Angella Ahn and her sisters Maria and Lucia had not yet reached their teens when their parents decided to pack up the family and leave their home country of South Korea for the United States. The girls were challenged to learn not just a new language but a whole new culture.

Now, more than 25 years later, it's clear that this decision was beneficial not only for these talented sisters but for audiences worldwide who have witnessed performances that give a new definition to the rather archaic and dark term "chamber music."

Next stop for The Ahn Trio is Rudder Auditorium, where they'll open the 37th MSC OPAS season Tuesday night with a 7:30 curtain.

The first act titles alone suggest this is not the classical concert your grandmother would love, but something with considerably more toe-tap appeal.

Then after intermission, the Ahn sibs will deliver selections from their latest CD, Lullaby for my Favorite Insomniac. They will also be joined onstage by The Kin, Australian brothers Thorry and Isaac Koren, who had gone separate ways until they discovered a common harmony in 2003.

With Angella on violin, Maria on cello and Lucia on piano, The Ahn Trio delivers what some purists may regard as unconventional, a badge they wear proudly.

"As to the question of what can a piano trio do or what it cannot do is kind of irrelevant to us," Angella said last week in a phone interview with The Eagle. "We feel like we can play the music that's influenced by all kinds of genres."

Indeed, tunes titled Slip Jig, Sarabande, Backstep and Disco Boogie would seem to exude genre jumping -- certainly not your typical fare of Schubert, Brahms or other long-gone composers. Quite the contrary, the Ahns focus on music written for them by very-much-alive authors such as Pat Metheny, Kenji Bunch, Nikolai Kapustin, Mark O'Connor and Michael Nyman.

The women don't want you arriving at Rudder thinking this will be an evening of sleep-inducing classical dirge, because it won't be. They don't even care that you dress the part or worry about how to listen or when to clap. How refreshing!

"We don't put ourselves in the classical box, per se," Angella said. "It's open, it's spontaneous, it's creative. And we want our audience to clap when they feel moved to, or laugh or cry. We hope they won't come thinking 'because this is a classical concert, I have to feel a certain way or behave a certain way.'

"We don't want people to feel inhibited in any way because we are classical musicians," she said. While that doesn't mean bring a cooler and barrel of fried chicken, it does mean try to come armed with a different notion of how much fun classical music can be.

For twins Maria and Lucia and younger sister Angella, the transplantation from Seoul to New Jersey came at such a young age that it was more like just another exciting adventure than a permanent alteration of their life's path.

"If we had been older, the adjustment might have been more difficult than it was with me age 9 and them age 11," Angella said. "It was only exciting, it really was. I'm sure for our parents, having these three young girls and only having studied a little English in college, it was a huge struggle; but for the three of us, it was only fun, just thrilling."

They spoke not a word of English when they arrived, but Angella again credits their young age at the time for making learning the language easier than it might have been had they been older. They did, however, bring their passion for music with them.

"We had started playing in Seoul and in fact had already played a couple of concerts," Angella said. "It was more of a hobby then but still, we were quite into our instruments."

Schooled at Juilliard, the Ahns knew early on that music would pay the bills.

"When we first moved to America, our parents' friends' children were enrolled at the Juilliard pre-college, which was a weekly program on Saturdays," Angella recalled. "When we moved to northern New Jersey, we all three auditioned and we all got accepted. That was the first time we saw many other children our ages who were amazing musicians who were serious about music. That was the first time that we all thought that if we want to do music -- and we did -- we have to put in a little more work and be a little more serious and spend more hours doing it."

That led to college, The Juilliard School, interest from a recording label, a New York booking agent and a 1987 Time magazine cover story called "Asian-American Whiz Kids." The Ahn Trio was in the fast lane and now, five CDs later, they are in the middle of a 30-city tour that started in July and ends in May. It's already included stops in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany over the summer and will take them back to Europe next month.

To check on ticket availability for The Ahn Trio with The Kins, call the MSC box office at 845-1234 or go online to www.mscopas.org. For more information on The Ahn Trio, go to www.ahntrio.com.

'Guys and Dolls'

While it's been revived on Broadway several times, the musical Guys and Dolls has never been revived in the Brazos Valley -- until now. Randy Wilson and The Theatre Company bring it to the stage starting Friday and running for 12 performances over the next three weekends.

Guys and Dolls is the story of Nathan Detroit (Bryan Burrets), the proprietor of the oldest established floating craps game in New York. That's the premise of a musical-comedy that involves characters such as Sky Masterson (Clayton Jones), Miss Adelaide (Molly Gasbarrini), Nicely-Nicely Johnson (Chris Haden), Big Jule (Dan Bates) and Sarah Brown (Mandy Walker).

Familiar tunes like Luck Be A Lady Tonight, Guys And Dolls, Sit Down You're Rocking The Boat, A Bushel And A Peck, Adelaide's Lament, and If I Were A Bell will have you toe-tapping and laughing at the same time.

Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets can be ordered online at www.theatrecompany.com and season tickets for all six The Theatre Company shows are available.

Save the date

* Sunday-Wednesday: Arts Council of Brazos Valley and Brazos Valley Arts League present "Hidden -- Oculto by Ernie Sherow", Texas Gallery (696-ARTS, acbv.org)

* Tuesday: MSC OPAS presents The Ahn Trio, 7:30 p.m., Rudder Auditorium (845-1234, mscopas.org)

* Thursday-Oct. 10: Stage Center presents One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 7:30 p.m., Thursdays-Saturdays (696-2787, stagecenter.net)

* Friday-Oct. 15: Arts Council of Brazos Valley and Brazos Valley Arts League present Artswork by Dena Petty, Texas Gallery (696-2787, acbv.org)

* Saturday: St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church presents Matt Maher in concert, 7 p.m., St. Thomas Aquinas Parish Activity Center (693-6994, www.stabcs.org/mmconcert)

* Saturday: Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History presents first annual Buffalo Stampede 5K Race/3K Walk, 8 a.m. and Boonville Days Heritage Fair, 4 p.m. (776-2195, brazosvalleymuseum .org)

* Oct. 8-24: Navasota Theatre Alliance presents Leading Ladies, Thursdays-Saturdays (936-825-3195, navasotatheatre.com)

* Oct. 10-11: Brenham Children's Chorus presents Fall Concert, O'Donnell Center, Blinn college (979-277-6540, brenhamchildrenschorus.org)

* All month: Children's Museum of the Brazos Valley offers various programs, including Monday Madness, from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. (779-5437, www.mymuseum.com)

* Tom Turbiville is The Eagle's arts columnist. He's also sports director for WTAW-1620AM Radio. E-mail him at tom.turbiville@ theeagle.com.