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Ingrid Laubrock's "Purposing the Air” coming April 11 via Pyroclastic! Hailed as a “fully committed saxophonist and visionary” by The New Yorker, Ingrid Laubrock has evolved a distinctive, fascinatingly complex and richly layered sonic vocabulary that spans her efforts as an improviser, as leader of her own diverse ensembles or, as in the case of her captivating new album Purposing The Air, as composer and conceptualist for other musicians. Out April 11, 2025, Purposing The Air marks yet another adventurous exploration in a career marked by bold innovations. The album continues Laubrock’s engagement with the voice, following the blend of orchestra and choir on Contemporary Chaos Practices (2018). Purposing the Air is an expansive collection of 60 miniatures setting the words of poet Erica Hunt and her emotionally incisive piece “Mood Librarian – a poem in koan.” Approaching the poem’s succinct two- or three-line fragments as separate compositions, Laubrock tailored each of them for one of four duos: vocalist Fay Victor with cellist Mariel Roberts, vocalist Sara Serpa with pianist Matt Mitchell, vocalist Theo Bleckmann with guitarist Ben Monder, and mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway with violinist Ari Streisfeld, aka the contemporary classical music ensemble Duo Cortona. While she’s never before so fully integrated words and voice into her work, Laubrock has enjoyed a lifelong appreciation for poetry and literature. Her father was a Goethe scholar, while her mother instilled a love for language in her children from an early age. During the early years of her career in London, Laubrock was a member of the Brazilian-influenced band Nois 4, which featured the Brazilian singer Mônica Vasconcelos as well as vocal contributions by Laubrock herself. “The genius of Laubrock's compositions lies in the way they balance compositional structure with improvisational freedom.” – Troy Dostert, All About Jazz The seed for Purposing The Air was planted while Laubrock was pursuing her master’s degree in composition. Setting out to write for Duo Cortona, she pondered which text to set for the intimate pairing. While she at first considered classic works, she quickly determined that she should employ the words of a living artist in keeping with her dedication to new works and vital collaborations. Not long before, Laubrock had met Hunt at a mutual friend’s home and struck up an immediate connection, making her an obvious candidate. While perusing Hunt’s most recent volume, Jump the Clock, the composer was intrigued by the possibilities of “Mood Librarian, ” which compiles a spectrum of feelings from the everyday to the searching, the introspective to the speculative. As the composer explains, “The texts of the poem are open and concise, often cryptic, but still poignant and relatable. Some I connected with immediately and viscerally, while others were more like evocative images or fun impressions. They really lend themselves to the song form in my mind.” Deciding which duo would interpret which koan was key to the compositional process, Laubrock relates. Each of the pairings carried with it differing degrees of history –Fay Victor and Mariel Roberts had never performed together, while Matt Mitchell had worked with Sara Serpa in the context of the Portuguese-born singer’s multi-media Intimate Strangers project. Theo Bleckmann and Ben Monder are longtime collaborators who have released a number of duo albums over the last three decades, and Calloway and Streisfeld not only perform together as Duo Cortona, they are also husband and wife. Writing for a project in which she wouldn’t also be a featured performer was a unique challenge, Laubrock says. “As a performer you can always direct the music from the inside. When you don't have that option, you have to be more concise in what you write and construct. Writing for these duos was all about trying to find ways of letting two musicians interact and figuring out the possibilities of their instruments while still allowing my personal creativity to shine through.” The title Purposing The Air is paraphrased from the lyric of the penultimate piece (performed here by Duo Cortona): “birds purpose the air / as you purpose / pen and paper.” Contained within those few words is a suggestion of the art of composition, where marks on paper are translated into vibrations in air, rife with meaning and feeling; at the same time, as Laubrock explains, it hints at the wide-ranging interconnectedness of the project. “I envisage this whole piece of music almost as a space with the poems floating through it, ” she describes. “There’s just enough space in between each song that it allows a moment to settle before the next one pops up.” In conceiving the musical settings for each of Hunt’s koans, Laubrock took her cue from the poem’s title, “Mood Librarian.” Each piece conjures a vivid sensation, all of them as simultaneously complex, elusive and specific as the poet’s brief, evocative lines. Together this wealth of emotional knowledge and exploration could fill the shelves of a vast, impressionistic library. Ingrid Laubrock Ingrid Laubrock is an experimental saxophonist and composer interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds. A prolific composer, Laubrock was named a “true visionary” by pianist and Kennedy Center artistic director Jason Moran, and a “fully committed saxophonist and visionary" by The New Yorker. She has worked with such luminaries as Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, Jason Moran, Myra Melford, William Parker, Tom Rainey, Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey, Craig Taborn, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Yarn + Wire, Wet Ink Ensemble and many others. |
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