Earth, water and some fire in this mix

NZ Trio's Sarah Watkins (left), Ashley Brown and Justine Cormack. Photo / Becky Nunes

A few weeks ago, Rannoch, the art-laden Epsom residence of James Wallace, hosted a celebration of an exciting development in the career of one of the country's leading chamber music ensembles.

The NZ Trio was proclaiming its independence after its years of residency with the University of Auckland, with Justine Cormack, Sarah Watkins and Ashley Brown offering an up close and personal sampling of their repertoire from Haydn through to a project-in-progress by Australian composer Stuart Greenbaum.

Spoken introductions to the pieces were democratically shared around the group. A few weeks later, violinist Justine Cormack hesitates when I bring up the word "leader".

"We all take leadership roles in different areas," she explains. "It's more a matter of one of us instigating that first mini-second and then all three of us are there, aiming at the same goal."

Next weekend, the ensemble returns from a South Island tour to present their new Flourishes programme and Cormack allows that the concert's final showpiece, Ravel's Trio, has special significance for the group.

"This was on our very first concert programme back in 2002 and we've all played it with different people," she recalls. "Yet, every time we come back to it, we do make changes. It's always ongoing; you never get to the point of 'this is it'."

NZ Trio has made its name fostering local composers, both in concert and on their two CDs, the 2005 Spark and the most recent Bright Tide Moving Between.

She has fond memories of composer Phil Dadson working intensively with the three musicians "to loosen us up to feel free and comfortable with improvising" and is justifiably proud that commissions from Ross Harris and Jack Body have been included on the group's Arts Channel recitals.

"We're trying to expand barriers all the time," she stresses, "but it's absolutely paramount that we take the audience with us. The last thing we want to do is alienate them, which is why we like to mix the contemporary in with other music so they can digest and enjoy it."

Next Sunday's contemporary offerings are Eve de Castro-Robinson's At Water's Birth and Wayan Yudane's Entering the Stream. Cormack is momentarily caught by the coincidence that both works reference water in their titles but is clearly struck by the way in which de Castro-Robinson's piece "seems to come from the very beginning of time".

"It's as if it comes out of the earth," she muses. "There's such a peacefulness about it, even if it does get seriously going in the middle."

Cormack singles out one extraordinary moment in which she and Ashley Brown have a spot of bounce-on-the-string ricochet bowing against Sarah Watkins' piano, the instrument's sonorities modified by rubber stops on its strings.

"It's a sort of thudding sound. I listened to a recording of our performance recently and was surprised how beautiful and subtle that passage is when you're at a distance from it."

Yudane's commission was inspired by the Trio's visit to Indonesia, where they made music with the composer and some other gamelan players.

"He's such a lovely, quiet and spiritual man, although his gamelan music can be seriously full on with all its gongs.

"It's been a liberating move breaking out on our own. Now we feel we can really be representing ourselves.

"This concert is about us playing to the wider community and we're really excited about that, getting the music out to more people."

Performance

What: NZ Trio - Flourishes

Where and when: Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber, Sunday November 22 at 5pm