Name: Trio Gaia Performance
Start: 2025-10-12T15:00:00-04:00
Location: 1342 Congress Street, Portland, ME, United States, Maine 04102

Experience a powerful and intimate performance by award-winning musicians!
In Convergence, Trio Gaia explores the theme of conflict—both internal and external—and its resolution through music. In Nico Muhly’s Common Ground, the composer navigates the tension between individual voices and collective unity, highlighting dialogue between contrasting ideas. Janáček’s Kreutzer Sonata, arranged for piano trio, delves into the raw emotions of jealousy and passion, while Bartók’s Contrasts brings together folk-inspired rhythms and harmonic clashes, creating a soundscape of cultural and personal dissonance. The program culminates with Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat major, which at its heart exposes deep inner turmoil on an arduous path toward emotional reconciliation. This program offers a reflective parallel to today's world, where divisions and struggles for resolution continue to shape our collective experience, and the search for unity persists despite discord. These themes are especially relevant as we mark and reflect on the anniversary of the October 7th attacks and ongoing conflicts.
About Trio Gaia: Trio Gaia, New England Conservatory's most recent graduate piano trio in residence, formed in 2018 and is dedicated to offering audiences dynamic, personally relevant experiences inside and outside the concert hall. In their programming, the trio is equally passionate about reviving standard works and championing new works, while also experimenting with original arrangements and compositions.
Trio Gaia has won 1st prize at the WDAV Young Chamber Musicians Competition, as well as prizes in the Premio Trio di Trieste International Music Competition, Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition, and the Plowman National Chamber Music Competition. Recent seasons have included appearances on stages nationally and internationally, including recitals at Schneider Concerts, the Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota, Market Square Concerts, the Harvard Musical Association, Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, Electric Earth Concerts, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, Davidson College Concert Series, Core Memory Music. The trio has also made summer appearances at the Shouse Institute of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, the Chamber Music Workshop of the Perlman Music Program and Yale University’s Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.
Dedicated to sharing classical music in the community, Trio Gaia is also sought-after for its educational programming. The trio has crafted weeklong residencies for the Panama Jazz Festival and the Virginia Arts Festival, served as Community Performance & Partnership fellows at NEC, and most recently were invited to perform and teach at PRIZM International Music Festival in Tennessee. In 2020, during the onset of the pandemic, Trio Gaia gave virtual performances for Music for Food, Massachusetts Peace Action, NEC's Black Student Union, and Opus Illuminate, a series dedicated to music by composers underrepresented in classical music.
Over the years, the trio’s mentors have included Vivian Weilerstein, Don Weilerstein, Kim Kashkashian, Yeesun Kim, Ayano Ninomiya, Merry Peckham, Max Levinson, Laurence Lesser, Itzhak Perlman, and members of the Brentano Quartet and Horszowski Trio.