PROGRAM NOTE:
Trio was commissioned by Market Square Concerts (Harrisburg, PA) and Lois Lehrman Grass for the Bachmann-Klibonoff-Fridman Trio and was premiered by them on 21 February 1999 at the Rose Lehrman Arts Center. I composed it in 1998, immediately before beginning my first symphony (completed the following year); like the symphony, it is a romantic work, much indebted to the textures, techniques, and expressive content of the piano and string works of Brahms, in particular, though not nearly on the same scale (my work is barely seven minutes long).
While writing the work, I was much enamored of Joan Miróʼs Dog Barking at the Moon which hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; I feel that the relationships between the “characters” in that work (a dog, the moon, and a ladder-like object, as well as the nearly indistinguishable ground and sky) bore some resemblance to the relationships between the players in my Trio.