The composer writes:

My Piano Trio was commissioned by the 1999 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition as a test piece for the competitors. It has since become one of my most frequently and widely performed chamber works. It is dedicated to my wife Helen Edwards.

There are three movements. The first, lucid and calm, is related to my Guitar Concerto Arafura Dances (1995) through its texture, modality and general ethos: I had in mind sunlight sparkling on the Arafura Sea, north of Australia. In the second, an adagio, an intimate dialogue between violin and cello is supported by the piano and the movement concludes with a brief quotation from my Second Symphony, Earth Spirit Songs, completed the year before. The finale is an effervescent maninya (Australian dance  chant), whose characteristic shapes and patterns have their origin in the natural world.

listen:

Piano Trio I. Allegretto

 

Piano Trio III. Allegro assai