The First Music Concert Series at the First Church, 1 Concord St., will present Chamber Masters V with the Boston-based Neave Trio on April 18 at 3 p.m. (Photo by Mark Roemisch)

NASHUA – The First Music Concert Series at the First Church, 1 Concord St., will present Chamber Masters V with the Boston-based Neave Trio on April 18 at 3 p.m. Admission is free. The concert is an in-person event, with a reduced capacity audience. Wearing masks is a requirement inside the church building for all attendees.

Formed in 2010, Neave Trio consists of violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov and pianist Eri Nakamura. The trio strives to champion new works by living composers.

The April 18 program includes Clara Schumann’s “Piano Trio in G minor. Op. 17,” Lili Boulanger’s “D’un matin de printemps,” and Astor Piazzolla’s “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.” The Schumann and Boulanger are part of a collection of works by women composers.

Veselov, who hails from St. Petersburg, Russia, said the trio selects the works that they play based on the material and its wide range appeal.

“As you can tell, it is classical music but that’s such a broad term,” he said. “It can include anything like the romantic music of Clara Schumann to tango by Astor Piazzolla. Choosing the repertoire is always a process. We’re lucky in this formation to have so many different options.”

Formed in 2010, Neave Trio consists of violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov and pianist Eri Nakamura. The trio strives to champion new works by living composers. (Photo by Jacob Lewis Lovendahl)

The trio is proud to be playing the work of two female composers and Veselov said that he along with Williams and Nakamura think it’s important to play selections that may have been often overlooked.

“Our last recording was ‘Her Voice,’ and features work by all-women composers,” he stated. “In general, I think it’s only 1.2 percent of repertoires have been written by women composers. The rest has been written by male composers.”

The members of Neave Trio are all in residence at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nakamura is from Hiroshima, Japan and Williams grew up in the Boston area.

Williams and Veselov met at the Longy School where they now teach. The two met in 2008.

As for working with living composers, Veselov said it’s a privilege for the trio to have that opportunity.

“So often in piano for example, the composers are no longer with us,” he said. “We love that tradition but you can never ask that composer a question as to what their intention was. To work with living composers is such a gift because you can collaborate with them.”

Veselov said while the trio thoroughly enjoys interpreting the works of different composers, none of its members compose music themselves.

“None of us are composers, unfortunately,” he said. “It’s such a specific skill and talent. We wouldn’t dare. But in Astor Piazzolla’s piece that we’re going to play, since it’s tango music, and Piazzolla had a band, it’s really a cross between classical music and jazz and obviously tango so there are sections of it which are improvised.”

With a skeleton of a chord and a melody, Veselov said that the group members “get to play around with it a bit.”

“That’s the closest way that we get to making stuff up,” he said.

When not performing, Veselov enjoys listening to many different types and genres of music. He said that’s part of their occupation.

“We’re so lucky to have this job,” he said. “We’re always listening to trio repertoires obviously, to determine what music we might select next. We also teach so we get to hear music played by our wonderful students. So our head is always in the music space in one way or another.”

Veselov also loves popular music and especially listens to jazz when in his car.

“Good music is good music,” he said. “There is a lot of inspiration to be found across all genres. We do listen to everything.”

Neave has performed at many esteemed concert series and at festivals worldwide, including Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Smithsonian American Art Music, 92nd Street Y, Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Norfolk and Norwich Chamber Music Series in the U.K., and the Samoylov and Rimsky Korsakow Museum’s Chamber Music Series in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The trio performs 50 dates per year, although 2020 presented a much different schedule for the group due to the pandemic.

“We are always excited to do as much as we can,” he said. “Even with COVID, we were lucky enough to have streaming concerts and outdoor concerts in the summertime. So, we’re very fortunate to have had that and we can’t wait to come back and see live audiences in person.”

The April 18 show in Nashua will be their first live performance since last summer. For more information, visit neavetrio.com or tfcucc.org.

Newsletter