This Sunday afternoon, Reith Recital Hall was filled with the sounds of passionate violin playing, rich cello tones and dramatic piano chords — the sounds of the Sherer Trio. 

The Sherer Trio was created in memory of Lon Sherer, the founder of the Goshen College Orchestra, and Kathryn Sherer, a piano professor at GC. It is composed of Solomia Soroka on violin, Matthew Hill on piano and Dato Machavariani on cello.

The concert began with Beethoven’s Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3. Its fiery passages and mournful sections offered a dramatic conversation between the instruments. 

Next, the group played Max Bruch’s Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 5. The Romantic era trio brought out the melancholy melodies of the violin and the cello. 

Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio finished out the concert with dissonant dark sounds punctuated by dramatic silences. The playful yet dissonant sound of Clarke’s last movement created the image of an out of control carnival until the Sherer Trio brought the chaos to an end with a flourish. 

The highlight of the concert for Victor Vegas, a junior music major, was the third movement of the Bruch Piano Trio. “Because I compose, I really picked on specific things,” Vegas said. “I’ve always been much more of a Romantic era music kinda guy so I really dig that kind of sound.”

Matthew Hill jokingly said “Finishing it!” was  the highlight of the concert before praising the opportunity to collaborate with Soroka and Machavariani. 

“Whenever … you are performing alongside really good musicians like that,” he said, “you actually go into a different world than you’ve been in even in rehearsals.”

For Hill, each Sherer Trio performance invites us to remember not only Lon and Kathryn Sherer, but the many  GC faculty who have inspired him including Marvin Blickenstaff, Doyle Preheim and Mary Oyer. 

“All those people I mentioned are huge shoes to fill and so the Sherer Trio is in honor of them,” Hill said, “but it is really in honor of music at Goshen College and all the wonderful faculty that have been here in the past … We owe them a lot, more than a lot.”