I’ve seen this discussed with regard to writing credits, but I’m not sure if the same logic applies to performers.
I have a classical release which, on the front cover, lists the name of the trio performing, and also lists the members of the trio. I was unsure whether performer relationships should be for the Trio, the individuals, or both. I added the Trio as the performer relationship on the release, since the Release Artist already had the Trio.
In this case, the membership of the trio has never changed. The Trio already exists in MB. Two of the members did not exist in MB, so I created their Artist records (minimally - I can’t find much info on them), and associated them with the Trio.
Further thought after the fact has made me wonder if I did the right thing, crediting the Trio instead of the individual members. I found another Trio that has had personnel changes. At least one of their releases credits both the Trio and the individuals, and the Trio is credited as a Release Artist. No performer relationships have been added.
What’s the best way to proceed? Credit just the Trio, just the individuals, or both? It’s not that important when the personnel haven’t changed, but it seems more important when they have.
My way of thinking about this is that the Album Artist credit is for recording what the cover of the Release says, and Performer Relationships are for recording the facts about who did what. In this Release, the cover says the Trio and three names, so as a first draft I would put the Trio and the three names in the Release Artist, and also Perfor Relationships for the Trio and for each of the three names.
I would also look through the Style guidelines to see if this situation is covered there.
Actually, the name of the Trio is “Trio Mezzena, Patria, Ballario,” so it isn’t really repeating, but I get what you’re saying. Basically, “do the same thing they did.” I almost did that in the Performance Relationships because it’s on the back cover that way, but it seemed redundant, so I decided to ask for input.
Oh, I did that before I came to the forum. 
I look at how much they put out as a trio, and did they also then tour as a trio. If they make an actual thing of it, then I would make them up as a group. If it is only one or two albums then I’d likely keep them as “individuals who played together”.
For classical, I personally only add the members as relationships, and the trio as recording artist. The main credited artist is generally the trio (quartet, whatever), so that fits as a recording artist. The performers, if known, should of course be relationships - personally, once those are there, it feels confusing and redundant to also have the ensemble as a relationship; it makes it look like the trio and three musicians performed a sextet.
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Exactly what I was worried about. Thanks!
I don’t agree with this at all. It’s a fact that the trio performed on the recording, and it’s also a fact that the trio’s pianist performed on the recording.
For tagging purposes, you would want to be able to find recordings featuring the trio, but you may also be interested in listening to everything by one of the members.
Users (meaning software, mostly) can tell that one artist is a group, and also use the relationships between ensemble and members to display it properly, if they want to.
I guess the question is whether you see it as “the trio” itself performs, or if it’s just a shorthand for “the three people performed”. I cannot say it’s wrong to have both, it just looks silly and confusing. In an ideal world, we’d have a three-point relationship, X performed piano in Y as part of group Z. At the moment, both options are mediocre, so I can live with either, but I have my preference (not a guideline and people should enter stuff as they prefer since neither option is wrong)
Here’s another related question: When creating a Recording relationship for a group, such as a Trio, I’ve seen them credited as “instrument” and as “performer.” My inclination is toward “performer,” but is there a best practice here?
It would make sense to specify what they are doing, so instruments is better if that’s all you can do - keep in mind we have a fair amount of ensemble instrument choices, including piano trio and string trio.
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