Joan Trimble

Joan Trimble (18 June 1915 – 6 August 2000) was an Irish composer and pianist from Ulster. She studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London, and she and her sister performed for many years as a piano duo. In later years she inherited her father’s newspaper, becoming its proprietor and editor. Early life Joan Trimble was born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh (now Northern Ireland) to William Egbert Trimble, the proprietor of The Impartial Reporter, one of Ulster’s regional newspapers, and Marie Dowse from Dublin. Joan grew up in a musical household; her mother was a solo violinist from a Dublin family of musicians, from which all eleven children had attended the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and her father was a bass-baritone and a noted collector of folksong. She attended Enniskillen Royal School for Girls and was the school’s first Head Girl. Joan studied composition with John F. Larchet and won a scholarship to the University of Dublin, from where she graduated with a BA degree in 1936. and studied piano with Annie Lord and music at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1936, BMus 1937). In 1936, the tenor John McCormack chose her to play piano solos