Triple Helix Piano Trio at Redfern Arts Center
KEENE, NH, 2/14/03 - The nationally acclaimed piano trio Triple Helix, recently named 2002 Musicians of the Year by the Boston Globe, will appear at Keene State Colleges Redfern Arts Center at Brickyard Pond, Wednesday, March 5, at 7 p.m. That afternoon, the ensemble will offer a lecture/demonstration at 1:30 p.m. Both the concert and the lecture/demonstration will be held in the Alumni Recital Hall.
Triple Helixs appearance is funded in part by a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts, with additional support from the six New England State arts agencies, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Tickets for the recital are available through the Brickyard Pond box office, 603-358-2168, or on the web at www.keene.edu/racbp/.
Tickets are $15 for the general public, $13 for seniors and KSC faculty and staff, $7 for youth 17 and younger and $5 for KSC students with ID. The lecture/demonstration is free and open to the public. Those attending the lecture demonstration and do not have a Keene State parking permit may park at the visitors lot on Wyman Way.
Triple Helix is ensemble-in-residence at Wellesley College. The individual members of the trio serve on the music faculties of several Greater Boston colleges. Emotionally charged, virtuoso playing, said the Boston Globe of Triple Helix. The Los Angeles Times noted the trios splendid musical chemistry, virtually perfect dynamic balance, firm collective sense of rhythm, and fervor and authority when needed. On the program will be Beethovens Ghost trio (Opus 70, No. 1), a trio by Lee Hyla written for Triple Helix in 2002, and the trio by Maurice Ravel.
In calling themselves Triple Helix, the artists were inspired by the double helix, the spiraling energies that generate life. They saw a parallel in the partnership of violin, cello and piano - each instrument entrusted by the composer with its own share of the genetic material of the music.
Established in 1995, Triple Helix comprises violinist Bayla Keyes, who was a founder and long-time member of the Evian- and Naumburg-award-winning Muir String Quartet. She teaches at Boston University College of Fine Arts and is artistic director of the Interlochen Chamber Music Festival and the founding director of the String Quartet Institute at Tanglewood. She is also an active performer with Musica Viva.
Cellist Rhonda Rider was the founding cellist of the Naumburg-award-winning Lydian String Quartet. She performs with the chamber players at Boston Conservatory, where she heads the chamber music program and is the founding director of the Cello Seminar. She has premiered works by contemporary composers Elliott Carter, Lee Hyla, Donald Martino and Steve Mackey.
Pianist Lois Shapiro has performed as soloist and collaborative artist throughout the U.S. and abroad in concerts ranging from 18th-century period- instrument performances to premieres of pieces. A winner of the New York Concert Artists Guild Award, Shapiro has recorded on Afka, Channel Classics, Centaur, MLAR and Pierrot. She is on the faculty of Wellesley, Longy School of Music, and Brandeis.
At Wellesley College, Triple Helix is in the midst of a Beethoven Festival. The runaway hit of the chamber music season, says the Boston Globe about the groups presentation of the complete cycle of Beethoven piano trios. Also at Wellesley, Triple Helix takes lecture-recitals directly into classrooms in which poetry, history of art, or even philosophy, Russian history, or astronomy is taught. The group ties the music to the particular curriculum being studied and thereby enhances students grasp of the cultural and social aspects of a given period or country. The Triple Helix musicians are also regular guests on WGBH-FM radio, where they offer performances and lecture- recitals.
Advocates for new music, Triple Helix has premiered seven new works written especially for the group. An eighth, a work by Martin Brody, a colleague at Wellesley, will be premiered there in April.
