What: Hibiki Trio
When: 3 p.m., Nov. 22
Where: Sursa Performance Hall
A flute, viola and harp playing together might seem like an unusual combination, but they blend well when their musicians are as accomplished at their craft as the members of the Hibiki Trio, an ensemble made up of faculty from the School of Music.
Plus, said Elizbeth Richter, the harpist for the Hibiki Trio, there is a surprising amount of musical literature for the three different instruments.
Hibiki Trio’s members include Richter, Mihoko Watanabe on flute and Katrin Meidell on viola. They performed their first concert in April and will be performing again Nov. 22 in Sursa Performance Hall at 3 p.m.
Each member of the ensemble comes from a different part of the world. Watanabe hails from Japan — Richter from New York and Meidell from Denmark.
They’ve performed separately in a variety of different ensembles and symphonies including the Kansas City Philharmonic, the Boston Philharmonic and the Muncie Symphony.
They came to Ball State because of the performance opportunities that are offered to the faculty.
Watanabe, Meidell and Richter played together before they formed the Hibiki Trio, but Watanabe wanted to revive their pairing and give it a new name.
Kelsey Byrum, a junior music education major and student of Watanabe, attended the Hibiki Trio’s debut concert where they played “Sonata for flute, viola and harp” by Claude Debussy, a French composer.
“It was interesting to see how they were able to make three seemingly different instruments work really well together,” Byrum said.
The Trio has since performed at the College Music Society National Conference on Nov. 7 at the JW Marriott Indianapolis where Watanabe said the trio was well-received by the audience. They will continue their performance streak after the Sursa concert with an appearance at the American Viola Society Conference in Oberlin, Ohio.
The Trio has decided to take a more contemporary approach to their upcoming Ball State concert while still maintaining Debussy's richness.
“All of us are open to playing modern, contemporary music, which opens a lot of doors when it comes to putting together a concert program,” Meidell said. “Each audience member gets what they want out of a performance. It’s not so much what we want to give, so we just give what we have.”
The Sursa performance will include works by Jean-Phillipe Rameau, Jiro Censhu, Jacques Ibert and Srul Irving Glick.
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