Now that saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock is firmly established as a member of the New York avant-garde and free jazz scene, it has become easy to forget that she was born in Stadtlohn, Germany, in 1970, and moved to London in 1989 before moving on to New York City in 2008. She has remained in NYC ever since, playing with such luminaries as Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Dave Douglas, Mary Halvorson and drummer Tom Rainey, the latter having been Laubrock's husband since 2010. Just as significantly, Laubrock has recorded for the Swiss label Intakt (established 1986) since 2008 when her album Sleepthie f — recorded in London in September 2007 — was released.

Although Laubrock is an improvising saxophonist who mainly plays tenor or soprano saxophone but can also turn her hand to alto or baritone, she has increasingly been recognised and awarded for her skills as a composer. Intakt albums like Contemporary Chaos Practices / Two Works for Orchestra with Soloists (2018) and Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt (Music for Chamber Orchestra and Small Ensemble) (2020) are evidence of her composing as was the composition ″Vogelfrei″ for orchestra, soloists and choir, from the 2018 album, which was included in The New York Times' 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2018.

Monochromes. Is the latest Intakt release in which Laubrock displays her composing skills. The composition "Monochromes" is divided into four parts- 1.1 Trumpets, 1.2 Accordions, 1.3 Percussion, 1.4 Harry Bertoia Sonambient Sculptures. There are no pauses between the parts, and the piece plays continuously for 39'35". Throughout, the quartet of Laubrock on tenor and soprano saxophones, Jon irabagon on sopranino saxophone, Zeena Parkins on electric harp and Tom Rainey on drums is central to the piece. Laubrock wrote and designed "Monochromes" as a launchpad for improvisation. In each of the four parts is a tape piece recorded by one or more musicians of Laubrock's choosing and instructed by her: trumpeter Nate Wooley in 1.1, accordionist Adam Matlock in 1.2, Tom Rainey in 1.3, Laubrock, tenor saxophonist J.D.Allen and poet David Breskin using Harry Bertoia's Sonambient sound sculptures in 1.4. Leaving aside details of the recording and mixing of the album, it is far more important that this album has achieved Laubrock's goal for the monochromes on it to be fashioned into one long piece and provide a backdrop for improvisation. Bravo!

https://www.squidco.com/cgi-bin/news/newsView.cgi?newsID=2841

Via de ene drummer uit New York, Ches Smith, beland ik bij de ander: Tom Rainey. De ideale sideman, internationaal geliefd. Ook in Europa, of wellicht moet ik – als ik naar de vier albums die in de komende twee recensies centraal staan – wel concluderen: vooral in Europa. De van oorsprong Duitse saxofoniste en levenspartner Ingrid Laubrock mag dan inmiddels Amerikaans staatburger zijn, dat geldt niet voor Yannick Peeters en Stefan Schulze van wie hier morgen recente albums aan bod komen. Maar eerst het team Laubrock – Rainey. Op het eind vorig jaar verschenen ‘Mononchromes’ horen we ze in gezelschap van saxofonist Jon Irabagon, harpiste Zeena Parkins, trompettist Nate Wooley en accordeonist Adam Matlock. Met die laatste twee is bovendien iets bijzonders aan de hand: Laubrock nam de muziek van te voren op en bracht het digitaal in tijdens de uiteindelijke opnames. Samen met een aantal ‘Sonambient Sculptures’ van Harry Bertoia. Verder kwam deze maand ‘Brink’ uit waarop we Laubrock en Rainey samen horen.

In de inleiding tot ‘Monochromes’ legt Laubrock uit dat muziek voor haar een manier is om zich emotioneel te uiten, via klank kan ze overbrengen wat haar met woorden niet lukt. Op persoonlijk niveau maar ook op het niveau van de wereldproblematiek: “Times are tumultueus and the world feels like it’s wobbled far off its axis. This record reflects those feelings. But hope, love and beauty exist even in the hardest of hard times, and my own hope is that this music expresses all three.” Welnu, dat doet het, in dit bijzondere stuk van bijna veertig minuten, waaruit overigens ook duidelijk blijkt dat Laubrock zich steeds verder ontwikkelt als componist. De zware en indringende klanknevel aan het begin van deze compositie staat voor mij voor al die wereldwijde onrust, slechts doorbroken door Rainey’s gerichte slagen. Dan horen we ineens Laubrock op sopraansax en Irabagon op sopranino scherp hier doorheen komen. En zo rond de zevende minuut klinken die saxklanken pijnlijk ontregelend, terwijl geleidelijk die drone weer opdoemt. Halverwege deze wonderlijke compositie loopt de onrust alleen maar verder op, een overdaad aan experimentele klanken wordt ons deel, van jazz lopend naar noise en rock. De rust die zo rond de dertigste minuut intreedt, de bekoorlijk fragiele klankwereld die Laubrock hier neerzet, associeer ik met de hoop, het licht dat door de duisternis breekt. Een bijzonder veelzijdig en knap gemaakt album.

‘Brink’ is in tegenstelling tot dit ‘Monochromes’ traditioneel te noemen. De stukken ontstonden in de tijd van Covid-19 toen de twee musici niet veel andere musici zagen dan elkaar. We beginnen met mooi ingetogen klanken van Laubrock op ‘Flock of Conclusions’. Het is even over de helft als de ritmiek erin kruipt en we vrij kort ook even Rainey horen. Bijzonder klinkt de samenwerking op ‘Coaching’, een krachtige ritmiek van Rainey en boeiend meanderend spel van Laubrock, dat naarmate het stuk vordert een steeds feller karakter krijgt. Bijzonder klinkt ook het klankkunstwerk ‘Liquified Columns’, een schrijnende sopraansax en tot de verbeelding sprekende percussie vallen her prachtig samen. In ‘A Peculiar Logic’ horen we Laubrock op sopraansax, net als in bijna alle stukken ook hier weer heel subtiel, maar uiterst doeltreffend begeleid door Rainey. Een uitzondering hierop vormt het bijzonder ritmische ‘Scrunch Repercussions’, waarin de twee een aangename dialoog aangaan. Ale laatste klinkt het prachtig ingetogen ”Said, been said’, waarbij ik moest denken aan de woorden van Laubrock hierboven over het verklanken van emoties. Dit stuk is daar een prachtig voorbeeld van. Verder bevat het album zes delen ‘Brink’, allemaal zo rond de minuut. Ze zitten verspreid over het album, opvallend experimentele saxklanken presenteert Laubrock ons hier.

https://www.nieuwenoten.nl/?p=18157

10
WORLDWIDE MAGAZINE BY WE JAZZ
INGRID LAUBROCK
Photo by Nicki Chavoya
BY STEWART SMITH
ISSUE 12 SUMMER 2024
"I OFTEN WRITE from that place where I'm trying to find the stillness within myself, at least, enough stillness to come up with ideas that exist on a deeper level, rather than just something that flutters by. That is ideally the place that I'm writing from, my own relatively quiet place." Ingrid Laubrock is talking about her 2023 album The Last Quiet Place, which takes its name from ecological writer Elizabeth Kolbert's proposition that in the Anthropocene, the last quiet place is within oneself. From that place of stillness, Ingrid Laubrock has brought forth music that is both beautiful and strange, underpinned by a compositional sensibility that is as imaginative as it is rigorous.
Born in Germany, the saxophonist, composer, and improviser cut her teeth on the millennial London jazz scene as a member of the forward-thinking F-IRE Collective. Since relocating to Brooklyn in 2009 she has established herself as a leading figure in the creative music scene, collaborating with luminaries such as Anthony Braxton, Myra Melford, George E. Lewis, Kris Davis, and Tyshawn Sorey, as well as leading her own projects, from duos with her husband, drummer Tom Rainey, to large scale orchestral pieces. She moves freely across idioms and contexts, her masterful tenor saxophone playing weaving it all together.
Released on Kris Davis's Pyroclastic, The Last Quiet Place is a marvel of musical organisation. Exploiting her sextet's potential to contain smaller ensembles within itself, Laubrock plays jazz, avant- rock, Americana, and chamber music elements off each other to create an ever-shifting but integrated whole. As deft as this layering of idioms is, it's the ensemble's ability to move between textures and improvise around the pre-composed material that's particularly striking. "There's a sonic fluidity because everybody's so versatile," says Laubrock, "it flows between worlds and is tied together with improvisation."
On "Grammy Season," Laubrock's saxophone dances around Michael Formanek's bass and Tom Rainey's toms, answered by guitarist Brandon Seabrook's muffled growls. The middle section is built around an impish motif suggestive of a Dixieland Prime Time, with Mazz Swift's violin and Tomeka Reid's cello moving in and out of unison with Laubrock and Seabrook. For the coda, the strings form a trio, with Seabrook's chiming guitar dissolving into stately arco chords.
"I'm trying to blur the edges of instruments," Laubrock states. She imagined herself and Seabrook as viola players, sitting within the string trio of Swift, Reid, and Formanek. "Brandon can have a very languid, long sound that fits right in. And the tenor has got a shared range with a viola and a cello, so it's been fun trying to reimagine that instrument to be sitting in that space." Laubrock sometimes refers to The Last Quiet Place as her Americana record, with its "quiet, very lyrical, and very tonal moments, more tonal than what I usually do." Yet there's an uneasy edge to the lyricism, with several pieces based on a tone row that can bring ambiguous and dissonant colours
to the music.
A wonderful album, The Last Quiet Place yields new riches with every listen. Towards the end of 2023, she followed it with Monochromes, an audacious work where a crack squad of improvisers plays over a series of fixed-media compositions in real-time. The amount of work that went into assembling each of these "monochromes" is remarkable, from a virtual trumpet choir to an exploration of Harry Bertoia's sonic sculptures. "I've always seen it like an installation piece, not necessarily as a concert piece, but we have performed it at Vision Festival in 2021." Laubrock envisioned Monochromes as a modular work, with individual multi-layer tape pieces connected by improvisation. "The order of pieces and who improvises over what can be reordered every time," she adds. "The idea was always to have a catalogue, a library, that you could export so that other people could improvise over them."
FOR THE RECORDED VERSION, Laubrock fixed a particular order of soloists and entry points. To keep things simple and retain an improvisatory feel, she gave the musicians an image of the audio file as a guide. "For example, in the first piece, if you look at the audio file, there's a very obvious drop. This is where saxophonist John Iragabon comes in." That first monochrome is a notated score for 29 trumpets, with each tone recorded by Nate Wooley, then looped and layered by Laubrock and recording engineer Chris Krasnow. The results are monumental, with the trumpet choir sounding like a church organ at points. Iragabon's improvised solo cuts through, reaching a piercing extremity as the trumpets fade. Laubrock joins in, cueing the second monochrome, an extension of a passage from her orchestral composition Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt played by accordionist Adam Matlock. The saxophones ar...

Monochromes bringt meines Erachtens ein Dilemma mit sich. Musik sollte ihre Wirkung auch ohne Erklärung des Prozesses entfalten. Um dem knapp vierzigmi-nütigen, pausenlosen Werk nahezukommen (und wirklich gerecht zu werden), ist es fast unerlässlich, das ausgetüftelte Konzept zu durchschauen. Dem Stück zugrunde liegen vorgefertigte „Tape Pieces". Ingrid Laubrock, deutschstämmige Saxofonistin und Komponistin aus Brooklyn, NY (am Tag der finalen Aufnahme wurde sie amerikanische Staatsbürgerin), hatte vorab vier Soundblöcke aus verschiedenen Quellen erarbeitet: einen dichten Chor aus Trompetenstimmen (Nate Wooley), dräuende Klangkas-kaden vom Akkordeon (Adam Matlock), einen Schlagzeug-Parcours (Tom Rainey) sowie Ausschnitte aus Improvisationen auf einer Klangskulptur von David Breskin (Breskin, JD Allen, Laubrock) - alles nachträglich aufbereitet und geformt. Die Blöcke unterteilen Monochromes grob in ein viersätziges Opus. Zu diesen „Fixed Media"-Elementen improvisierte schließlich ein Quartett: Sax-Kollege Jon Irabagon, E-Harfenistin Zeena Parkins, Rainey und Laubrock. Das Konstrukt aus gesetztem Material und Reaktion hat seinen Reiz, wobei die Dramaturgie für mich keinen perfekten Bogen ergibt. Der improvisatorische Ausdruck entwickelt aus strukturellen Gründen nur eine bedingte Strahlkraft. Monochromes ist ein sperri-ges, herausforderndes Opus, das vor allem Laubrocks Profil als konsequent nach eigenem Kompass experimentierende Komponistin schärft. Ihrem Begleittext zufolge soll es „hope, love and beauty" ausdrücken in turbulenten Zeiten. Auch für Emotionales hat sie halt ihre ganz und gar persönliche Sprache.

Now an established luminary of the Brooklyn avant-garde, tenor/soprano saxophonist and composer Laubrock here uses taped pieces of the likes of trumpeter Nate Wooley and percussionist Tom Rainey as the starting point for a startling series of compositions. Rainey, Zeena Parkins (electric harp) and Jon Irabagon (sopranino sax) aid her in completing a satisfyingly successful mission. (KW)

Jazz New Release Round-Up - 2nd February 2024
Well, it looks like we survived January. And what have we got to show for it? I'll tell you — some of the finest new jazz releases around! If you're not impressed by frequent mentionee Ingrid Laubrock's Monochromesi, we suggest you try Emil Ingmar's new celestially-inspired album Pleiades. How about some sultry vocals from Mette Juul on Celeste or Here It Is, the latest scorcher from Charles Owen? You could even run wild with Reinhardt Winkler on Drop Me Off. The sky really is the limits!

Monochromes
Ingrid Laubrock
Reintroducing an artist we simply can’t get enough of at Presto HQ, here’s Ingrid Laubrock with another daring avant-jazz performance piece recorded under her own leadership. Consisting of four contrasting sections contained within a single continuous track, this spirited piece speaks to New York’s cutting-edge legacy of radical art. No stranger to the sonically extreme, the saxophonist assembles janky tape pieces as she stands in the crossfire of this electrifying ensemble. From its introduction of discordant accordion clusters pumped out with the voracity of a cathedral organ to the final revel amidst the shimmering brilliance of Harry Bertoia’s sonambient sculptures, this album is not to be missed!

https://www.prestomusic.com/jazz/articles/5753--new-release-round-up-jazz-new-release-round-up-2nd-february-2024

De monochromes waar-van sprake zijn vooraf opgenomen stukken muziek, bruitage, geluid, die dienen als achter-grond om de improvisa-tie van de muzikanten
de vrije loop te kunnen laten gaan. Deze plaat werd op die manier één track van rond de 40 minuten, een collage van gelui-den, aangevuld met het bevreemdende en confronterende improvisatiewerk van de muzikanten, die hun instrument zowel conventioneel als onconventioneel behan-delen in de exploratie van die backdrops.
Die collage is dus niet lukraak gemaakt (dus niet helemaal free), maar de monochromes (de backdrops) dienen als voedingsbodem voor de improvisaties door de bandleden. (MVDW)

Last year was a good one for Ingrid Laubrock. She ended 2023 in a saxophone duet with JD Allen as a part of Sculpting Sound, a program of improvised duos with sculptures. (The set of six duets can still be streamed via the Pyroclastic Records website.) She also released a duo with Cecilia Lopez' electronics, did a double duo album with drummer Tom Rainey and Dutch power couple Ab Baars (reeds) and Ig Henneman (viola) and recorded and toured with Myra Melford's exceptional Fire & Water Quintet.
Another 2023 effort, The Last Quiet Place (released by Pyroclastic last spring), hinted at more structured ensemble arrangements in its nuanced textures. In June, the Wet Ink Ensemble premiered her Fight, Flight, Freeze (that performance can be found on Laubrock's YouTube channel). The new Monochromes may not be Laubrock's first venture into more formalized composition, but it 1s a remarkable piece or work that may prove to be a significant album in her discography.
The single, 40-minute track is a thick chunk of sound in four segments. The work is built around recordings made during the Sculpting Sound shoot at Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Both the audio and the video incorporate sculptures made by artist and furniture designer Harry Bertoia. After initial success designing wire chairs, Bertoia crafted "sonambient" sculptures designed to make sound when vibrated by the wind or struck by hand, and he released eleven albums of recordings of his sculptures before his death in 1978.
Laubrock, joined by Allen and writer/producer David Breskin, made recordings on the sculptures (separate from the video performance) and crafted one of the four tape pieces that provide the foundation for Monochromes. Other tracks were created using recordings of Adam Matlock's accordion, Tom Rainey's drums and Nate Wooley's trumpet. Laubrock, Rainey, saxophonist Jon Irabagon and electric harpist Zeena Parkins then played over the tapes. The resulting album is as dense with sonic information as its origin story makes it sound. It's not an album for passive listening, but it's hardly monochromatic. The record is rich with detail, balancing soloists atop generally unidentifiable sounds. It's an exciting listen, repeatedly rewarding the listener's focused attention.
Monochromes might not prove to be a pivotal album for Laubrock. It might turn out to be some weird odd disc she did way back when. But even still, it will endure as a rarified example of improvised musique concrète, a subgenre that shouldn't even make sense.

A single thirty-nine-minute track where creative music heavyweights – Laubrock, Jon Irabagon, Zeena Parkins, and Tom Rainey perform atop four tape pieces. The tape pieces build upon the leader’s compositions, written in both traditional Western and graphic notation, and include Nate Wooley’s performance of twenty-nine trumpet lines in a manner inspired by Ligeti’s Atmosphéres and a duet between Laubrock and JD Allen inspired by artist Harry Bertoia’s somambiant sculptures. The intersection between live quartet and prerecorded blueprint is fascinating, with textures frequently shifting into unpredictable directions.
https://postgenre.org/https-postgenre-org-rob-shepherd-favorite-2023/

You can read my interview with Ingrid from earlier this year on The Last Quiet Place (included below on this list) here: https://postgenre.org/quiet-place-ingrid-laubrock/

Con sax tenore e soprano e la sua visione aperta a 360° dell'avant-jazz Ingrid Laubrock è da anni una delle voci più interessanti della scena: lo conferma questo lavoro, gravido di bellezza selvatica e austera, in quartetto con Jon Irabagon al sopranino, Zeena Parkins all'arpa elettri- ca e Tom Rainey alla batteria. Riuscito innesto di improvvisazioni su fi-xed media, il disco va ascoltato ad alto volume e tutto d'un fiato, come consigliato anche nel libretto. "Da quando ho memoria, e ben prima di definirmi una musicista, ho usato la musica per buttare fuori parti di me. Musicisti e ascoltatori conoscono lo strano e misterioso potere della musica: il modo in cui può esprimere complesse emozioni, dove le parole spesso falliscono." Tra i mille timbri che escono da questo vaso di Pandora, da segnalare le sonambient sculptures di Harry Bertoia. Suoni che rivelano mondi, forse disabitati e aspri, liminali, terribili: certamente magnifici. [8.0] Nazim Comunale