The Strad Recommends: Trio Azura: Storytellers

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

The Strad Issue: November 2026

Description: An impressively mature first album from this US-based trio

Musicians: Trio Azura

Works: Harbison: Piano Trio no.2 ‘Short Stories’. Higdon: Piano Trio. Ives: Piano Trio

Catalogue number: DELOS DE3637 

Trio Azura got together as recently as 2022 when its players were still students at Los Angeles’s Colburn Conservatory. It returned in 2025 as the institution’s ensemble-in-residence, and its all-American Storytellers debut disc also launches a new recording partnership between Delos and the conservatory.

Don’t be fooled by the players’ youthfulness: these are considered and confident performances that offer true insights into repertoire that also serves to showcase complementary sides of the group’s playing. In Jennifer Higdon’s 2003 Piano Trio, that’s a vivid sense of atmosphere and hue in the work’s two colour-inspired movements: the surging energy of the Azura’s ‘Fiery Red’ contrasting beautifully with the limpid ornamentation of the shapely ‘Pale Yellow’.

Written the same year as the Higdon, John Harbison’s Piano Trio no.2 ‘Short Stories’ sets different challenges in its abstract sense of narrative. Here, the Azura players respond convincingly with declamatory utterances in its thoughtful opening movement and a rich sense of yearning in the closing ‘Enigma’.

Most impressive, however, is the group’s account of the Ives. The opening movement shows off violinist Duncan McDougall and cellist Yejin Hong’s bright, characterful playing, while its mischievous central ‘TSIAJ’ (‘This scherzo is a joke’) whips by with abundant humour and superb detail. Pianist Yanfeng Bai is somewhat forward in the mix throughout, sometimes overshadowing his string colleagues, but overall this is a deeply rewarding debut.

DAVID KETTLE