18 JUNE 2019

JOAN TRIMBLE - UK 
BORN 18 JUNE

Joan  Trimble was born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Ireland. She studied piano with Annie Lord at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin, and music at Trinity College, Dublin (BA 1936, BMus 1937) and continued her studies at the Royal College of Music (RCM), London, until 1940 (piano with Arthur Benjamin and composition with Herbert Howells and Ralph Vaughan Williams).

She first gained notice as part of a piano duo with her sister Valerie (1917–1980), earning a first prize at a Belfast music competition as early as 1925. Joan also composed a number of works for two pianos which the duo performed. A 1938 recital at the RCM, at which they performed three of them, was their breakthrough. Other composers wrote works for them, too, including Jamaican Rumba by Arthur Benjamin, which became a signature tune for the duo. Trimble's Phantasy Trio (1940) won the Cobbett Prize for chamber music. The sisters also performed modern music, including works by Stravinsky, Dallapiccola, Arthur Bliss and Lennox Berkeley and continued to perform in public until 1970. Trimble married in 1942 and had children, which restricted her compositional output. In 1957 her opera Blind Raftery was the third opera commissioned by the BBC for television, and the first television opera written by a female composer. Between 1959 and 1977 she taught piano at the RCM, with the years since 1967 travelling from Northern Ireland.

Joan Trimble's music is conservative for her time. She combined the impressionist harmonic language she had learned since her studies with Annie Lord with melodic and rhythmic inflections derived from Irish traditional music. Her arrangements of Irish airs for two pianos do not differ stylistically from her original compositions. Her most advanced music will be found in the Sonatina for two pianos (1940) and the impressive song cycle The County Mayo (1949). Trimble's music is always melodic, tastefully written, and rewarding for performers.

After her father's death in 1967 she went to work on his newspaper, The Impartial Reporter in Enniskillen, and cared for her husband who was severely ill for decades. She regained some attention in the 1990s when she was commissioned for a new composition  and the first recordings of her music appeared. 

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Phantasy Trio by Joan Trimble by Galina  Ustvoskaja

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LINA PIRES DE CAMPOS - BRAZIL  

BORN 18 JUNE

Lina Pires de Campos was born in São Paulo, Brazil, the daughter of Italian luthier Angelo Del Vecchio. She studied piano with Ema Lubrano Franco and Léo Peracchi and music theory and composition with Furio Franceschini, Caldeira Filho and Osvaldo Lacerda. Later she studied composition with Camargo Guarnieri.

Pires de Campos worked as assistant to Magda Tagliaferro and in 1964 founded her own piano school. She won awards as a composer including in 1961 the Roquete Pinto medal and the second place composition prize from Radio Mec. Her works have been performed internationally.

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Ponteio e Toccatina by Lina Pires de Campos

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