Contact Jason Duckles

• The Amelia Piano Trio
• Cello    

A member of the acclaimed Amelia Piano Trio, Jason has received numerous awards for his chamber collaborations, including Grand Prize in the Concert Artists Guild Competition and Top Prize in the Munich ARD International Competition. Jason has also been a member of the Avalon String Quartet and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and has appeared frequently as the cellist for the Mark Morris Dance Group, which tours throughout the United States and Europe. Jason can be heard on the Sony Recording "Enchantment" with Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project.

Jason received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University, and his Master's and Doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook as a student of Timothy Eddy. He teaches at both Wesleyan University and Connecticut College, and has given master classes at Dartmouth College, the Longy School of Music, and Stanford University.

Dedicated to music of our time, Jason has commissioned works from many composers, including Pulitzer Prize-winner John Harbison. Jason is a recipient of Chamber Music America's ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming and can be heard on the labels Sony, Channel Classics, Koch, Traditional Crossroads, and Cedille Records.

Formed in 1999, the Amelia Piano Trio has already established a glowing international reputation. Called "remarkable" by Strings and "exemplary" by The Strad, the group has quickly become one of their generation's most sought-after ensembles. In its short history the Amelia has been Grand Prize-winner at the Yellow Springs National Competition and recipient of the prestigious ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.

In 2003 the Trio was asked by National Public Radio to be the Young Ensemble in Residence. This exciting week of live concerts and interviews put the Amelia firmly in the foreground of classical music in America, reaching an estimated 1.5 million listeners. Performing fifteen works that spanned the centuries, the Amelia forged a lasting relationship with NPR. In October 2006 the Trio will be featured on Chicago's WFMT in live broadcast performances of the complete Beethoven Trios.

The Amelia members have quickly made their mark as performers and commissioners of new music. Notably, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison has written his first piano trio for the Amelia. Other commissions for the Amelia include Augusta Read Thomas' A Circle Around the Sun and Adam Silverman's Sturm. The Trio's next commissioning project is a new Triple Concerto being composed by Daren Hagen. The Amelia plans to premiere and perform this new piece with youth orchestras around the country.

The Trio has performed extensively in North America and abroad, including France, Italy, Panama, and the Caribbean. They have released CDs on the Cedille Records label, as well as on the world music label Traditional Crossroads. In addition, members of the Trio have toured North America and Central Asia with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project.

The Amelia Piano Trio is actively involved in arts education and dedicates a substantial amount of time to educational projects, master classes, and coaching children and adults. The Trio members are professors at the Hartt School of Music and Connecticut College. In addition to developing award-winning outreach programs, the Trio is in residence at the Green Lake Chamber Music Camp, where they teach gifted high school and college-aged students the art of chamber music.

View the music department site.