St Stephen’s Church. Friday 28th April 2023 at 1.00pm.
There is no question that Trio Doyenne was one of the stars of Springfest ’22 when they played Brahms and Boulanger in Inverness Town House on Friday 6th May 2022. It is an honour for musicinverness to invite them back to our new venue of St Stephen’s Church and for the trio to provide the climax of Springfest ’23
Trio Doyenne is an internationally formed piano trio comprised of three young emerging artists. Monika Masanauskaite (piano, Lithuania), Michelle Dierx (violin, Belgium) and Shannon Merciel (cello, USA) began their journey at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2017.
They were highly commended at the Governor’s Recital Prize for Chamber Music in February of that year. They successfully represented RCS at the Intercollegiate Piano Trio Competition in Manchester and at the Annual General Assembly of the World Federation of International Music Competitions. Since then, they have been invited to competitions and recital venues around Europe. In May of 2018, they won first prize at the 24th Josep Mirabent i Migrans Chamber Music Competition in Sitges, Spain and the Mary D Adams Prize for Chamber Music by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. In the summer of 2018, they toured to different venues around Europe performing Rachmaninoff’s iconic Trio “Elegiaque” in G minor and Shostakovich’s first piano trio. They were invited to perform at Dumfries House, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Concerts aux Chateâux Series in Saint-Savin (France), Racó de la Calma Music Series in Sitges, and at the 6th Eduardo Ocón International Course for Youth in Málaga, where they also spent the week giving private lessons to students of the course.
At the end of 2018, Shannon moved back to the United States, Michelle moved to London to pursue her Master’s at the Royal Academy of Music, and Monika remained in Glasgow until she had finished Master’s at RCS. She has now moved to Berlin where, last September, she married the pianist Robertas Lozinskis who received great acclaim when he and Michelle Dierx played in the Spectrum Theatre for At One With Music in December 2018. So technically, by Lithuanian tradition, she is now Monika Lozinskiene.
Though the three have been separated, it is their mission to continue to work together learning new repertoire and performing recitals in as many locations as they can. The trio hopes that, while they currently reside in different countries, they can maintain their musical cohesion by meeting a few times a year to perform recitals.
For their second Springfest concert, Trio Doyenne will be playing:-
Ludwig van Beethoven : Piano Trio No 6 in E flat major, Op 70 No 2
Stasys Vainiunas : Piano Trio
Fritz Kreisler : Three short pieces
musicinverness 