Category: Chamber Music / Violin / Piano
Instrumentation: violin, cello, piano
Duration: approximately 9 minutes
Publisher: Alymar

From The Headwaters is a one-movement piano trio for violin, cello, and piano. Dedicated to the memory of Baxter’s brother Gari Baxter, the work is romantic in character and unfolds in a broad ternary form. It is a revision of an earlier work, The Rejected Stone.

The piece belongs naturally to Baxter’s chamber music catalog, while also serving as a substantial work for violin and piano within the piano trio repertoire. The three instruments are treated as active participants in the musical argument, with thematic material passed among the strings and piano rather than confined to a single leading voice.

The work opens with a dark theme in the two string instruments. After the piano takes up this idea, the music moves toward a more expansive romantic melody. The central B section is faster and lighter, with a melody passed among all three instruments, before the work returns to an abbreviated version of the opening A section. This formal clarity, combined with lyrical intensity and contemporary harmonic color, gives the trio both emotional breadth and structural focus.

From The Headwaters is suited to upper-intermediate performers and is appropriate for chamber concerts, piano trio programs, memorial or reflective performances, and contemporary classical recitals. Violinist Glenn Angus described the work as “what Brahms would sound like if he lived in the 21st Century,” a reflection of its Romantic lineage, full-bodied ensemble writing, and modern harmonic voice.