February 2025

Dear friends and supporters,

Greetings from the Lions Gate Trio! Hope you are all doing very well. 
Many of you have asked us to update you on the Trio and our recording project. Here is our first report! Others will follow. 

Happy 2025! The Lions Gate Trio welcomed the year with a freezing frenzy--with a fantastic blitz of recording sessions in Boston. Yes, our exciting plans begun over a year ago have at last been realized. In large part, this was thanks to all of you. We are so grateful for your enthusiasm at our concerts, for your loyalty and interest. Heartfelt thanks to those of you who contributed financially to this ambitious project as well. 

You may remember the theme of our recording: Gabriel Fauré was the father of the French sound, so we began by recording his noble, lyrical D minor trio. Demonstrating his legacy among those who followed, we also recorded four contemporary trios by those influenced by the French sound--works by Kaija Saariaho, Christophe Bertrand, York Höller, and Clara Iannotta.

WGBH Radio Studios in Boston was an exquisite place in which to record, with its extraordinary wood architecture, very high ceilings–and hey, even some purple lighting (see photo). Our recording engineer Antonio Oliart proved a wonderful partner for our process, with his astute musical insights, superpowers of perception, and wise and lovely presence. Thank you so much, Antonio!!!

Each morning——brrr!—-we Lions braced ourselves to face the cold (18 degrees Fahrenheit!). But once we were inside WGBH's Studio, the music transported us to far-off worlds. It also challenged us like nothing we have ever played together. Playing Saariaho's Light and Matter, we found ourselves floating across vast, surreal expanses. Her acoustic-inspired textures shimmer and hover, creating a world of infinite intimacy.

Höller’s Daydream miniatures vacillated between rhythmic punch, quicksilver gesture, and suspended chords. Bertrand's nearly impossible webs of sound proved, in the end.... to be possible! They culminated in a cello cadenza: Darrett played like a maniac--but, of course, a brilliant one! And amazingly, he broke two (three?) strings in the process. (That has never happened before!) For Iannotta's music, Florence was constantly standing up to play inside the precisely-prepared piano and then back down again to the keys. At the same time, we string players, in order to meet Iannotta's extraordinary demands, were in a whirlwind of physical motion. With our lowest strings detuned to unusual pitches, we found natural harmonics all over our instruments. These add fascinating and exotic flavors to the group sound.

Our days were very long and multi-faceted. But with the last note of the last recording session, we found we were deeply satisfied and also deeply exhausted! We braved the cold one more time, to raise a glass in celebration at the local tavern, making plans to start the editing process. 

Our next steps include working with our program note writer, and communicating with our record label (Triton). 

The post-recording process has several stages. We will keep you posted on our progress! No doubt the recording will come together speedily this season, wrapping up by summer or early fall. 

Thank you, again, for each and every way you helped us get here. 

Until the next post---our very best wishes to everyone!

Katie, Darrett, and Florence

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