ARTIST PROFILE:
Opalio Trio

Three emerging artists of exceptional promise, Cork natives Eoin Ducrot and Aoife Burke are joined by Venetian pianist Chiara Opalio to present a lunchtime recital of works for piano trio. Contemporary Irish composer Sam Perkin’s Freakshow will open the programme. Comprising seven movements – The Rat Circus, The Two-Headed Nightingale, The Living Skeleton, The Gentle Giant, The Angel of Death, Pandora’s Basket and The Armless Fiddler – it is emotionally wide-ranging, a set of imaginative musical portraits of historical figures whose physical deformities were exhibited as carnival and circus sideshow spectacles during the mid-19^th and early 20^th centuries. This will be followed by Mendelssohn’s beloved and beautifully lyrical Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, undoubtedly one of his finest and most substantial chamber works.

This trio of musicians was brought together by the Spotlight Chamber Music Series, funded by The Arts Council through its Arts Grant Funding Scheme. Between them, they have garnered numerous national and international accolades, and are passionate chamber musicians, performing in many different guises and ensembles. As a trio, they have performed at Triskel Arts Centre in Cork, the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin as part of the Sundays@Noon Concert Series, where they recorded for Near FM, and at the O’Donoghue Centre at the National University of Ireland, Galway, as part of Music for Galway’s Arts in Action Series.