Piano Trio - II, III | Jose Daniel Vargas, SFCM Senior Recital

San Francisco Conservatory of Music Barbro Osher Recital Hall Sunday, May 12th, 2024 Cuna Kim, violin Daniela Gonzales-Siu, cello Jon Lee, piano These are the second and third movements of my first piano trio, which also happens to be my first multi-movement piece. This piece was composed during my third year at SFCM as an undergraduate studying classical composition under Dr. David Conte. I decided to attempt my first large-scale chamber work after hearing the world premiere of my Dr. Conte's own second piano trio in Spring of '22. Thanks to the guidance and encouragement of my colleague and good friend Ericsson Hatfield, and having spent the summer prior with the book Classical Form by William Caplin, I was able to complete my 25-minute, four-movement piano trio within my junior year. My main areas focus while writing this trio was counterpoint, form, and clarity. I wanted to create meaningful musical interactions between the three instruments that would form a convincing energy curve that every listener could follow. The lessons I learned while composing this piece pushed the boundaries of my compositional technique and paved the way for all of my future pieces. Because of how pivotal this piece was in my studies, I decided to feature these middle movements on my senior recital. Having graduated from SFCM and being a life-long advocate for free and open access to high-quality information, I look forward to creating educational videos in the future about my compositional process and the different lessons each of my pieces teach me. If you have read this far, I hope you stick around and look out for more content from me coming soon! -Jose