Hope College will host the piano trio Trio con Brio Copenhagen as part of the Great Performance Series on Friday, Oct. 14, at 7:30 p.m. in the Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts.
Recognized as “one of the finest piano trios on the current scene” by The New Yorker, this ensemble has won most of the international competitions for piano trios around the world.
Korean sisters Soo-Jin Hong (violin) and Soo-Kyung Hong (cello) and Danish pianist Jens Elvekjaer founded Trio con Brio Copenhagen in Vienna in 1999. The sisters had played together since childhood, and Jens Elvekjaer and Soo-Kyung Hong (who are now married) had played piano and cello duos together for years. They have won countless awards and performed in significant venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall and the Konzerthaus Berlin.
Their performance at Hope College will include Joseph Haydn’s “Trio in G major, Hob. XV:25 ‘Gypsy’”; Bedrich Smetana’s “Trio in G minor, opus 15”; and Maurice Ravel’s “Piano Trio.”
The trio’s high-quality sound has been recognized by some of the most important and renowned musicians of the time. In 2005, Trio con Brio Copenhagen received the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson International Trio Award, one of the most coveted in the world of chamber music. This biennial award, with a panel of prominent musicians as judges, carried with it appearances on 20 major concert series across the United States, thereby introducing the trio to American audiences.
The members of the trio have created their programs to include the core well-known repertoire as well as contemporary compositions from Scandinavia. They often commission pieces so that the trio’s repertoire is dynamic and constantly changing. Their performances and interpretations benefit from a constant curiosity about repertoire as well as new angles and cohesive themes in programming, opening new perspectives for both the players and the audience.
Season tickets are still available for the Great Performance Series. Season subscriptions are $80 for adults, $65 for senior citizens, and $160 for a family (regardless of the number of children). The subscriptions are such a savings that they are equivalent to seeing two shows for free. Individual tickets are also on sale, and are $18 for regular admission, $13 for senior citizens, and $6 for children 18 and under. Tickets for Hope College students are free.
Tickets are available online at hope.edu/tickets as well as at the ticket office in the Events and Conferences Office located downtown in the Anderson-Werkman Financial Center (100 E. Eighth St.). The ticket office is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and can be called at (616) 395-7890.
More information about the season may be obtained online by visiting hope.edu/gps/.
The Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts is located at 221 Columbia Ave., between Ninth and 10th streets.