Trinity College Dublin's new trio-in-residence, Ensemble Avalon, will work with the music department to create new musical paths, writes ARMINTA WALLACE
TRIO-IN-RESIDENCE. It sounds just the tiniest bit odd somehow, as if you had stumbled home from a hard day at the office to find a chamber group sawing away earnestly in your kitchen, giving you Shostakovich with your spag bol whether you want it or not.
When the residence in question is Trinity College Dublin and the group is the Ensemble Avalon, however, it’s a different story.
This piano trio features three of Ireland’s most dynamic young musicians, Ioana Petcu-Colan (violin), Gerald Peregrine (cello) and Michael McHale (piano).
While all three have enjoyed successful solo careers on the international stage, they put together the ensemble so they could create and perform a different kind of chamber repertoire.
Since their inaugural concert in 2006 they have toured Ireland, the UK and Italy. Their Winter Chamber Festival has become an annual fixture in Wexford, with the exception of last year when snow stopped it from going ahead.
The trio will begin an exciting new chapter in its artistic life this month when it becomes trio-in-residence at the music department of the university. “We approached Trinity in late 2008,” explains Peregrine. “We had identified that there was a gap in that they had no ensemble in residence. So we formulated a proposal and got funding for a pilot project.”
This enabled them to ascertain exactly what kind of residency programme would benefit the students and themselves, as well as offering concerts that would be of interest to the public.
The next stage was to raise capital – a grim prospect in the climate of the past two years. But Peregrine managed to get a corporate sponsor, Allied Pension Trustees, on board for three years. The Trinity Foundation is also looking to secure funding and the Hugh Lane Gallery has come up trumps by hosting some of the bigger public performances.
Which brings us back to the question with which we began. What does a trio-in-residence do, exactly? “Trinity’s music department has a long and distinguished record of producing really great composers,” says Peregrine.
“There’s a very heavy focus in the department on composition and modern music. We felt that as there are so many students who may go on to become professional composers, they really needed a working group to use as guinea pigs to see how the instruments work, how to write for particular instruments, in practical terms.
“It’s all very well to do it in a textbook, but when you actually have the musicians in there, you can ask them questions and hear how it sounds immediately.
“Trinity is at the cutting edge of technology for composition — but it’s important to have a real group of old-fashioned instruments as well.”
During the pilot project the ensemble gave lectures and then asked the students to write short works based on those lectures. The trio recorded and performed the pieces in question in front of a peer student group. This was followed by discussions of how the musical ideas had worked out in practice.
“Music can be very isolated and individualistic, especially composition,” says Peregrine. “So it’s good to get people talking and working in a room together.”
There could be few people more suited to the task than the genial, chatty Peregrine. As a group, Ensemble Avalon is something of a dream team for a multicultural, multidisciplinary student body.
It is deeply committed to commissioning and performing new and classic works.
“For the past three years we have commissioned a new work every year for our festival,” says Peregrine.
“We’ve been very lucky to have the opportunity to work with the composers. And also, our job is to study the trio repertoire, so we’re learning all the time about the writing within that, and how the great composers have done it in the past.”
Petcu-Colan, McHale and Peregrine came together initially to work with Camerata Ireland, Barry Douglas’s north-south chamber group. “We really feel that as a group we reflect the ethos of coming together across the political divide and having a common purpose,” Peregrine says. “Also, we’re the first part of a generation who have the option to come home and work in Ireland as classical musicians.
“In the past that would have been difficult, in many cases. We feel it’s important for the students to see that it’s not too far out of their reach to have a career in music.”
And, he adds, they have learned from the students as well. So even before it starts in earnest, the residency has been a collaborative process. “We’ve learned a lot as a group about how to put something like this together, and how it gets from an idea to reality. We’re going to find more connections as we go along. Ideas will bounce back and forth, and it will evolve.”
Never mind Shostakovich and spag bol, watch out for all kinds of extraordinary menus emanating from this particular musical kitchen over the coming months and years.
