Meet the three that just had to be

Kathryn Selby planned a break from trios, but fate decided otherwise, writes Judy Adamson.

WHEN the Macquarie Trio - and its relationship with the university that provided its name - fractured in spectacular fashion last year, a shell-shocked Kathryn Selby determined two things: to finish the series for subscribers if at all possible, and not to form another trio.

The former took a lot of phone calling, but eventually she managed it. The latter, she says now, was "the furthest thing from my mind. I just thought, well, I'll have a break for a while."

Then Selby began to rehearse for her final 2006 concert series with the Adelaide violinist Niki Vasilakis and the former Australian Chamber Orchestra principal cellist Emma-Jane Murphy. While familiar with each other's reputations, the three had never met and their immediate rapport took Selby by surprise. By the time the concerts were over, the women knew they wanted to keep playing together - and before long TrioOz was born.

"It's like when you meet somebody and you feel like you've known them for a very long time," says Selby.

"You don't usually go through that [kind of split] and then immediately pick up with somebody else. But with Emma-Jane and Niki, it was fantastic. Musically we just got along really well, and obviously that's the most important thing, but then we also liked being in each other's company. That was something I wasn't expecting."

In the meantime distraught Macquarie Trio subscribers had been sending piles of letters and emails about the demise of the group. They vented and expressed their sorrow. They encouraged. They offered advice. But mostly they hoped that, after 14 years involved in the life and music of the trio, concerts in some form could continue.

Selby longed to stretch herself with different performers after playing for so many years with the same people, but was concerned about how she could achieve this. There was no longer the financial and administrative support of the university to assist her. Could she safely continue to plan performances for five major cities, as with the Macquarie Trio? Or should she confine herself to Sydney?

In the end it was the support of the trio's former audience base that helped her decide. She chose a balance of three concert series with TrioOz, plus two more comprising herself on piano with a solo cellist (Li-Wei) and another trio (the Janaki String Trio). All this will be performed in the Macquarie Trio's former stamping grounds of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Adelaide, but under the familiar old moniker of Selby & Friends - a format Selby used with considerable success in the four years to 1992.

On the morning Selby and I talk, it's the first day of rehearsal preparing for the season's opening series next month. We chat in a North Sydney cafe in the brief window of time after Selby's school run, before she picks up Murphy and Vasilakis at the train station.

"We've been emailing each other lately saying 'Hey, I can't wait to get stuck into it,"' she says. "And we're trying to run this group slightly differently because with [the Macquarie Trio] Michael Goldschlager lived in Perth - and for a long time we were with Nick Milton and he lived in Adelaide and then moved to Europe - so our capabilities of getting together and working as a group were non-existent.

"In essence we would get together in the days preceding a tour, absolutely rehearse the guts out of it and then go on tour and as we performed it, it would evolve. I don't want to do that any more. That's not how I see working with a group and neither do Emma-Jane or Niki. So what we've decided to do is get together every week, but of course, Niki lives in Adelaide … so we're constantly looking for cheap deals on airlines."

Without the same level of sponsorship as the Macquarie Trio had, the financial risk this year is considerably higher. Selby jokes about her hair having turned "completely grey" in recent months, then becomes serious.

"Really, I'm terrified," she admits. "Absolutely terrified. I'm doing it without a net and that's scary, because I'm a pianist, you know - I'm not supposed to be out there doing this sort of stuff … financing it and basically putting my name on the line.

"For me, this year, I wanted to try the experiment [of the new trio] and see if it worked. I wanted us to play together and this is a golden opportunity because there's a guaranteed number of chances for us to play. It's hard to get a group off the ground as well, so we need to have the mileage behind us and a few reviews here and there just to see what people think of us."

Despite the anxieties attending the death of the old trio and birth of the new one, Selby is excited about the musical possibilities now and into the future and considers herself very fortunate.

"One great thing ended but I've got the prospect of going into something new," she says. "I really think that if I wasn't doing it I'd be a very sad person because a performer has to perform and, without an outlet like that, part of you dies. So I'm very, very lucky - and I'm very glad that those concerts [last year] actually happened so I could meet Niki and Emma-Jane and have an opportunity to play with them. These sorts of relationships are very precious."

The first Selby & Friends concerts, with TrioOz, will be at St Andrew's Cathedral in the city on March 20 and at the Monte Sant'Angelo Mercy College in North Sydney on March 25.