The Nightingale Trio is a women’s vocal trio inspired by traditional folk songs and vocal techniques from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Their pure vocal stylings have been featured on NPR’s Prairie Home Companion and they have delighted audiences in live performances around the United States. The Nightingale Trio is village harmonies, birdsong lullabies, and moonlit round dances. They reignite the flame of women’s folk music from Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Nila Bala, Rachel LaViola, and Sarah Larsson met each other in 2009, singing with the Yale Slavic Chorus. One year after finishing their degrees, the three reunited as The Nightingale Trio. They have studied the traditional vocal techniques unique to women’s folk music of the Balkans and Eastern Europe with master singers from Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia.
“[Seeing the chorus] was truly one of those life-changing moments,” said Larsson, who lives in Minneapolis. “Singing this music has always been about how inherently beautiful it is and the connection to a lineage of culture that has been carried to this side of the Atlantic.” Eight months after graduating from college, Larsson, LaViola and Bala met again at a Balkan music festival in New York, where LaViola asked, “If I find a few gigs for us in Dallas to cover the cost of your flight, will you come visit for a singing weekend?”
They quickly chose the nightingale as their namesake because of its significance in Eastern European folk songs and stories. Then, after booking some gigs in Dallas, the trio found their rhythm. “People really wanted to hear us and were wondering when we were going to be back since they just assumed we all lived in Texas,” LaViola said. “So we thought, if it works, why don’t we keep doing this until people just don’t want to hear us anymore?”
The Nightingales sound fuller than a trio, yet still maintain the intimate, tight harmonies of a family band. Though dedicated to recreating the rhythmic, complex, and stunning folk songs that have spanned centuries of Slavic artistic culture, the Nightingale Trio also strives to expand the boundaries of the traditional folk by bringing their own unique forms of expression and creativity to the dynamic and ever-evolving art form.
