HAILING from Copenhagen, this trio includes Tokyo-born Makiko Hirabayashi and veteran Danish-American percussionist Marilyn Mazur, whose array of tiny bells and miniature cymbals hang from a crossbar over her drum set and create a metallic transcendence.

Hirabayashi plucks the strings inside her piano and the rubber-souled fingers of bassist Klavs Hovman delve deep during Once Upon a Sea, their tribute to those who perished in the 2011 Fukushima tsunami.

Ever prone to melodic invention, Hirabayashi’s piano has a softly-struck tenderness beside Mazur’s often tranquil drumming. But all can change, as it does in Hirabayashi’s tune Gallop, when rhythmic power breaks out and the trio moves into a faster, more muscled impetus.

In Mazur’s composition Journey Waltz, the timbre dances gently and all through Mou Ikai (Are You Ready) the threesome are beautifully and nimbly assertive in their sonic message.

This is a potent, unified and intimate trio, percussion-emphatic and always radiating the sound of equals who know each other’s musical qualities as closely as they know their own.