Trio Phōs

Now in its third season, Marlboro Music’s artist residency program brings exceptional chamber music ensembles to Marlboro’s southern Vermont campus throughout the year for deep creative work and concert offerings. Each group is in residence for 1 to 3 weeks, enjoying concentrated time together in a retreat-like environment where they can rehearse new repertoire, prepare for recording projects, develop community engagement programs, and more. Every ensemble in residence includes at least one Marlboro Music artist, and each residency culminates with a free informal concert, in which the groups share the results of their work with our local community.

Celebrating community, empathy and intergenerational understanding through music, Trio Phōs’s “The Sound of Connection” project is a powerful meditation on the experience of aging and intergenerational relationships. It is a collaboration between Trio Phōs—comprising Marlboro cellist Julia Yang, clarinetist Yasmina Spiegelberg, and pianist Zhenni Li-Cohen—and choreographer Zoey November. Their informal performance integrates music, dance, and stories collected from community members. The event also includes a post-concert talkback, sharing the work developed throughout the week.

About Trio Phōs

Trio Phōs is a fresh collaboration between clarinetist Yasmina Spiegelberg, cellist Julia Yang, and pianist Zhenni Li-Cohen. They are sought-after performers, members of acclaimed and internationally prize-winning ensembles, including the Merz Trio, alumni of Ensemble Connect and New World Symphony, and have performed across the globe at festivals such as Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, Tippet Rise, and Yellow Barn. Their name Phōs, from the Greek word φῶς for “light” and “firelight”, implies the ensemble’s stir to light up their own corner of the chamber music world through virtuosic programming, exciting commissions, and highly innovative collaborations and projects. Together, Li-Cohen, Spiegelberg, and Yang are drawn towards the piano-clarinet-cello instrumentation through a shared love of the ensemble’s textural breadth, its repertoire, and a desire to create unique concert experiences that forge connections between the old and the new.