Weill and Zankel Halls at Carnegie Hall.

Violinist Laura is the associate concertmaster of the San Francisco Opera. She and her sisters began studying Suzuki violin with their mother, Ellie LeRoux, at the age of two. Laura went on to receive degrees from The Cleveland Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, where she studied with Donald Weilerstein and Ronald Copes. While attending Juilliard, she toured with the Astor String Quartet and the Wild Ginger Philharmonic, and also taught Suzuki violin at the Diller-Quaile School of Music. In addition to the opera, she performs in the San Francisco area with the Broderick Ensemble and the Empyrean Ensemble, in New York City with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and in Florida with the Sarasota Opera.

Violist Rebecca resides in Ann Arbor, Mich., as a member of the Phoenix Quartet. Rebecca received degrees from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Heidi Castleman and Hsin-Yun Huang. She currently teaches in the Juilliard pre-college program with Castleman and is a touring member Mark O’Connor’s Appalachia Waltz Trio. As the winner of Juilliard’s 2003 viola competition, she made her solo debut performing the New York premiere of Samuel Adler’s Viola Concerto with the Juilliard orchestra in Alice Tully Hall. Rebecca has been a participant at the Marlboro Music Festival, Open Chamber Music at Prussia Cove, Music Academy of the West, the Taos School of Music and the Perlman Music Program. As a chamber musician she has performed across the United States, France and Switzerland, and has appeared with such artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Richard Goode and members of the Juilliard, St. Lawrence and Guarneri String Quartets.

Cellist Julie studied with Richard Aaron at The Cleveland Institute of Music. She made her major orchestral debut at age 17 with the Cleveland Orchestra, and has performed in recital and with orchestras in the U.S., Europe, Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia. She has received various awards including the Grand Prize in South Korea’s Gyeongnam International Music Competition and Second Prize in Munich’s Internationaler Musikwettbewerbes der ARD. She has performed with the orchestras of Indianapolis, Seattle, Colorado, Syracuse, San Antonio, Dayton and San Diego. In addition to solo performances she regularly appears at chamber music festivals around the world and is currently in the middle of a three-year residency with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two. October of 2005 marked the release of her solo debut recording on the Artek Label.

Born in Taipei, pianist Wang was the youngest pianist ever to receive the overall First Prize in the Taiwan National Piano Competition, at the age of eight. Four years later, she was invited to study at The Curtis Institute of Music, where she worked with Seymour Lipkin and Institute Director Gary Graffman. She then studied with Claude Frank at Yale University, where she received a Master of Music degree. She currently resides in New York City, where for several years she was under the tutelage of celebrated pianist Richard Goode.

Wang has established herself as a prominent soloist and chamber musician and has since performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia at venues including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York City; the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; Salle des Varietes in Monte-Carlo; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the National Concert Hall in Taipei.

The performance is sponsored by the Middlebury College Performing Arts Series and is part of the 15th anniversary celebration and dedication of the Mahaney Center for the Arts. The Mahaney Center for the Arts Concert Hall is located on South Main Street (Route 30). Reserved seating tickets are $15 for general admission and $12 for seniors. A pre-performance dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. at Rehearsals Cafe in the Center for the Arts. Reservations are required. For tickets or dinner reservations, contact the Middlebury College Box Office at 802-443-6433 or www.middlebury.edu/arts.