FOR me, the record of the year is the re-release of a precious vinyl disc on CD of the Jazz Doctors, who toured the UK in in 1983-84, and recorded their first session as Intensive Care on John Jack’s Cadillac label in a Hoxton studio in November 1983.

Val Wilmer’s expressive sleeve photograph shows squatting tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe, drummer Dennis Charles with a cymbal under his arm, violinist Billy Bang and bassist Rafael Garrett fresh from the US, posing in an East End park. As they romp into Jackie McLean’s Little Melanae, they play with prescriptive fire in the heart of London.

The record includes an unreleased session of November 1984, with bassist Wilbur Morris and drummer Thurman Baker, with the Doctors still offering a full dose of groove. My favourite track is the 12 minutes of Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman from the 1983 date, its haunting melody set on edge by Garret’s throbbing bass, Lowe’s moaning horn and Bang’s palpitating strings: marvellous!

In 2020 jazz lost the great Bristolian pianist Keith Tippett. The album Sound on Stone (Discus Records), was created by his vocalist wife Julie (formerly Julie Driscoll) in 2022, using extracts from recordings of Keith from his tour of Holland which sparked the making of his 1979 album The Unlonely Raindancer, and other unreleased waxings made in Bologna (1991) and the Welsh College of Music and Drama (1995-96). This final album of the Couple in Spirit duo is a brilliant amalgam of Keith's pianism and Julie’s effervescent voice, including a memorable version of Michel Legrand’s ballad, Windows of Your Mind.
Elaborately reinvented, beautifully harmonised, extraordinarily fused, this landmark album fully expresses one of jazz’s blessed unities. An outstanding track is the title song, Stone on Stone, and as Julie sings “Who stood enraptured?/ How many echoes call/Sharp on the breeze?” we know it is us, the listeners, spellbound by their sound.

Another powerful duo album is Fragile (Intakt Records), full of co-operative beauty by Stadtlon, Germany-born saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and the pianist from Hamilton, Ontario, Andy Milne.
Both musicians explore their sonic vulnerability on tracks like Fragment or Shard but the power of their inventiveness seems boundless, with Laubrock giving full scope to her soprano horn and Milne playing with a potent empathy and, as a student of a master, Oscar Peterson, with a deeply affective lyricism.
Although there are but two musicians at work, as a listener you feel that their sounds are coming from a much larger collective ensemble, giving them their strength and innovation, and making Fragile a profoundly memorable album.

The Arizonan pianist now living in New York City, Angelica Sanchez, a lover of big band music, moved to a secluded cabin while teaching upstate. She would walk in the woods at night and “realised that it was only my ears that were activated. I became fascinated by what I couldn’t see.”
Her album Nighttime Creatures (Pyroclastic Records) recreates those moments where “coyotes and other animals make noise in the dark.” It’s where living nature stews up into ensemble music and the human imagination joins with the animate external world, with Sanchez tunes plus Ellington’s Lady of the Lavender Mist and Carla Bley’s huge influence with CB the Time Traveller and Wrong Door for Rocket Fuel.
Alongside eight other virtuosi like saxophonists Michael Attias, Chris Speed and John Goldberg, Thomas Heberer’s trumpet and bassist John Hebert, Sanchez opens up the night and makes beautiful light out of darkness in a profoundly original and revelatory album.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/best-2023-jazz-albums

This is the third in saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock's series of duo recordings with pianists, following albums with Aki Takase and Kris Davis. Laubrock contributed all ten compositions and/or concepts for the project, undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two pieces, "Fragment" and "Splinter", feature prepared piano and Laubrock using false fingering and pushing her soprano sax into weird, flute-like ranges and sounds. Otherwise, the music here seems more an exploratory extension of the traditional piano-sax duo tradition than anything "out". Maybe that's because Laubrock has a robust, centered, appealing tone on tenor sax, which wouldn't be out of place in a swinging big band. She employs that sound to advantage in a largely a capella solo on the title track, one favorably recalling Sonny Rollins.

Laubrock and Milne employ space and silence as collaborators in their duets here. "Equanimity", the first track, has a gorgeous opening piano solo, each note reverberating and vibrating through the surrounding silence. When Laubrock's tenor enters at 1:40, the feeling persists as both musicians step carefully through the open space. They are more blunt and abrupt on the aptly titled "Unapologetically Yours", sax spluttering and piano probing. Laubrock's circular-breathing tenor solo on the wry "Illusion of Character" seems to engage in an internal dialogue with itself.

Milne returns to prepared piano on "Shard", variously conjuring up a koto or drum pads, all under Laubrock's ethereally high-pitched soprano. The album's longest track, at just under 10 minutes, is "Ants in My Brain", a soprano/piano duet reminiscent of the pairing of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. Milne begins alone and is joined eventually by Laubrock's slyly commenting soprano, her solo in the instrument's altissimo register. The piece concludes with a long, tandem melodic line.

Laubrock blijft verschroei-end productief. Fragile is intussen het derde album voor Intakt Records dat haar laat horen in het gezelschap van enkel een pianist(e). Nα Kris Davis en Aki Takase is Andy Milne de man aan het ivoor. Die was in de jaren 90 vooral actief aan de zijde van Steve Coleman, en liep daarna wat minder in de kijker. Snel maken ze duidelijk dat de album-titel goed gekozen is, want Fragile is introspec-tiever dan z'n voorgangers, met een sterkere nadruk op lyriek, harmonie en ruimtegebruik. Echte mijmermuziek is het nooit, daarvoor zijn Laubrocks composities net iets te knoestig en onvoorspelbaar, met Shard als textuurspel, Unapologetically Yours als een grillig parcours en Fragment en Splinter zijn stukken waarin ze haar sax haast als een shakuhachi laat klinken. Het maakt dat aura van discipline en ingetogenheid compleet.

À la suite d’Aki Takase et de Kris Davis, c’est Andy Milne qui s’installe au piano aux côtés de la saxophoniste allemande Ingrid Laubrock pour un troisième duo tout-à-fait différent des précédents : Fragile. La réussite d’un duo, en particulier entre ces instruments tellement complémentaires, tiendrait-elle à un fil ? Dix compositions de Laubrock, sont jouées alternativement au ténor et au soprano dans des techniques et des registres très différents. Milne y entre totalement, en épouse les contours et en élargit les dimensions. De fait, un duo est réussi lorsqu’il est à la fois uni et contrasté, donc complémentaire. Ce disque en est un excellent exemple.

https://culturejazz.fr/spip.php?article3852

Auf Einladung von Intakt-Gründer Patrik Landolt hat Ingrid Laubrock 2019 die Herausforderung einer Reihe von Duo-Projekten mit unterschiedlichen Pianisten angenommen. Die folgenden Alben mit Aki Takase (Kasumi) und Kris Davis (Blood Moon) wurden auch international als Bestätigung für das Ausnahmetalent der deutschen Saxofonistin aufgefasst. Während die beiden Pianistinnen und Laubrock weitgehend im selben künstlerischen Territorium heimisch sind, ist der dritte Teil der Serie etwas anders gelagert: Mit Projekten wie der Band Dapp Theory wird der von der M-Base-Szene geprägte Pianist Andy Milne zumeist auf der zugänglicheren Seite von Jazz verortet. Sprich: Die musikalische Schnittmenge ist eine andere, eine überraschenderweise verhältnismäßig lyrische zudem. Alle zehn Stücke auf Fragile sind Eigenkompositionen von Laubrock. Dennoch ist hier durchwegs ein gleichberechtigtes Duo zu hören, nie ist Milne einfach nur Begleiter oder Stichwortgeber: Die 51-jährige Saxofonistin gewährt reichlich Improvisationsspiel-raum, den der drei Jahre ältere Kanadier glänzend zu nutzten weiß wie in der langen Introduktion des Openers „Equanimity", bevor Laubrock ihrem Tenorhorn betörenden Gesang im Diskant entlockt. Am anderen Ende des Spektrums befindet sich das nervöse „Unapologetically Yours".

Zwei Seiten einer musikalischen Idee erkunden „Fragment" und „Splinter", für die Laubrock ihr Sopransaxofon in Flötenregister treibt, wohingegen Milne am präparierten Klavier improvisiert. Episch: „Ants in My Brain".

Het derde luik in een hopelijk lange reeks duo’s waarbij saxofoniste Ingrid Laubrock telkens een andere collega uitnodigt. Voordien waren dat Kris Davis (‘Blood Moon’) en Aki Takase (‘Kasumi’). Deze keer was pianist Andy Milne (Steve Coleman, Benoît Delbecq) aan de beurt.

Het leidde tot een versplinterd aaneenrijgen van ingetogen momenten en actiescènes. Laubrock (sopraan- en tenorsaxofoon) laat haar saxofoon regelmatig klinken als een bamboefluit en het klankenspectrum verkrijgt al eens een licht Indonesisch tintje waarin gamelansporen te ontdekken vallen dankzij het percussief spel van Milne (‘Splinter’!).

Beide muzikanten wagen zich aan diverse spielereien, nu eens solo dan weer op elkaar inspelend. Hoogtepunt van de omzichtige uitwisselingen is het negen minutenlange ‘Ants In My Brain’ terwijl ze in ‘Unapologetically Yours’ extra illustreren hoe ze actie en reactie op elkaar laten inwerken. Tot radicale confrontaties komt het nooit, wel lassen ze op hun manier de nodige spanningsvelden in door middel van korte knetterende energiestoten.

De combinatie van de cd-titel (‘Fragile’) en het citaat op de hoes (“…music that releases a form of energy, something that pulses with life, while also drawing down into intimacy, suggesting feelings of tenderness or uncertainty…”) vat het allemaal mooi samen. Het improvisatieleven zoals het is (of kan zijn).

https://www.jazzhalo.be/reviews/cdlpk7-reviews/i/ingrid-laubrock-plus-andy-milne-fragile/?fbclid=IwAR02km5PAGf6tnZwVO3iVWeZPGnK1FCDLmc-g5JrGVGbQ64Nb2FKVUb530I

INGRID LAUBROCK IN A STRONG PLACE

Brooklyn-based saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock keeps a busy schedule. Her simultaneously poised and experimental tones can be heard in an array of settings.

While her focus is on her own projects, encompassing forward-looking vehicles like Anti-House, Serpentines and Ubatuba, as well as larger ensembles, she is also a generous collaborator. A full list of her partners would read like a who's who of leading lights in a firmament, including Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richards Abrams, Dave Douglas, William Parker, Kris Davis, Cory Smythe, Myra Melford, Tom Rainey, Tyshawn Sorey, Nate Wooley and Mary Halvorson.

Born in the small German town of Stadtlohn in 1970, she took piano lessons as child and became captivated by jazz and free music in her teens. But it wasn't until she moved to London in 1989 that she took up the saxophone, making her subsequent rise all the more remarkable. Initially she supported herself by busking on the London Underground, but eventually became part of the city's thriving jazz community, taking whatever jobs were going and becoming part of the vibrant F-ire Collective. Although essentially self-taught, studies with Jazz Messengers saxophonist Jean Toussaint and later Dave Liebman helped develop her sound. Her involvement, first musical then romantic with drummer/now husband Tom Rainey, as part of the cooperative trio Sleepthief along with pianist Liam Noble, led to a move to New York in 2008.

Slowly but surely she established herself as a significant creative presence, but as she recalls those early days were difficult: "It's such a huge city and the amount of talent is completely out of whack. I made a few really important connections very early on. One was Kris Davis and Tyshawn Sorey. We had a trio together called Paradoxical Frog, which started really months after I moved there. So that was very important for me. I met Mary Halvorson early on who became important and John Hébert. At the time I had the band Anti-House with Kris, Mary, Tom and John. So there were a few anchors right away. But of course they were already completely involved and busy and I was not, because I was starting afresh basically. They were away a lot, including Tom. So I did have a lot of my own time. I wrote a lot of music. I practiced a lot. And in a way also took stock and took a break from constantly performing, constantly rushing up and down highways and tried to figure out what I did and did not want to do. So the first six months were pretty lonely, then I slowly started to grow into the scene."

And how she has grown, excelling from freely improvised to predominantly composed settings. Does she draw any distinction between them? "It's a different discipline. It sounds hokey to say it, but I'm aiming to play music with people. And that part doesn't feel that different. There's a part where you feel you're tuned in, you're communicating and that is what I'm really after. Sometimes when there is composed music there is an element where you flip between mindsets. It is a different mindset if I'm reading music than if I'm making everything up, but I don't think I write in a particularly stylistic way either. I'm trying to make it seamless and flow from one to the other." Anti-House is imbued with an unrestricted immediacy, so that away from the occasional driving unisons, it can be hard to tell where the notation stops. Typically her charts avoid the obvious: convoluted thematic materials arise following an inscrutable inner logic, often juxtaposed with improvised components, whether solo or group, as they intimate a tangled web of feelings, sometimes even within the space of a single number. Pianist Davis, who has played with Laubrock in many contexts, gives an insider's view: "Ingrid is one of the most unique, prolific - and I believe underrated - composers of our time. Since we started working together in 2008, I have watched her develop a completely unique and personal musical language that can be playful, complicated, intense and melancholy all at the same time. She takes risks as composer and performer and that draws both highly skilled players and adventurous listeners to seek out her music." Davis further articulates why she is so enamored: "Her writing has so much 'meat on the bones', meaning that there is so much language with which to develop improvisational ideas. As a bandleader, she wants the musicians to bring their own ideas and personality to the music." It is also her experience as a bandleader that helps make her such an appealing colleague. As pianist Melford, whose quintet on the tremendous For The Love of Fire and Water (RogueArt, 2021) includes Laubrock, explains: "I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy working with her so much. Improvisation and composition are really the same thing at a certain point, but she really approaches the music like a composer, especially the kind of music that I'm bringing to this group, which is quite open-ended at so...

Nach „Kasumi" (2019) mit Aki Takase und „Blood Moon" (2020) mit Kris Davis folgt nun der dritte Teil eine Reihe von Aufnahmen mit verschiedenen Pianist:innen, die Ingrid Laub-Besetzung formidabler Solisten der deutschen Szene versammelt (Christian Mehler, Matthias Bergmann, John-Dennis Renken, Bastian Stein. Trompeten; Nils Wogram, Shannon Barnett, Moritz Wesp, Jan Schreiner, Posaunen und Tuba; Johannes Ludwig, Sebastian Gille, Leo Huhn, Uli Kempendorff, Steffen Schorn, Saxofone; Pablo Held, Klavier; David Helm, Kontrabass und Fabian Arends, Schlagzeug), die der Musik in ausgedehnten Passagen ihre persönlichen Stempel aufdrücken. Das „Semi“ im Albumtitel soll genau diese den Musikern zugestandene Freiheit ausdrüdern neue Möglichkeiten und Mittel des Zusammenspiels ermöglicht, ästhetische Figurationen extrahiert, die uns musikalisch auf ganz andere Weise über die Welt informieren, als es das einzelne Künstlerindividuum vermöchte. In diesem Fall ist die Organisation das Musikerkollektiv Waschsalon, aus dessen Mitte die Generationsgenossen Anna Anderluh (Stimme, Autoharp, Live Loops, Effekte), David Gratzer (Gitarre, Live Loops, Effekte) und Lukas Aichinger (Perkussion, Gongs) 70 Minuten lang einen ästhetischen Körper aufregender Improvisation entstehen lassen.

gewissen Schwermut, die besonders Berger auf seiner Violine versiert wiederzugeben weiß. Ganz wichtig ist zu bemerken, dass Rudi in der Vergangenheit immer wieder mit Säulenheiligen des Jazz konzertieren konnte: z. B. Astor Piazzola oder Toninho Horta. In Österreich fing Bergers Stern zu glänzen an, als er in den 80ern beim Vienna Art Orchestra engagiert war. Besonders zu erwähnen wäre der Bassist Rosario Bonaccorso, dessen Kompositionen, „Mr. Kneipp" mit Gesang und das mobilisierende „Viaggiando", optimal gelungen sind.

2019 begann Ingrid Laubrock eine Duo-Reihe für Intakt Records mit den zwei Pianistinnen Aki Takase ("Kasumi") und Kris Davis ("Blood Moon"). Nun hat sie sich auf ein weiteres Duo mit dem Kanadier Andy Milne eingelassen, der mit Steve Coleman Five Elements, Cassandra Wilson oder Ravi Coltrane gespielt hat und mit seiner eigenen Band Dapp Theory auftritt. Auch seine Zusammenarbeit mit dem französischen Pianisten Benoît Delbecq hat Spuren hinterlassen: Auf "Fragile" nutzt Milne manchmal Präparationen, die sein Spiel und seinen Sound in abstraktere Texturen oder perkussive Feinheiten verwandeln. Die zehn Stücke, komponiert von Laubrock, geben beiden Instrumentalisten viel Space, in der Begegnung die Eigenheiten aus-zuloten, sich zu verschränken oder den gegenseitigen Annäherungen Zenmässig ihren Lauf zu lassen. Auch Kontrapunkte werden gesetzt, Heftigkeiten angetönt, Avantgardismen integriert. Dennoch dominiert auf dem Album ein ruhiger Grundton. Das lyrische Spiel von Milne scheint die (Sopran-) Saxophon-Ideen von Laubrock auch zu fokussieren, die mit ihren luftigen und jagenden Linien manchmal wie eine Flötistin klingt. Das Fragile (Album-titel) ist hier nicht das latent Zerbrechliche, sondern vermittelt eher den Eindruck, dass das Feine letztlich das Harte bezwingt.

ドイツ人サックス奏者とピアニストのデュオ・シリーズ第3弾

スイス Intakt でコンボからオーケストラ作までの実績を積んできたラブロックの高瀬アキ、クリス・デイビスに続くパートナーは, M-Base派出身のミルン。3人の共通点はフリーな展開も得意とする先鋭性にあるわけで、今回は前任の2人とは経歴が異なる初の黒人男性との化学反応を狙ったのではないだろうか。お互いに刺激し合う⑧がその象徴。作品コンセプトを立てずにラブロックが1週間で作曲したというスピード感が、共演に好影響。