Last Look: A Resonant History

Did you know that Macalester once had its very own professional chamber music “trio in residence”? For thirty-two years—from 1968 to 2000—The Macalester Trio was that group.

The trio, consisting of Mac professor of music Donald Betts (piano), Minnesota Orchestra first chair violinist Joseph Roche, and Minnesota Orchestra cellist Eric Wahlin (later, cellist 

Camilla Heller) came together in 1968 to perform Romantic Era trio compositions, such as those from Brahms, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn.

At some point early on, a “residency” program was arranged for the group at Mac: the trio would get access to free practice space with superior acoustics (the Concert Hall in the Janet 

Wallace Fine Arts building); secure space to store their instruments, and in Betts’ case, access to a concert-quality piano; and Roche and Wahlin (and later Heller) would be hired as instructors of music for their instrument. 

What Macalester got in return was a soon-to-be nationally known Classical music trio, performing at the highest level, playing regular free concerts on campus. They soon expanded their repertoire by also commissioning and playing new compositions by twentieth century composers, as well as new compositions created by Betts.

In archival audio of an interview with Roche, he states of the residency idea, “It would be kind of nice if we tied ourselves to something which is a total commitment—where we got some kind of salary, and where we didn’t say, ‘Well, there’s something good on TV tonight; let’s not practice.’ So, we decided that if we got together twice a week, no matter what, we could have a group with some kind of consistency.”

That consistency turned into six albums, hundreds of concerts at Mac and across the country, and many hours of recorded performances (MPR alone has approximately 200 different recorded movements in their music archives).

Of note: all of the scores composed by Donald Betts over his lifetime have been donated to the Mac Archives by his children, and they are now fully processed into a collection which is open to use and research. The Archives has also fully digitized each score, and they will be made available for public access later this year on our digital archives platform, CONTENTdm (https://contentdm.macalester.edu). — Ely Sheinfeld, college archivist