by Adorjan Horvát
The harp has long carried the weight of cultural myth as an instrument once confined to parlors and salons, deemed “feminine” in its delicacy and domesticity. With Birds of Paradise (Azica Records, September 12, 2025), Ember, a trio comprising Emily Levin (harp), Julia Choi (violin), and Christine Lamprea (cello), takes this stereotype head-on. Their debut album is a demonstration of formidable artistry and a statement that the harp and its interpreters belong in the center of the concert stage, in dialogue with composers past and present, and in full recognition of women’s foundational contributions to classical music.
The album opens with Henriette Renié’s Trio in B-flat Major (1901), the first major work for harp, violin, and cello. Renié was a prodigious force, winning the Premier Prix at the Paris Conservatoire at age eleven and later expanding the harp’s repertoire and pedagogy. Her trio is a cornerstone, rich in late Romantic lyricism and demanding in terms of technical scope and ensemble cohesion. Ember plays it with elegance and fire. Levin’s harp establishes the “Allegro risoluto” with pastoral arpeggios, before giving way to playful dialogues between Choi’s violin and Lamprea’s cello. The scherzo brims with rhythmic wit, pizzicato exchanges dancing against shimmering harp textures, while the slow movement unfolds like a folk-inflected waltz, imbued with warmth and counterpoint. The finale is a study in contrast with moody harmonic clouds that resolve into rhythmic clarity, ensemble articulation, emotive and energetic enough to propel the music forward with energy. Levin’s pedagogical lineage, from Renié through Susann McDonald, renders this performance deeply personal in character.
Reena Esmail’s Saans brings the album into the realm of the intimate. Originally written as a wedding gift and transformed here into a trio for harp, violin, and cello, the work embodies Esmail’s gift for melding Indian melodic inflections with Western harmonic flow. The piece breathes, “saans” means “breath” in Hindi, through variations that pass seamlessly between instruments. Levin often drives rhythm through pizzicati and delicate glissandi, while violin and cello share long cantabile lines of extraordinary warmth. Ember emphasizes the dual heritage at the core of Esmail’s writing with the cyclical rhythms of Indian tala and the expansive lyricism of Western chamber tradition. The result is music rooted in friendship and shared history as well as compositional craft.
The album concludes with Angélica Negrón’s Ave del paraíso, a world premiere recording that extends Ember’s mission into the contemporary soundscape. Inspired by the bird of paradise flower and Puerto Rican avifauna, the piece layers shimmering harp textures with field recordings of bird calls, weaving them into syncopated, Afro-Caribbean-tinged rhythms. The trio shapes the music with organic pacing, allowing gestures to flutter, hover, and then burst into kaleidoscopic color. The effect is visual and auditory, evoking the canopy of a rainforest alive with sound and light. Negrón’s work also complicates notions of “utopia” with the idyllic beauty of place set against the tangled histories of Puerto Rico. Ember’s performance does not shy away from this tension, instead celebrating it as part of the music’s meaning.
Across Birds of Paradise, Ember demonstrates felt chemistry. Their balance is precise and flexible, textures interwoven and cleanly layered, and their tone colors evolve to match the shifting idioms of each composer. What unites the program is the gender of its composers and the vitality of Ember’s performances.
This debut aligns Renié’s historical triumph with contemporary commissions from Esmail and Negrón; Ember reveals itself at the forefront of chamber music’s future. The harp, violin, and cello trio is a force of rhythm, harmony, and cultural dialogue. Birds of Paradise is a recording that honors lineage while writing the next chapter. That’s the short of it!
