Joan Trimble
Joan Trimble's music joins Impressionist harmony to the melodic and rhythmic turn of Irish traditional airs. She wrote and performed for two pianos, and arranged Arthur Benjamin's Jamaican Rumba for the duo medium she knew from the keyboard.
Her original two-piano pieces and her arrangements of Irish airs sit on the same ground: rhapsodic rhythm, colour and clarity, written without regard to schools or fashion. With her sister Valerie she formed a piano duo for which Arthur Benjamin composed Jamaican Rumba; it became their signature, and she later wrote a personal introduction to surveys of his piano and chamber music. Her catalogue also takes in the Phantasy for piano trio, The County Mayo for baritone and two pianos, a Suite for Strings, and Blind Raftery, a BBC television opera set in the west of Ireland.
Credits
Jamaican Rumba, Vol. 2
Pianist Ian Munro's devotion to Arthur Benjamin drives this second volume of chamber music, recorded with colleagues from the Tall Poppies Ensemble. Major and long-neglected works for violin, viola, cello and clarinet finally receive their due.
Jamaican Rumba, Vol. 1
Recorded for the first time, this is a comprehensive overview of the piano music of Arthur Benjamin, an Australian composer who spent most of his life in Europe and whose work has long been neglected. Ian Munro plays with an astonishing affinity for the music.