Caravaggio's Shadow 2022

Acclaimed as a “creative force,” cellist and composer Chris Votek, who is one of LA’s most in demand studio artists and composers, is celebrating the release of Memories of a Shadow, on MicroFest Records, with a concert on March 5 at the Pico Union Project.

With excerpts from their new CD "In the shadow", the Trio Adorno presents compositions that have hitherto not been sufficiently in the limelight of European chamber music salons. After the fresh and festive C major Trio by Joseph Haydn, the Trio Adorno's insider tip sounds: Martinu's last piano trio. His piano trios are hardly known, performed, published or even recorded on sound carriers, even in chamber music circles, despite their tonally magical variety of colours. Probably also, since the exiled Czech is always in the shadow of his two Compatriots Smetana and Dvořaks stood. The Adornos devote themselves to the latter with his Piano Trio in G minor, an enchanting work which, in turn, would also be much better known if it didn't suffer from the top dog Dumky Trio, which affects perception clearly dominated by Dvorak's piano trio oeuvre.

Even as a young child, Lucia Swarts was taught to be extra alert when women did not have the same opportunities as men. Many women did not have the same opportunities as men to compose and publicly share their musical ideas and lead public lives as composers, with some having their freedom limited by ill health or because family or society had different plans for them. Through the ages, female composers encountered considerable difficulties, often with fewer opportunities, support and education, even when they were members of the upper social classes. They were not in a position to enjoy worldwide fame, but several of them accomplished a great deal. Strong women, in other words.

With their first album, the Trio Adorno consciously addresses three compositions, which are rarely heard in concert for rather different reasons. Mozart’s Piano Trio in D minor, KV 442, is presented as well as Martinů’s Piano Trio in C Major and Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 66.