For their debut recording, the Lantana Trio – Raquel Samayoa (trumpet), Stacie Mickens (horn) and Natalie Mannix (trombone), all faculty members at the University of North Texas – have put together a programme of premieres.

Lauren Bernofsky’s three-movement Trio for Brass begins with a jagged fanfare, and the lyrical themes that ensue are all built from simple yet tautly interwoven motifs. At times her writing brought Britten to my mind, while the central slow movement is more Coplandesque. The nervous rhythmic energy of the finale puts the musicians through their paces but they play with confidence throughout. Dorothy Gates’s Between Friends, also in three movements, is similar in its language but far pithier, and its optimistic finale ends in a satisfying surge of grandeur. Shanyse Strickland’s A ‘BOP’ (Beats of Power) is a single movement whose three sections draw from black music: funk, gospel (and an enticing whiff of the brass bands one hears on the streets of New Orleans) and, finally, disco. And, like a good disco song, it seems to end with the players breaking a sweat.

Erik Morales’s Black Bayou Vignettes are five highly syncopated, memorably tuneful miniatures, all expertly conceived for this format, and the Lantana Trio clearly relish their felicities. Ivette Herryman Rodriguez offers the most powerfully expressive work of all in the Adagio of her Adagio y Danza, while in the dance itself she quite brilliantly makes the trio sound like a much larger ensemble. Jeff Scott’s Crossing Barriers, another highlight, is in three movements, each invoking a circle dance from a distinct location (and black tradition): Ecuador, Uganda and Brazil. Scott’s music is lyrical at heart but always with a strong rhythmic profile. Flutter-tonguing in the first movement evokes a ritualistic power (think of Stravinsky’s ‘Sacrificial Dance’), but it’s the mesmeric diatonic patterns of the central Ugandan dance that charmed me most.

Morales, Rodriguez and Scott are all composers I want to hear more from, but the album as a whole is a delight. Indeed, in terms of both commissioning and performance, the Lantana Trio’s debut is an unqualified success.