THE first time I met Joan Trimble was in the mid-1980s. Frank Murphy, General Manager of the National Concert Hall, had asked our Dublin Piano Trio to perform Joan's Phantasy Trio. Written at the start of the Second World War, it had remained unplayed since its first performance so naturally Joan was anxious to hear it again. My immediate impression was of a lively, precise and in some ways formidable lady, someone you definitely had to be on your toes for.

Looking back, I don't know quite what I expected. Even then, I knew her music intimately. Her two-piano versions of The Gartan Mother's Lullaby and the Heather Glen sat on our pianos at home for many years and the whole family played them just for fun. It was music that was easy to identify with and to which we wholly responded. Later on I got to know and play her other pieces: Buttermilk Point, The Humours of Carrick and others, and I remember in particular a concert with Philip Hammond in an idyllic setting on the west coast of Scotland. Like me, Philip was hooked on Joan's music.

There were a number of significant details about Joan's life. Arthur Benjamin wrote and dedicated his Jamaican Rumba to the Trimble sisters, Joan and Valerie, specifically to encourage them to play two pianos (something they hadn't spent much time on before). It is a mere detail of history that the Rumba should have become so internationally recognisable. Joan might not even have considered a career in music had she not accompanied the tenor John McCormack on a concert tour of Ireland during the 1930s. His belief in her talent gave Joan the encouragement to go on to studies in London, where she later married and settled before returning to her native Enniskillen in the 1970s.

When I listened to Joan reminiscing about the war years in London -- she was half a pianist and half a Red Cross nurse -- it occurred to me that this period was in many ways the heyday of the Trimble sisters. However, when one reviewer described them as halcyon days, Joan was horrified. I enjoyed the tales of her hectic lifestyle, particularly the one about the turquoise and gold brocade dresses made by the sisters for their Albert Hall Prom. concert. They had no coupons for fabric so the curtains had to do; meanwhile, the taxi awaited while the baby was bathed (with an apron over the precious gown) and final adjustments were made to the hems in the taxi en route to the Albert Hall!

Throughout her life Joan found herself besieged by other commitments. Despite the demands on her time and energies, however, she managed to combine a busy career with acting as receptionist for her G. P. husband and bringing up three children. Help was not easy to get. While she practised or composed, the phone sat on top of her piano to answer queries from patients and make appointments. The Trimbles' radio work, which had made them household names during the war, included regular spots on the Tuesday Serenade programme which continued to run long afterwards. But there were always other things drawing her away from composition and for the last twenty years of her life she devotedly nursed her invalid husband.

Joan was a lady with wide interests and interesting conversation. Perhaps her newspaper background had something to do with her active interest in current affairs. But in the middle of extolling her liberal theories on solving Ireland's political problems, she could just as easily digress into discussions about the itinerant harper Turlough Carolan and his travels in the Fermanagh area. Joan felt connected with the past and her own music responded to the gentle influences of history.