[4] 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.
[8] In 1957, the BBC commissioned an opera from her, and she chose the 1924 Blind Raftery by Donn Byrne (1889-1928), the story of a wandering Irish bard set in the west of Ireland in the 17th century.
[7] It was the second opera commissioned by the BBC for television, the first having been the one-act Manana in 1956 by Benjamin, Trimble's piano teacher at the Royal College of Music;[7] and it was the first television opera written by a female composer[9] Between 1959 and 1977 Trimble was professor of accompaniment and musicianship at the Royal College of Music,[3] for ten years after 1967 commuting between London and Enniskillen.
Joan Trimble married in June 1942 in London, John Greenwood Gant (1917–2000),[10] a Royal Army Medical Corps officer,[4] with whom she had a son and two daughters.
They gave their first professional recital as a duo in the evening of September 28, 1938, at the Royal College of Music in London, as war was about to be declared with Germany.
Their repertoire was wide and included Arnold Cooke, Dallapiccola, and Stravinsky, and they premièred the two-piano concertos of Arthur Bliss and Lennox Berkeley.
[3] Also in 1985, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a concert to celebrate her 70th birthday, which included the first performance since 1957 of her composition for baritone and two pianos, The County Mayo.
[3] Her work combined the impressionist harmonic language she had learned since her studies with Annie Lord with melodic and rhythmic inflections derived from Irish traditional music.
[3] She was an active managing director, in the ten years after 1967 commuting between London, where she was teaching, and Enniskillen; and she became involved in local journalism and wrote for the paper, including a weekly column devoted to the history of the district.
The purpose of the scheme was to encourage and support the involvement of young people in creativity, the performing arts and Irish culture, and to provide bursaries for training and education.
[19] In 2012, Fermanagh County Museum staged an exhibition titled "Buttermilk Point: The Musical Life of Joan Trimble, 1915–2000".