THE
ENID
TRIO
The Enids
The Enid Trio is an adventurous new chamber ensemble with a unique instrumentation and a bold approach to music from the 16th through the 21st centuries. Formed originally at the University of Iowa, their members come from across the United States: bassoonist Stephanie Patterson (California), violinist Megan Karls (Wisconsin) and violist Megan Gray (Virginia). They play an active role in the changing music scene, performing re-imagined versions of standard works, commissioning new pieces, and working with musicians across all genres. In addition to their performing engagements, they present educational programs that emphasize communication, movement, and creative music exploration.
The members of the Enid Trio have commissioned over 25 new works, including Recordarás, written for them by Lewis Nielson. As solo artists, they have performed nationally from Virginia to Wisconsin, Kansas to California and Alaska. Their members have attended the Lucerne Festival Academy, the Bang on a Can Festival, the Hot Springs Music Festival, and the National Orchestra Institute, among others. They currently perform professionally with orchestras across Iowa, Wisconsin, and Montana.
Stephanie Patterson
Megan Gray
Megan Karls
As a founding member of the Enid Trio, Megan has the opportunity to fulfill to her great loves in life, perform and commission new music and collaborate with her two dearestfriends. Megan is an active chamber collaborator and especially enjoys exploring repertoire written for odd instrument groups. In addition to her repertoire with Enid some of her recent performances include Vincent Persichetti’s Serenade No. 6 for Trombone, Viola, and Cello, and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Quasi Hoqestus for Bassoon, Viola, and Piano. Megan completed a project this past year that involved performances of an
extensive portion of the repertoire for Viola, Clarinet, and Piano. The project culminated in the premiere of a new commission for the ensemble.
An active private teacher and clinician she created and directed the Young Maestro’s workshop, a program designed to introduce children ages 4-7 to the world of classical music. She also served as the conducting intern for the Richmond Youth Symphony under Erin Freedman, Associate Conductor of the Richmond Symphony. She has an active career as a teacher in the Iowa City area and loves to work in experimental pedagogy with her students. Her methods involve combining the interdisciplinary world of music, cognitive science, and neurology. Her goal is to cultivate and encourage creative growth in her students though knowledge, self-awareness, and right-brained thinking.
She is currently pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts in Viola Performance and Pedagogy at the University of Iowa where she is the teaching assistant under Christine Rutledge. Megan also holds a Masters of Music from the University of Iowa and a Bachelor of Music from Virginia Commonwealth University where she graduated with academic honors. Megan has performed with orchestras such as the Opera on the James, The Virginia Beach Symphony, and the Northern Neck Orchestra. In addition, she has held fellowships with festival orchestras including the Symphony Orchestra Academy of the Pacific and the National Orchestral Institute. Megan enjoys an active orchestral freelance career in Iowa.
Violinist Megan Karls enjoys an active and varied career in chamber music, orchestral, and recital engagements across the United States.
Karls is in her second season as violinist in the renowned Cascade String Quartet, the resident string quartet of the Great Falls Symphony. Members of the quartet perform as principals in the Great Falls Symphony, present a local chamber music series, and tour extensively throughout Montana and the Northwest. The Cascade Quartet members are also sought-after clinicians. Highlights of the 2012-13 academic season included workshops at the Montana State Music Educators Conference, University of Idaho and Montana State University.
As a founding member of the ground-breaking new music ensemble, the Enid Trio, Karls and her partners are busy building the repertoire for their unique instrumentation: violin, viola and bassoon. Originally formed at the University of Iowa, the Enids have performed at universities across the country, including Oberlin College, Lawrence University, Wichita State University and others.
In addition to her chamber music engagements, Karls performs with the String Orchestra of the Rockies, Helena Symphony, Bozeman Symphony, and has previously held positions with the Green Bay, Des Moines, Fox Valley and Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphonies. She has spent summers performing at the National Music Festival, Hot Springs Music Festival and Milwaukee Noise Festival, in addition to serving on the artist faculties at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp and the Superior String Alliance Camp.
Karls holds a B. Music in Violin Performance and a B. Arts in Political Science, with honors, from Lawrence University and a M. Arts in Violin Performance from the University of Iowa, where she was awarded both a Graduate Fellowship and Research Assistantship with the Iowa Center for Contemporary Music. Karls makes her home in rural Montana, where she spends time away from the violin out hiking the Rockies and fly-fishing with her family.
California native Stephanie Patterson is currently living in Iowa City, Iowa and working on her doctorate in bassoon performance. Her primary bassoon gurus have been Professors George Sakakeeny, Nicolasa Kuster, Scott Oakes and Benjamin Coelho though she has also dabbled in improvisation under the direction of jazz bassoonist Paul Hansen and guitarist Craig Owens, and studied in Russia with Igor Gerasimov, who neither plays jazz nor speaks English. While studying at Oberlin Conservatory, she premiered many new works for bassoon, including her commissioned The Self-Referential Construction Set by Christopher Gollmar, the award-winning Plateaus by Timothy Rosser, and her own original libretto to Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. Recently she has premiered many pieces by young composers, and has been working to commission even more. She founded and ran the first season of the Wichita State University New Music Series during the 2008-2009 season, while receiving her Masters' in Bassoon Performance from Wichita State University. This year she is organizing and performing in the Iowa Celebration of Women Composers, a concert to feature new works by women.
Her recent appearances in costume include Michael Daugherty’s Dead Elvis for bassoon and small chamber ensemble, featured at the Wichita Knob Festival at the FischHaus art gallery, and In Freundschaft by Stockhausen for bassoon-playing teddy bear. She has also performed at the Fairbanks New Music Festival, the Sonorities Festival in Belfast, Ireland, and the Midwest Composer's Symposium. Stephanie has played improvised concerts at art galleries in Wichita, Kansas and has appeared as a guest with the contemporary jazz combo Bodo Ensemble as well as the Iowa City Jazz Vespers group. As an orchestral musician, she has been a member of the Wichita Symphony, the Fairbanks Symphony and Arctic Chamber Orchestra, and has played with the Wichita Grand Opera, Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, and the Quad-Cities Symphony. She has performed in Carnegie Hall, on the busy streets of Moscow, on the pedestrian malls of Madrid, in the gilded Kappella hall in St. Petersburg, inside a medieval church in Prague, for after-school programs in Alaska, with Pierre Boulez at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, atop a gallows at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and in the mountains of North Carolina.
