by Mike Telin
Founded at the Oberlin Conservatory in 2004, Prima Trio (Boris Allakhverdyan, clarinet, Gulia Gurevich, violin and viola, and Anastasia Dedik, piano), were awarded the Grand Prize at the 2007 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. On Saturday, January 10 at 8:00 pm in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall, Prima Trio will present a concert featuring music by Schumann, Piazzolla, Khachaturian, Milhaud and Srul Irving Glick as part of Oberlin’s Winter Term Chamber Music Festival.
Although its members have gone on to establish impressive individual careers, the Trio continues to tour internationally. In recent seasons they have appeared on the “Junge Elite” Series at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany), at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, on the Oakton Chamber Music Series, and on the Dumbarton Oaks series in Washington D.C. They also made their Los Angeles début with three concerts on the Da Camera Society series.
Packed tight on a Wednesday night, the Oberlin Conservatory Lounge played host to the Punch Brothers for their latest jam session on December 3. Joining the band were a legion of thirty-some college and conservatory musicians playing violin, trombone, oboe, double bass, accordion, djembe, and tuba, to name a few. A big crowd of fans snapping photos, shooting video, nodding, singing, and wiggling along helped keep the night going until near closing time. 
The baroque ensemble named after the innovative eighteenth-century composer Jean-Féry Rebel took a rapt, mid-sized audience through a breezy, one-hour survey of “Musical Treasures of the 17th and 18th Centuries” early Sunday afternoon in Kulas Recital Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. 
When Oberlin faculty violinist Marilyn McDonald and pianist David Breitman play Beethoven sonatas in the Conservatory’s Kulas Recital Hall on Saturday, September 13 at 4:30 pm, they’ll be joined by the latest addition to Oberlin’s impressive collection of historic keyboard instruments. An Anton Zierer fortepiano built in Vienna in 1829 came to live in Oberlin last summer and has kept Robert Murphy, the conservatory’s curator of fortepianos, busy getting it settled into a new environment.
Recitals and chamber music concerts by faculty members at Northeast Ohio conservatories, colleges and universities add to the rich menu of classical music in the region. Usually free, these events begin coming onto the calendar in September. Here’s a quick look at the first performances of the fall.
The ten young pianists who advanced to the Concerto Round in the Oberlin Cooper Piano Competition on Tuesday ranged in age from 13-18 and hailed from five countries. The contestants played complete concertos in Warner Concert Hall at the Oberlin Conservatory with a second pianist providing the orchestral accompaniment. The performances gave a taste of what the audience can expect on Friday evening at Severance Hall when three finalists perform with Jahja Ling and The Cleveland Orchestra.
“Don’t B-sharp, Don’t B-flat, Just B-natural.” — Milt Hinton (1910-2000)