For the opening concert of the 2017-18 season, the Tryon Concert Association will present The Montrose Trio at 8 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 17 at the Tryon Fine Arts Center. The program includes Poeme by Shostakovich, Trio in E-flat Major by Beethoven, and Trio No. 1 in B Major by Brahms.

Exemplifying the very best in chamber music, the Montrose Trio plays with brilliance, clarity and sensitivity. Soloists in their own rights, the three musicians “play as a unit, melding seamlessly with an impeccable sense of ensemble.”

Violinist Martin Beaver and cellist Clive Greensmith, former members of the Tokyo String Quartet, performed many times with famed pianist Jon Kimura Parker. Their collaboration in 2014 to form the Montrose Trio was a natural. The Trio has performed throughout this country and abroad and is considered one of the leading piano trios of the world.

Mr. Parker is called a true Canadian ambassador of music, having performed for Queen Elizabeth II, the United States Supreme Court, and the prime ministers of Canada and Japan. He performs with major North American orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and appears in Off the Score, an experimental group with legendary “The Police” drummer Stewart Copeland. He is artistic advisor of the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival and professor of piano at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston. Mr. Parker was also featured as a speaker alongside humanitarians Eli Wiesel and Paul Rusesabagina at the 50th anniversary of the relief organization AmeriCares in commemoration of his performances in war-torn Sarajevo in 1995.

Martin Beaver, previously first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet, is known for his technical agility, warm tone, and remarkable memory for the violin repertoire. He has appeared as soloist with the orchestras of San Francisco, Indianapolis, Montreal, Toronto, and in Belgium and Portugal. A founder of the Toronto String Quartet, he is also an educator, having taught at several outstanding schools of music in Canada and the United States and is now on the faculty at the Colburn School in Los Angeles.

Clive Greensmith is one of the most successful British cellists of his generation. As well as performing with the Tokyo String Quartet, he has performed as soloist with the London Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Mostly Mozart Orchestra, the Seoul Philharmonic, and the RAI Orchestra in Rome. Mr. Greensmith has given concerts across the globe and has collaborated with outstanding international artists, including András Schiff, Claude Frank, and Steven Isserlis. He has had a long and distinguished teaching career and is presently co-director of chamber music and professor of cello at the Colburn School in Los Angeles.

Information about the concert series at TFAC is available through the Tryon Concert Association, P.O. Box 32, Tryon, NC 28782. For more information visit tryonconcerts.org

– submitted by Anne De Sutter