The San Francisco Early Music Society Presents The Costanoan Trio

The San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS) presents the COSTANOAN TRIO, with violinist Cynthia Black, cellist Frédéric Rosselet and fortepianist Derek Tam. Exploring the piano trio repertoire of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Costanoan Trio features trios by the four great composer-pianists of the late 18th century - Haydn, Mozart, Clementi and Beethoven.

Concerts of the Costanoan Trio will take place at 8 p.m. Friday, September 20 at First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto; at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, September 21 at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley; and at 4 p.m. Sunday, September 22 at Church of the Advent in San Francisco. Individual tickets, $15 to $50, are available for purchase online at sfems.org.

The Costanoan Trio takes its name from an 18th-century Spanish word for the indigenous peoples of the San Francisco Bay Area. Their concert opens with Haydn's Trio in B-flat major, written between 1794 - 95 during the composer's second trip to England. Mozart completed his Trio in E major, K. 542 in the summer of 1788. "It's a beautifully intimate and breezy conversation between three friends," said Tam.

The program closes with Clementi's Trio in D major, Op. 21, No. 2, one of the composer's earlier works, by turns "heartfelt" and "jaunty," full of dynamic surprises and variations. Finally, the Trio in G major, Op. 1, No. 2, a work in four movements, showcases "many of Beethoven's impulsive traits, his extreme and sudden changes in dynamics," as well as his gift for "unhurried exploration of a simple musical theme."

Praised for his "deft" conducting (San Francisco Chronicle) and as a "a master of the harpsichord" (San Francisco Classical Voice), Derek Tam appears regularly throughout the Bay Area and beyond as a conductor and historical keyboardist. In addition to performing with the Costanoan Trio, he is a founding member of MUSA, a Baroque chamber ensemble; he serves as Director of Music at First Church Berkeley; and he also serves on the board of Early Music America and as SFEMS' executive director.

Cynthia Black holds modern viola degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying with Robert Vernon and Lynne Ramsey, and a doctorate in Historical Performance Practice at Case Western Reserve University studying with Julie Andrijeski. In the Bay Area, she performs regularly with American Bach Soloists, Valley of the Moon Music Festival, Ars Minerva and Voices of Music.

Since moving to the United States, Swiss-American cellist Frédéric Rosselet has performed with local ensembles such as American Bach Soloists, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Cappella SF, Live Oak Baroque and Musica Angelica, and has made appearances in several music festivals, notably Yellow Barn (Vermont), Verbier Festival (Switzerland), Carmel Bach Festival, Piatigorsky International Cello Festival (Los Angeles), Music in May (Santa Cruz), Festival Cultural de Mayo (Guadalajara), as well as the Berkeley and Bloomington Early Music Festivals. Equally at ease on modern and period instruments, he enjoys exploring new repertoire for the cello and discovering early works on baroque cello and viola da gamba. He studied at the Conservatory of Lausanne, the Hochschule für Musik in Basel and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, finally obtaining his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California.

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