The Chicago-based Black Moon Trio was founded in 2022 by Parker Nelson, Jeremy Vigil, and Khelsey Zarraga. Having met as members of Fifth House Ensemble, Parker, Jeremy, and Khelsey aim to continue making classical music available and relevant to everyone. Harnessing the experience from years of professional chamber music performance, music-making in social service settings, facilitating workshops at universities, developing curriculum for youth in schools, and community development through music, Black Moon Trio is excited to provide a classical music experience that resonates far beyond the vibrations of a final chord.

 

With a commitment to programming and commissioning composers of color and women composers, building educational opportunities for all ages, and working with artists of other disciplines, Black Moon Trio has developed four programs that will premiere in the inaugural 2022-2023 season:

 

The inaugural season opens with the premiere of ¡Festeje!, a program featuring the works of Latine composers from Mexico, Central America, and South America. This program centers around a new piece by three-time Grammy-nominated composer, Miguel del Aguila, that revamps the Baroque Dance Suite into an eight-movement collection of Latin dances. Black Moon Trio will give the world premiere performance at Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods as a part of the 2022 Brushwood Family Fest and to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. This performance also offers the audience the opportunity to dance and to play along with the trio using their own homemade instruments made in guided arts and crafts portions of the festival.

 

Developed in the waning days of Fifth House Ensemble, Spilling Over, is a program developed in collaboration with the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago that was inspired by the works of visual artist, Bob Thompson. Using videos and object talks by lead museum educators at the Smart, Black Moon Trio invites audiences to explore the life of Bob Thompson through his art. The musical selections echo the life and work of Bob Thompson and feature works by black composers, jazz, and original arrangements of compositions by friends of Thompson such as Nina Simone.

 

Black Moon Trio continues the 2022-2023 season with two new projects that feature the work of Chicago-based authors and illustrators. In Honeybee, Black Moon trio will co-create public performances of Candace Fleming and Eric Rohmann’s children's book, Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera, with the author and illustrator. In addition to the performance, Black Moon Trio will collaborate with teaching artists from Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods’ “It’s A W.I.N.” (Arts and Wellness in Nature) program to develop curriculum and nature-exploration journals to share with youth of Lake County, Illinois and promote the understanding, appreciation, and preservation of honeybees and other migratory pollinators.

 

Continuing the theme of wellness through nature, Black Moon Trio also works with Chicago author, Michael Tyler, to develop Sow the Seeds. Tyler’s collection of poetry of the same name was originally written with reflection as a necessary component to the reader’s experience with journaling pages left in between the poems. Black Moon Trio brings this reflection to life by setting the poems to music while also asking audiences to converse, communicate, and reflect with one another on issues directly affecting their communities such as environmental justice and health equity.