Puget Sound Piano Trio

The Puget Sound Piano Trio is the ensemble-in-residence at University of Puget Sound School of Music in Tacoma, WA. Over the Trio’s rich four-decade history, it has presented hundreds of concerts in a multitude of venues, from celebrated biannual performances on the university’s Jacobsen Concert Series to appearances in prominent concert halls throughout the United States. 

Trio members Maria Sampen (violin), Alistair MacRae (cello), and Ronaldo Rolim (piano) bring distinguished musical backgrounds and a rich variety of professional experiences to their work as a trio.  Both individually and as the Puget Sound Piano Trio, they have appeared in concerts throughout the world, as soloists with numerous orchestras, and at major music festivals such as Aspen, Ravinia, Brevard, and Banff.  Recently, they were featured soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Northwest Sinfonietta and conductor Mei-Ann Chen; and their latest visit to KING FM Seattle's Northwest Focus Live, where they have been frequent guests, was featured nationally on NPR Music Live Sessions. Upcoming and recent engagements include performances and artistic residencies at Benaroya Hall (Seattle), The Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Bowling Green State University (OH), Grand Valley State University (MI), Alaska Center for the Performing Arts (Anchorage), Roosevelt University (Chicago), and Berklee College of Music (Boston).

The Puget Sound Piano Trio is equally at home performing repertoire from the standard classical canon and hot-off-the-press works of living composers. They recently completed a recording of piano trios by Marilyn Shrude, which is slated for future release. In 2023, the Trio gave the West Coast premiere of Miguel del Aguila's Barroqueada, a neo-Baroque suite infused with Latin-American dances. This became the seed of a program entirely dedicated to Latin-American music for the following season, including 21st-century works by Gabriela Ortiz and Alejandro Cardona. The Trio can also be heard on the 2020 Navona Records recording Drift, featuring Tianyi Wang's trio Dark Blessing. That same year, the group commissioned and premiered Robert Hutchinson's When April Woods Are Red for piano trio and mezzo-soprano.

In addition to performing on the concert stage, the Trio is deeply committed to educational outreach. As part of this mission, the ensemble's concert tours are multifaceted in nature, often combining a string of formal concerts with free workshops, masterclasses, and school visits. The Trio's recent visits to Temple Music Prep (Philadelphia), Anchorage Youth Symphony, Tuesday Musicale of Detroit, the MacPhail Center for the Arts (Minneapolis); and schools in Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, Boulder, New Jersey, and throughout the Pacific Northwest have placed them in contact with thousands of students and young people of every background. The Trio frequently interacts with educational institutions at the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels in its Pacific Northwest home as well as throughout the United States, and passionately believes that music and art should be a part of every child’s education.