The Buttonwood Trio

By popular demand, ArtsFarmington is bringing  the Buttonwood Trio back to the stage in Farmington on Sunday, March  3rd, at 3:00pm. The performance will be in the Nordica Auditorium,  Merrill Hall, at the University of Maine in Farmington. The trio  consists of Philip Carlsen, cello, Mary Hunter, violin, and James  Parakilas, piano. They will be performing Joaquín Turina’s Piano Trio  No. 2 from 1933, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 from 1944, and  the world premiere of the piano trio version of Carlsen’s “Far Psalteries.” Adult tickets are $20, more if you can, less if you can’t.  Nobody turned away.

Philip Carlsen taught at the University of Maine at Farmington from 1982 to 2015, conducting the UMF Community Orchestra and offering courses in theory, composition, history of jazz, non-Western music and music in film. His compositions have been performed at the Kennedy Center, New York’s Town Hall and Museum of Modern Art, at national conferences of the Society of Composers, and throughout Maine. Now a resident of South Portland, Phil plays with the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra and on baroque cello with the professional early music group St. Mary Schola.

Mary Hunter taught at Bates College from 1979 to 1997 and at Bowdoin from 1997 to 2017. She taught music history, music theory, courses on music and film, and music and gender and regularly coached chamber music. As a scholar she has written about late eighteenth-century opera, including Mozart, eighteenth-century chamber music, and more recently about the ideologies of classical music performance. As a performer she is a member of the Midcoast Symphony and has played chamber music most of her life.

James Parakilas taught music at Bates College from 1979 to 2016. A musicologist, he has published on piano music and cultural roles of the piano, on opera and on musical cognition. He taught courses on music history and theory, music drama, and music and the mind. As a pianist he has performed with the UMF, Bates College, and Midcoast orchestras, as well as with student and professional chamber groups in Maine. He has premiered works by several Maine composers, including Philip Carlsen.