L to R: Tessa Lark, Edgar Meyer, and Joshua Roman at The Reser for CMNW. Photo by Nicole Lane.

BEAVERTON – It’s no surprise that Edgar Meyer’s concert with his brilliant new touring partners, violinist Tessa Lark and cellist Joshua Roman, sold out Jan. 10 at the 550-seat Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. Chamber Music Northwest presented the concert, and has invited Meyer to play many times. He has performed 25 CMNW concerts since 1992. Six years have passed since his most recent visit in 2019.

So the enthusiastic attendance wasn’t surprising. But the music was, which proved more provocative than much of Meyer’s chamber repertoire. Playing with such young musicians as Lark and Roman inspires him to keep pushing himself and his music.

A J.S. Bach sonata opened the concert “like a prayer,” Meyer said that night, adding that Bach is his favorite composer. Bach’s music appeared like a closing prayer as an encore with the familiar cantata, “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (BWV 140), meaning “Awake, the Voice is Calling Us,” based on a hymn by Philipp Nicolai. Kentucky-born Lark, 36, who wields her instrument equally artfully as a high-brow violin and a down-home fiddle, performed it dreamily and prayerfully with the trio’s backing.

Sprucing up the stage in a floral jumpsuit and heels, Lark is a rising, or already risen star. She was nominated in 2020 for a Grammy in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo Category. She has listened to Meyer’s music since she was 10 years old. As a girl, she and her family drove two hours to Cincinnati’s music conservatory every Saturday from her Richmond, Ky. home in the middle of bluegrass country. On that drive she listened to Meyer’s “IB” cut from his Appalachian Journey over and over. He has remained a musical hero to her. Eventually, she met up with him and they first played together in 2021. He’d already met Roman, and after those meetings, Meyer said, let’s go. We’d make a good trio.

In the opening Bach Sonata for Viola da Gamba in G Major, BWV 1027, Roman took the viola da gamba part on his cello, Meyer played the keyboard bass line and Lark the keyboard’s treble line. “My favorite composers are oriented toward the bass line,” Meyer has said in an interview with Michael Schoenfield at Duke University. And Bach tops his favorites list.

The audience was hooked but there was more to come – and you never know what you’re going to get from Meyer and Company.

Three of Meyer’s own trio pieces written from 1986 to 2024 took things in another direction – and to the edge. Meyer wrote Trio 1986, which he called his “first big piece,” mixing up musical genres, including bluegrass. He first performed it at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. According to Ethan Allred’s CMNW program notes, Meyer added the violin and cello to the bass in his composition because, as Meyer said, that combination achieved the “full range of tessitura and color, not to mention harmonic and contrapuntal possibilities.”

That was 40 years ago, and the piece sounded new and bright and shiny.

His “New Trio” – written in 2024 with the help of Lark and Roman – went further, reminiscent of Bartók in places, American folk music in other places. Call it crossover with its mix of suspended harmonies, a layer of dissonance and a twangy lonesome bluegrass sound – but, to sum up some Yo-Yo Ma insights, all music is crossover. Hopefully the audience wasn’t following the written program, which differed from the concert order. Whatever, each trio was a knock-out and a challenge if new or unusual soundscapes make you nervous.

Most exquisite with the Bach pieces, and with the rest of the program, was the lack of bravado, a Meyer signature. A quietness, a purity of sound persisted. “Edgar’s sound world is like that,” Lark said in an interview in Minneapolis/St. Paul earlier on the tour. “He wants the music pure. Bravado is like putting salt on a bad piece of meat … so there’s no seasoning from the left hand. It takes a lot of work to achieve purity of sound.”

Certainly the theatrics were kept to a minimum, though Lark, a sparkling violinist who grew up on a sonic diet of bluegrass, jazz, Appalachian and classical music, was capable of turning heads with her technique and agility, as was Roman. A 42-year-old cellist who looks half of that age, he wore a glittering earring, a sleek blue shirt and relaxed manner that camouflaged spot-on technique and blending finesse. He is another rising, or risen star. He has earned many kudos for his ability to mix up classical music with other genres (sound like Meyer?) and, among other heaps of praise, for his 2017 TED Conference performance of the Complete Bach Cello Suites that drew 1 million viewers.

What’s more astounding – at least to me, though many musicians perform without music – the three musicians played everything by memory, though Meyer jokes that he doesn’t have to memorize as much as the other musicians. Not a note of music was on stage for the 2-hour concert, minus a 15-minute intermission. The only decor was Roman’s chair and a stool, where Meyer placed his bow when he wasn’t using it and plucked his double bass with his enormous hands and long fingers. The presentation was minimalist if much of the music was complex and layered like nothing I’ve heard before.

Often referred to as the current virtuoso of an instrument with little repertoire, Meyer is a tireless experimenter who says that he tries to keep it interesting for himself and for the audience. He makes and plays music that “doesn’t fit into anything. … I want to reach people but I want to keep exploring,” he said in an interview at Duke University a few years ago. Sure, you perplex people, he said, but that’s the cost of exploring.

Now 65, he has been performing for decades. He started playing the double bass at 5 years old and never looked back, or with much envy toward playing other instruments, though the violin is his favorite. He has been seriously composing for at least 40 years and believes in constantly creating as much as he does in playing different types of music with different kinds of musicians. Christian McBride, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, bluegrass musician Chris Thile and the eclectic Bela Fleck (with whom Meyer says he “breathes the same oxygen”) have been among his musical collaborators. That’s a big range. He has won seven Grammys, an Avery Fisher Prize and a MacArthur Award.

With his rarified musicianship and indefatigable performing in places from crummy bars to concert halls, he has lassoed the imaginations of a younger generation of string players. On stage, he never failed to praise Lark and Roman between pieces. He comes off, shirt sleeves rolled up and tie tossed away from his bow and bass that looks as if it’s running away from him, as an “aw shucks” guy with a soft, unpretentious Southern-speaking style. Don’t be fooled: He and his new trio partners perform and compose highly sophisticated music. On Jan. 10, they were unafraid to listen to each other and make one another sound world-class.