Dr. Francine Trester
email: ftrester@berklee.edu     
 
EDUCATION
1998 Yale University, DMA in composition                                        
1993-1994 Yale University, MMA in composition                  
1991-1993 Yale University, MM in composition
1987-1991 Yale University, BA in music, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
1980-1987 Juilliard Precollege Division, violin major
 
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2013-present Professor of Composition, Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA
2002-2013 Associate Professor of Composition, Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA
2003-2004 Faculty member of Tufts University, Somerville, MA
2002-2003 Faculty member of the Longy School of Music, Cambridge, MA
2000-2002 Faculty member of the Yale School of Music, New Haven, CT
1999-2000 Faculty member of Walnut Hill School and Powers Music School, MA
1996-1999 Assistant Professor in Music at Austin College, TX
1995 The Baylis Programme at the English National Opera: Post of Assistant to the Directors of Live Wires and Live Culture
1995 Composer-in-Residence at the Queenswood School, Hertfordshire, England
 
AWARDS
2024 Academic Sabbatical (spring semester, 2025) awarded by Berklee College of Music
2023 Berklee Faculty Fellowship to compose In Her Element for Kendall Square Orchestra
2019 Berklee Faculty Fellowship to compose A Walk in Her Shoes for Boston Landmarks Orchestra
2017 Berklee Recording Grant to record 2nd Partita for Solo Violin

2017 Nahant Cultural Council Grant for Nahant Calling song cycle (words and music)
2016 Academic Sabbatical (fall semester, 2016) awarded by Berklee College of Music
2014 Massachusetts - American String Teachers Association selects Trester’s My Darling’s Slumber (commissioned by Aaron Larget-Caplan) for MA-ASTA Solo Competition Repertoire
2012 Grant from Berklee Faculty Development to fund Zodiac Trio performance of Trester’s 5 Summer Haiku at Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in Glasgow, Scotland
2011 Chair Recording Grant to Berklee String Dept. Chair Melissa Howe for the purpose of recording Trester’s String Quartet No. 3 (at WGBH Fraser Performance Studio)
2007 Newton Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant and Weston Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for song cycle, Domestic Affairs
2007 Excellence in Curriculum Development Award, Berklee College of Music
2006 Berklee Faculty Recording Grant to record Woodwind Quintet
2005 Recipient of Fromm Music Foundation Award (awarded to Composers in Red Sneakers)
2005 Berklee Travel Grant: to support performance of Bus #66 at Carnegie Hall
1998 The ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award
1994-1995 Fulbright Graduate Student Award for Composition: study at Cambridge University,
United Kingdom with Professor Alexander Goehr
1994 The Woods Chandler Memorial Prize for Composition
1993 The John Day Jackson Prize for Composition
1992-1994 Composition Scholarship–participant in BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop
1992 Julia Loomis Havemeyer Scholarship
1991 Music major, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Yale University
1990, 1989 Violin Fellowship– Tanglewood Music Festival

SELECTED PERFORMANCES AND COMMISSIONS
2023 Shelter Music Boston Songs of Life commission
2023 Commission from the Kalliope Reed quintet to write The Azure World for mezzo and reed quintet 
2022 Commission from saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky to write All Points
2021 Boston Hatch Memorial Shell premiere of A Walk In Her Shoes; Boston Landmarks Orchestra
2021 Commission from Meghan Dillon to write for the New England Symposium for Female-Identifying + Saxophonists;” support from the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail to compose “Voices from the Boston Women’s Memorial”
2021 Merkin Hall premiere of A Fable for Tomorrow; Mirror Visions Ensemble
2020 Commissions from the Boston Woodwind Society, Mirror Visions Ensemble, Elmira Darvarova and Howard Wall, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, ensemble LIGAMENT
2019 Street Views (orchestral version) - commissioned by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms Society Orchestra of Boston; premiere of orchestral version at Faneuil Hall
2019 Reminiscences - commissioned by World-Wide Concurrent Premieres and Commissioning Fund, Inc.
2018 Sekelela - for SATB choir and the Triple Helix Piano Trio; commissioned by Communities Without Borders and First Unitarian Universalist Society in Newton
2018 Borrowed Blue – for viola and guitar, words and music by the composer; commissioned and premiered by Aaron Larget-Caplan and Michael Hall
2018 Florence Comes Home - commissioned by Shelter Music Boston

2018 In Our Own Words - commissioned by Shelter Music Boston
2017 Street Views - commissioned by Kenneth Radnofsky for the Amram Ensemble
2017 Walkers with the Dawn - commissioned by the Rivers School
2017 An Oman Odyssey - commissioned by the Mirror Visions Ensemble
2017 Songs of Nahant and Blackburnian Warbler - commissioned by the Nahant Music Festival
2016 A Robert Lowry Reader - commissioned by soprano Jayne West
2015 Elemental Emily - commissioned by pianist Lois Shapiro and soprano Sarah Pelletier
2015 At the River - commissioned by the Boston Landmarks Orchestra
2014 Sleeping Beauty  - chamber opera commissioned by the Nahant Music Festival
2014 Performances at St. Petersburg Conservatory and the Russian Foreign Library (with guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan); as part of a 12-City Tour of China (with the Zodiac Trio); and at The American University of Paris and SubCulture, N.Y.C.  (with the Mirror Visions Ensemble).
2013 Commission from Scottish Clarinet Quartet; quartet premiere at ICA
ClarinetFest, Assisi, Italy
2012 Zodiac Trio performs 5 Summer Haiku at Edinburgh Festival, Scotland
2012 334 Bunnies (one-act chamber opera; words and music by Francine Trester) performed at Longy, St. John’s in Jamaica Plain, and the Shirley Meetinghouse
2012 Trester’s String Quartet No. 3 recorded at WGBH, performed at Berklee, Cambridge School of Weston, Westford Parish Center for the Arts
2010-12 Six Portraits performed by CalTech, University of Anchorage, Los Angeles, University of Rhode Island, and Berklee Clarinet Choirs
2011 Mark O’Connor String Fest: performance of Echoes…Of the Past…Return
2011 Premiere of Dialogues and Three Dedications
2008, 2010 Premiere of MYTHOS by the Merrimack Valley Philharmonic Orchestra, performance of MYTHOS by the Shasta Symphony
2009 New Lullaby commission from guitarist Aaron Larget-Caplan
2007-2009 Premiere and multiple performances of Domestic Affairs and Backyard Birds
2006 Commissioned by the Providence Mandolin Orchestra, Merrimack Valley Philharmonic Orchestra, trumpeter John Holt, guitar duo Mark and Beverly Davis, Wheeler School Concert Handbell Ringers
May 2005: Bus #66, song cycle performed at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall
1999-2005 Bus #66 and other songs commissioned by baritone Richard Lalli, the Mirror Visions Ensemble, mezzo-soprano Mary Ann Hart, soprano Patricia Prunty
2002-2006 Member of Composers in Red Sneakers, a Boston based new music group
2006 Performances of Red Sox Blue Sax by Radnofsky Saxophone Quartet
1999-2006 Premieres and performances at: Florence Gould Hall; Kosciuszko Foundation; Joseph Papp Public Theater; Goethe Institute, Berklee College of Music; Yale, CUNY, Tufts and Wesleyan University, M.I.T.; Longy School of Music (including multiple SeptemberFest); 1st and 2nd Church, Boston; New Gallery Concert Series, Boston
2000 Summer Serenade (for orchestra) commissioned by Music on the Hill Summer Festival
1997 String Quartet No.2 commissioned and performed by the Arianna String Quartet
1997 Trio for Violin, Clarinet and Piano commissioned and performed by faculty (Roger Zahab, violin) at the University of Akron
1996 Orchestral work commissioned by the Queenswood School
1994 Scoring for Liability Crisis– independent film; screened nationally
and internationally in 1995
1994 Commissioned to write Orchestral Overture for Wallingford Symphony
 
RECORDINGS AND PUBLICATIONS
New Lullaby Six String Sound
Facets III Crystal Records
Facets II Crystal Records
Secrets Albany Records
String Works Albany Records
Awaiting the Sun Beauport Classical
Laments Clear Note Publications
 
Multiple broadcasts including KRWG, Las Cruces, KCBK, San Luis Obispo, WGBH, Boston and KALW, San Francisco, El Show de Fernandito, and YouTube