{trés} is a Grammy and Latin Grammy-nominated chamber music trio renowned for its dynamic performances, commitment to new music, and dedication to cultural advocacy. Founded in 2010, {trés} has built an international reputation for championing works by composers from the Caribbean, Latin America, and beyond. The trio has performed extensively across the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean, captivating audiences with programs that blend contemporary and traditional influences.
A hallmark of {trés}’s work is its dedication to commissioning and premiering compositions that reflect diverse artistic perspectives. Recent collaborations include works by MacArthur Fellow and Grammy winning composer Miguel Zenón, Brooklyn-based Angélica Negrón, and Dublin-based Amanda Feery. Their performances highlight music as a means of storytelling, cultural preservation, and social change.
Among the ensemble’s notable initiatives is A Tribute to Puerto Rico, a national tour designed to raise funds and awareness for Puerto Rico’s recovery following Hurricanes Irma and María. This work evolved into an annual multi-week residency on the island, bringing free concerts and educational programming to underserved communities. As recipients of a New Music USA Project Grant, {trés} continues to expand its outreach, ensuring access to high-quality musical experiences for audiences who might otherwise be excluded.
Through innovative programming and deep community engagement, {trés} remains at the forefront of contemporary chamber music, redefining what it means to be an artist in service to both music and society.
Interviewed in order: José A. Zayas Cabán / Colin Young / Casey Rafn / Joel Gordon
Born in Iowa, grown in Missouri, and sprouting throughout the Midwest, Joel Gordon is a cultivating saxophonist and music educator. As a musician and teacher, Joel strives to balance life on “both sides of the fence,” working in concert classical and jazz contemporary styles.
Joel became a bandleader and performing musician at the age of nineteen. With a group of high school and college friends from Kansas City, Joel formed the Trouble Clefs: a big band that convened during summer and winter school breaks. Over the course of three years and twenty-five concerts, the group evolved from entertaining at a backyard pool party to performing at the Future Stages Festival in Kansas City, MO and the Trails West! Festival in St. Joseph, MO. During their run, more than fifty different musicians performed with the Trouble Clefs. Experiencing the relationships with band members, families, and the community born out of this venture, Joel was inspired to become a musician and teacher. As a classical saxophonist, Joel regularly records and performs with {trés}, a piano trio consisting of two saxophones and piano. The group is diligent in bringing baroque and classical era works into modern saxophone repertoire. With {trés}, Joel performed at the 40th Annual International Saxophone Symposium in Washington D.C. and the inaugural American Single Reed Summit.
Joel holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music (2015) and a Master of Arts in Education of Music (2016) from Truman State University. Currently, Joel is an Area Director of KLIFE, a non-profit parachurch ministry focused on discipleship for youth. Joel lives in Kirksville, Missouri with his wonderful wife Megan, delightful daughter Ellie, and their two curious cats Izzy and Ollie.
Pianist Casey Rafn enjoys a dynamic career as a collaborative pianist across the United States and abroad. He currently performs with VocalEssence and plays for contemporary masses at the Basilica of St. Mary.
As a member of the saxophone-piano trio {trés}, he was nominated for both a Grammy and a Latin Grammy for their work with jazz saxophonist Miguel Zenón. Praised by composer Libby Larsen as a “great collaborator,” Rafn frequently appears in recitals with members of the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and faculty from the University of Minnesota.
He has also held positions at the University of Minnesota School of Music, St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists (SPCPA), and Lundstrum Performing Arts in North Minneapolis.
Pianist Leah Siltberg is an active and sought-after performer. Based in Minneapolis, Siltberg has performed or recorded with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Weisman Art Museum’s SONIC WAM, the James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Public Radio, St. Paul’s Schubert Club, the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, and the American Composers’ Forum. In 2010, Siltberg was featured as a solo performer in Jerusalem’s Mozart and Chopin festivals and performed as part of a chamber music tour of the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
In 2008, she performed Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with Minneapolis’s Kenwood Symphony. In 2007, she was part of the premier of a Colombian trio at the White House Conference on the Americas. Although Siltberg most often concertizes as a collaborative pianist, she has performed both solo and collaborative recitals in the United States, Canada, Central America, the Middle East, Spain, and New Zealand.
Siltberg graduated from Toronto’s Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music with a Performance Diploma, Bachelor of Music, and Artist Diploma under the tutelage of Boris Lysenko and Peter Longworth and completed a M.Mus. and DMA in collaborative piano and coaching at the University of Minnesota with Timothy Lovelace and Noriko Kawai.
Multiple woodwind specialist Ryan Smith performs widely across genres, appearing with symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles, jazz combos, pit orchestras, and rock bands throughout the Midwest.
As an international artist, he has toured São Paulo, Rome, and Milan with the Américo Project and performed in Hong Kong and China with the Iowa Saxophone Ensemble. Smith is the Artistic Director of HTLIC Media, an Iowa City nonprofit supporting original works by Iowa artists with socially relevant themes. Most recently, he organized and directed Esteban and the Children of the Sun at the Englert Theater—a mixed-media, multi-genre collaboration telling the story of Estevanico (Esteban the Moor), the first African explorer of North America.
Smith holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts and a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the University of Iowa and teaches applied woodwinds and improvisation at Grinnell College, Cornell College, and St. Ambrose University.
Colin Young is a concert saxophonist and educator living near Des Moines, Iowa. An active solo and chamber musician, Colin performs regularly with the piano trio {trés} which recently performed in Costa Rica, Mexico City as well as throughout the United States.
He also performs with the Des Moines Symphony and the Des Moines Metro Concert and Big Band as well a the Turner Center Jazz Orchestra and has recently played with the Minnesota Orchestra. As a member of the saxophone quartet Axius, Colin won prizes at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, the Music Teachers National Association Chamber Music Competition and the North American Saxophone Alliance Saxophone Quartet Competition.
Colin currently serves on the faculties of Drake University and Grinnell College in Grinnell Iowa. As a soloist, Colin has given guest recitals and masterclasses at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Mr. Young is working towards his DMA in Saxophone Performance and Pedagogy at the University of Iowa where he studied with Dr. Kenneth Tse. His previous teachers include Matthew Sintchak and Eugene Rousseau. Before beginning his Masters degree with Eugene Rousseau at the University of Minnesota, Colin taught for three years in the public school system as a 5 – 12 grade instrumental music teacher. Mr. Young is still active in the public school music programs around central Iowa as a lesson teacher and clinician. Colin is a Yamaha Performing Artist as well as a Rousseau Mouthpiece artist.
José Antonio Zayas Cabán is a multi-GRAMMY®-nominated saxophonist, McKnight Fellow, and activist whose work bridges music and social justice.
Born and raised in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, he now resides in Minneapolis, where he leads Our Streets as Executive Director.
His artistic projects, including El País Invisible and ROMANCE AL CAMPESINO PORTEÑO, reflect on cultural identity and political narratives, bringing Caribbean and Latin American influences to contemporary chamber music. As a co-founder of the chamber music trio {trés}, he has performed extensively across the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean, commissioning and premiering works that explore themes of heritage and social change.
Zayas Cabán is also on faculty at St. Joseph’s School of Music, where he teaches applied saxophone. His work continues to inspire and challenge audiences, fostering a deeper understanding of the intersections between art, identity, and activism.
