“Musicians like the Reverón Trio are an inspiration for any composer; after listening to you play, one feels an urgent desire to write more music!” Miguel del Águila, Grammy-nominated and award winning composer

The Reverón Piano Trio’s main goal is to introduce audiences to underrepresented music from Latin America alongside contemporary and standard repertoire. These seasoned artists are active promoters of Latin American music through their work as scholars and entrepreneurs, and they have devoted their careers to the discovery, cataloguing, performance, editing, and recording of this rich repertoire. In addition, the trio continues to commission and perform new works: recent collaborations include La Hamaca (2021) and El Ventilador (2022), written for the trio by renowned Venezuelan-American composer Ricardo Lorenz, and the world premiere of Barroqueada (2020) by Grammy-nominated composer Miguel del Águila.

The Reverón Trio is named after Venezuelan painter and sculptor Armando Reverón (1889- 1954), one of the earliest American modernists and considered one of the most important visual artists in Latin America. Even though Reverón is now regarded as a highly influential figure in Latin America, his work is not celebrated outside the borders of Venezuela. It is the trio’s wish to enhance multicultural understanding and increase the visibility of Reverón’s work and of Latin American music; for this reason, they are in the process of creating the Sphinx Catalog of Latin American Piano Trios. Ana María, Simón, and Horacio are all Venezuelan artists that have made their home in the United States.

Recent engagements include concerts at the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico, Music Institute of Chicago, Aruba Symphony Festival, Beethoven Festival Park City, Festival A la Vela de la Alhambra in Granada, and Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Additionally, the trio has been in residence at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Wisconsin, Dickinson College, Lawrence University, Louisiana State University, the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, the Collaborative Piano Institute, and various other universities in the U.S. and abroad.

Upcoming projects include recitals at Chamber Music Wilmington and American Music Festival in North Carolina, concerts in Peru and Mexico, the release of their first audio recording produced and distributed globally by IBS Classical,  and residencies at various other universities in the U.S. and abroad.

VIOLIN: SIMON GOLLO

Simon Gollo is recognized as a multifaceted and charismatic musician who enjoys a successful international career as a chamber musician, pedagogue, soloist, and conductor. He is also a recording artist for the international recording label IBS Classical.

Simón Gollo has performed at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall (New York), Cadogan Hall (London), the 92nd Street Y’s, Kaufmann Concert Hall (New York), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Bolívar Hall (London), the Teatro Teresa Carreño (Caracas), the Auditorio Blas Galindo (Mexico City), the Auditorio Manuel de Falla (Granada), and the Teatro Mayor (Bogotá), and for renowned organizations such as the Casals Festival, BBC Proms Festival, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Chamber Music Society of Detroit. He has collaborated with international figures such as Alessio Bax, Ricardo Morales, Dmitri Berlinsky, Monique Duphil, Edicson Ruiz, Paul Rosenthal, John Novacek, Alissa Margulis, Jakob Koranyi, Miguel da Silva (Ysaÿe Quartet), Richard Young (Vermeer Quartet), Jeff Bradetich, Adam Liu, David Cerutti, Randolph Kelly, and the Cuarteto
Latinoamericano, among many others.

Throughout his career, Simon Gollo has served as the Founder and Artistic Director of various music festivals in Venezuela, Aruba, and the United States intended to educate and edify young musicians. He was the conductor of the New Mexico State University Philharmonic from 2016-2022, and he has received numerous invitations to conduct both youth and professional orchestras through the United States, China, Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil.

In 2020, his album “CHAUSSON,” alongside the pianist John Novacek, and under the label IBS CLASSICAL, received vast positive international reviews in prestigious magazines like Scherzo, Melomano, Mundo Clásico, El Diario de Sevilla, and Fanfare. In 2021, he was selected as the recipient of a “Spring 2021 College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Faculty Achievement in Scholarship” at New Mexico State University.

In 2022, Simon Gollo was appointed Artistic Director of the Snow Pond/New England Music Camp and he became Associate Professor of Violin at Furman University in Greenville, SC.

CELLO: HORACIO CONTRERAS​

Venezuelan cellist Horacio Contreras  has gained esteem through a relevant activity as a performer, pedagogue and researcher. He is a faculty member of the University of North Texas  and the Music Institute of Chicago, and he is in the roster of Melukkulturmanagement and Halac Artist together with his colleagues of the Reverón Piano Trio.

Horacio has collaborated for performances as a concert cellist, recitalist, and chamber musician with prestigious artists, festivals, concert series and institutions in the US, Latin America and Europe. He has been invited to teach master classes at schools of music including Michigan, Juilliard, Oberlin, Indiana University at Bloomington, and renowned programs in Latin America. His students have won awards in international and national and competitions in the US and Canada, have  made solo recordings, have performed as soloists nationally and internationally, and have continued their studies in prestigious programs in the US and Europe. His former students have been appointed in positions in schools of music and orchestras in Europe and Latin America.

He is the author of the cello adaptation of Ronald Vamos’ Exercises in Various Combinations of Double-Stops, published by Carl Fischer, as well as the co-author of the Sphinx Catalog of Latin-American Cello Works, an extensive online database with information about works for cello by Latin American composers produced in partnership with the Sphinx Organization and CelloBello.org. He is the artistic director of Strings of Latin America, an official partner of the Sphinx Organization that is devoted to the promotion of Latin American music for strings.

Horacio is a member of the Pierrot ensemble Four Corners Ensemble. He started his cello studies at El Sistema in Venezuela, and made further studies in France and Spain. He holds a Masters and a Doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan.

PIANO: ANA MARIA OTAMENDI

Since her orchestral debut at age twelve, Venezuelan pianist Ana María Otamendi has performed as a soloist, collaborative pianist, and conductor with renowned orchestras and at important venues such as Chicago Symphony Hall, Spivey Hall, Teatro Teresa Carreño (Caracas, Venezuela), Salzburg Domesaal, Megaron Mousikis Concert Hall (Athens), Parco de la musica (Rome), Teatro Arcimboldi (Milano), Teatro Odeum (Patras), Festival Casals (Puerto Rico), as well as many other venues in Austria, Panama, Brazil, Venezuela, the United States, Spain, Italy, and Greece.  She has recorded albums with Centaur Records and IBS Classical, and will be releasing an album with Mark Records in 2024.

After working at the prestigious Houston Grand Opera Studio and the Merola Opera Program of the San Francisco Opera, she became the Head Vocal Coach of the Moores Opera Center at the University of Houston. Currently, she is the Janice Harvey Pellar Associate Professor of Collaborative Piano at Louisiana State University, where she is the head of the collaborative piano program. She is the Artistic Director of the Collaborative Piano Institute, an intensive three-week summer program devoted to collaborative pianists.

She is a regular guest artist, speaker, and teacher at different Universities in the United States and abroad such as Yale, University of Michigan, Cambridge University, Universidade de Sao Paulo and Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil), Mahidol University (Thailand), University of Minnesota, University of Texas at Austin, and many more. Ana María holds a Master’s degree in piano performance from the University of Wisconsin, an Artist Certificate from the University of South Carolina where she worked with the renowned pianist Marina Lomazov, and a Doctorate in Collaborative Piano from the University of Michigan, where she studied with world-class collaborative artist Martin Katz. In 2021 she won the Emerging Artist Award from the University of Michigan, as an artist who has greatly contributed to the profession.

Besides her musical training, Ana María is fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Italian, and also a Geophysical Engineer. Her thesis was published in the prestigious journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors.