In the group's previous incarnation as the Macquarie Trio, Selby shared the stage with two men.

In TrioZ, she is working with two outstanding women: young violin soloist Niki Vasilakis and Emma-Jane Murphy, formerly principal cello with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

"With the girls, the chemistry is just right," Selby said yesterday. "You're lucky if it happens in your lifetime as a chamber musician. It's a very special thing."

The Macquarie Trio was based at Sydney's Macquarie University, but the group disbanded in 2006 when the university cut its funding. "After what happened with the university, a lot of people wrote to me and said, 'I think you should keep going'," Selby said.

She fulfilled her remaining concert obligations with several other musicians, including a tour with Vasilakis and Murphy.

"I certainly wasn't planning on forming a new trio, I was planning on taking a break," Selby said. "But it was such a good tour and we worked well together. We wanted to play together again."

TrioZ begins its 2008 concert season tonight at Burradoo, in the Southern Highlands near Sydney.

The tour - with guest viola player Irina Morozova - includes dates in Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide, and at Sydney's City Recital Hall, Angel Place, where TrioZ is the resident ensemble.

The program includes music by Schumann and Brahms, and a piano quartet written at age 14 by Mendelssohn.

Selby said the concert would show the "huge shift" in thinking about chamber music for piano and string instruments during the Romantic period.

She said there was a different set of relationships between the women of TrioZ, compared with the members of the Macquarie Trio.

The three women were relaxed and supportive of each other, and this had an influence on their music-making.

"There is a lot more communication on stage between the three of us," Selby said. "I think that probably comes from our relationship with each other.

"It's part of the friendship we have - we're not just colleagues."