Violaine Melancon, violin

Bonnie Thorn, cello

Seth Knopp, piano

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The Peabody Trio, winner of the 1989 Naumburg Chamber Music Award, was formed in 1986 in San Francisco. In the fall of 1987, they began full-time residency at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD ending the residency in 2016. In 1988 the trio was awarded a first prize in the Baltimore Chamber Music Awards competition. In the summer of 1987, they were one of two resident ensembles at the Tanglewood Music Center and in 1988, they were selected to participate in the new "Institute for Young Artists" at the Ravinia Festival. The trio was invited back to Tanglewood for the summer of 1989.

The Peabody Trio were advocates of new music and had a keen interest in commissioning and performing contemporary music for the piano trio as well as performing the standard repertoire. Their reputation as champions of new music garnered them an invitation to the first Biennale for contemporary music, Tempus Fught in Tel Aviv. The Trio performed in the most important chamber music series in North America, including in New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, Vancouver, Montreal, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. Internationally, they toured England making appearances at London's Wigmore Hall, and in Japan and Israel. They were heard on radio broadcasts including Saint Paul Sunday Morning, Performance Today, Morning Pro Musica, CBC, Radio-Canada, WGBH in Boston and WQXR in New York.

The Peabody Trio collaborated with such eminent artists as clarinetist Charles Neidich, violists Roger Tapping and Maria Lambros, soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson, baritone William Sharp, and actor Andre De Shields.

In addition, they were and still are, dedicated teachers and mentors to a generation of young musicians serving as visiting professors at universities and conservatories in the United States and abroad.

As part of their Naumburg Award, the Peabody Trio was given a commissioned work by Bright Sheng, Four Movements for Piano Trio, which received its world premiere on the Trio's Naumburg concert on April 24, 1990 in Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center.

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Naumburg Concert, April 24, 1990, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center

Peabody Trio -- Violaine Melancon, violin; Bonnie Thron, cello; Seth Knopp, piano

Program

Bright Sheng: Four Movements for Piano Trio, World premiere and Naumburg commission

Shostakovich: Trio in E minor, Op. 67

Schubert: Trio in B-flat, Op. 99, D898

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Program Note for Bright Sheng's Four Movements for Piano Trio

Four Movements for Piano Trio was commissioned by the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation for the Peabody Trio, winner of the 1990 Naumburg Chamber Music Award. The folkloric style and prelude-like first movement of Four Movements for Piano Trio is constructed through the use of heterophony, a device typical of Asian music. The second movement of the work is based on a humorous and joyful folk song from Se-Tsuan. In the third movement, a savage dance, the melody grows through a series of "Chinese sequences" (my own term to describe a type of melodic development each time the initial motive is repeated, consequently lengthening its duration and widening the tessitura). The last movement evokes a lonesome nostalgia. - Bright Sheng

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