When a group of artists sets out to work together, there can be any number of complicating factors: will everyone share a common vision? Will there be an effective chemistry and comradery? Will there be an egalitarian division of labour? But when harpist Joy Yeh, violist Marcus Takizawa, and I convened to form a new trio last month, we didn’t seem to have any of these issues. We get along well, we all bring a diversity of strengths to the group, and we share a love for the music of the 20th and 21st centuries.

But for the love of all things good, we couldn’t come up with a name.

We wanted what all new enterprises want when name-hunting: something that’s catchy, appropriate, simple yet multi-layered. And we also thought it would be great to have a name that paid tribute to our Asian heritage (Joy is originally from Taiwan; Marcus and I are Canadian-born of Japanese backgrounds). Try as we might, there wasn’t anything that leaped out at us — searching for commonalities between Taiwan and Japan produced names that were (at best) difficult to pronounce by Western standards or (at worst) evocative of the rather bloody history between the two countries. Thankfully, it was the composer Jocelyn Morlock who came to the rescue with the name “Onyx”. Onyx is a gemstone formed in the gas cavities of lava. It can appear in many colours, but black is the colour that we most often associate with this stone — and thus very subtly alludes to our Asian heritage, in that we all have black hair (well, those of us who still have hair, or course). And, I gotta admit, it sounds great rolling off the tongue and it looks wonderful in print.

Thanks to Marcus’ skills as a recording engineer, the Onyx Trio recently recorded the second movement of Debussy’s remarkable Sonate pour flûte, alto et harpe as well as Takemitsu’s And Then I Knew ‘Twas Wind — both of which have been included here for your listening pleasure. Expect to hear more from us soon!