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Trio
For flute, violin and piano (1978)

After graduating from high school I started to study music more seriously and I enrolled in a conservatory. At the conservatory, I joined a choir that rehearsed in the same building. In this choir I made many close friends, who became professional musicians themselves. Carlos Urbaneja Silva, who studied piano with the same piano teacher I did, was starting to perform with another of our friends in the group, Luis Julio Toro, who at that time was already an accomplished flutist. A third friend of ours, Ernesto Ruiz Leandro, known to us as “Tato”, played the violin. At the time, writing a piece for them seemed like a great idea, and it was wonderful for me to work with them on it. They premièred the Trio in Curaçao during a tour of our chorus, I believe in the summer of 1978.

Since I can remember, I have always been attracted to modes, and this piece is no exception. The opening material works as a frame for the whole piece with very upbeat and groovy syncopated rhythms on E Mixolydian. This leads to a steady pulse of 16th notes, which build ostinato textures from which the flute solos. The tonal center keeps shifting along with the soloing instruments until a change of pulse to a flowing 3/8 meter. Then a backdrop is set, with cascading arpeggios from which each of the instruments ‘solo’. With a ritardando, the piece tapers to a more serene presentation of the opening material, which repeats three times, each time with a thicker texture until a Phrygian cadence in a major key closes in a peaceful ending.

Efraín Amaya 2008