The Gryphon Trio will be at Island Center Saturday night for the second time this week — but the first time wasn't to perform.
On Tuesday, the Canadian piano trio members served as the jury for the St. Croix preliminary round of the 11th annual Arts Alive/Vitelco Classical Music Competition for young people.
On Saturday night, violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, cellist Roman Borys and pianist Jamie Parker will be in the spotlight themselves.
On Sunday, the three musicians will fly to St. Thomas to judge the final found of the youth competition.
Saturday's concert actually is the trio's second performance on the Island Center stage, the first having taken place two years ago.
For Saturday's concert, the program consists of piano trios by Haydn, Schumann and Mendelssohn.
All three of the musicians play from time to time with other groups, Patipatanakoon and Borys with a Toronto string quartet and also with the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, and Borys also with Esprit, a new contemporary music orchestra. All teach music as well. But they all say The Gryphon Trio "is by far the primarily group," as Borys puts it.
The trio recently made a three-week tour encompassing performances in western Canada, Washington State and Los Angeles, then flew off to Russia for two concerts in St. Petersburg, followed by another in Helsinki, Finland; then it was back to Toronto for a performance there.
With all this globe trotting, they all still have fond memories of their previous visits to the Virgin Islands. In addition to the 1998 Gryphon tour with performances on St. Thomas and St. John as well as St. Croix, Patipatanakoon and Borys were also in the territory last year to play with other chamber musicians for guests of the Rosewood Resorts in the area — Caneel Bay and Little Dix Bay — and gave an additional concert at the St. John School of the Arts.
"It's great to come back here," Parker said on their first day in the islands at the start of this week. "I've just been lounging around on the balcony listening to a steeldrum playing." Parker added, "I can't tell you how similar the reactions are every time we've told people we come down here to play." In a word: envy.
"Chamber music is not something that is growing in popularity by any stretch," Parker noted. "And yet, the intimacy of the experience in a small venue gives people a feeling of how this music was meant to be played."
Recognized worldwide for its integrity of interpretation of both the standard classical repertoire and contemporary works, The Gryphon Trio has commissioned and premiered a number of new pieces. (Interestingly, none of the musicians are themselves composers.) The trio is meantime exploring the artistic opportunities of collaborating in performance with other mediums such as dance, lighting design and visual arts, notably on a commissioned work called "Constantinople" that is to have its music-portion debut in October. In 1997, the trio performed live on the Internet from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Broadcast Centre in Toronto.
Patipatanakoon and Borys have performed together since 1985, when they accounted for two-thirds of the Trio Lyrika. In 1993, with the addition of Parker, they formed The Gryphon Trio, choosing to take the name for a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. (Americans spell the word "griffin.") Legend has it that the gryphon is a guardian of treasures, symbolizing the relationship between cosmic force and psychic energy. This, the musicians felt, would be fitting for a piano trio that would be known for the performance of both traditional and modern works.
Among them, the three musicians have studied at the Banff Centre, the Curtis Institute, Indiana University, the Juilliard School, the University of British Columbia and Yale University. Borys and Patipatanakoon are on the string faculty of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and Parker teaches piano at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. The trio is currently the ensemble-in-residence for the "Music Toronto" series.
The Gryphon Trio's recordings of the Haydn Piano Trios and Mendelssohn/Dvorak Trios won audience and critical acclaim as well as nominations for Juno Awards. Last year, in response to audience demand, the group recorded a CD of commissioned contemporary works that is to be released soon.
Saturday's concert begins at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 for general admission and $6 for students. They're being sold only at the gate. For further information, call Island Center at 778-5271.
