Sapphire Trio to Perform at Converse
The Petrie School of Music at Converse College welcomes the Sapphire Trio to Daniel Recital Hall Thursday, March 27 at 8:00 p.m. The concert is open to the public and admission is free. The Trio will perform works by Gian Carlo Menotti, Astor Piazzolla, Peter Sculthorpe, and Rick Sowash.
In May 2006, the Sapphire Trio served as United States Cultural Ambassadors in the Persian Gulf. Their concert will include a multi-media presentation that highlights this historic event, and stories about their experience with the people in each country. The tour included Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and was acclaimed by the Ambassadors and embassy staff from each country as having a tremendous positive impact in that region.
The Sapphire Trio was formed in 1998 to explore the newly created literature for clarinet, violin and piano, bringing to the concert venue the masterworks that exist in the repertoire. Its members (Margaret Baldridge, violin; Jody Graves, piano; and Maxine Ramey, clarinet) are university faculty from the Pacific Northwest and are active soloists and chamber musician who appear regularly in performances and festivals throughout the US and abroad. Before 1971, there existed only a handful of pieces for this type of chamber ensemble. The nearly 200 works that have been composed since that time, by leading composers, is the direct result of commissioning projects championed by the legendary Verdehr Trio, mentors for the Sapphire Trio. The Sapphire Trio is committed to continuing this legacy, upholding the art of chamber music as an exciting and dynamic performance genre.