REVIEW:

Ingrid Laubrock

The organisers at the Spin Jazz Club do a wonderful job of providing a rich and varied programme throughout the year. Last week German-born saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock was a fine contrast to the high energy of bands like Zubop.

There seems to be an expectation that the sax, particularly tenor, should be played loud and fast from the very first chorus and that jazz in general should be a head-on experience with very little variation in dynamic. Ingrid Laubrock ignores all these expectations. She often starts a piece so softly her phrasing can hardly be heard above the rhythm section, begins a solo on a single note and only then proceeds to build a complex web of musical ideas. The result is jazz with all the force and energy that the saxophone can give plus the bonus of unexpected sensitivity and a much wider dynamic range shifting, often quite suddenly, from a soft lyrical phrase to the loud honks and wails that the tenor is so easily associated with. Laubrock is in short a remarkably sophisticated player who does not allow her audience to sit back and let a funky swinging solo wash past them. We have to listen in order to appreciate the full spectrum of her thought and technique.

With the house band of Raf Mizraki , bass, Mark Doffman, drums and, on this occasion, the stylish Rick Bolton on guitar, Laubrock played a wonderfully varied couple of sets. This included a funky blues-based tune by Rick Bolton called ‘Hell’s a poppin’. Instead of going with the flow and playing a straight-ahead solo Laubrock patiently built on all the variations of the harmonies to create an extraordinarily rich and exotic set of responses to a fairly simple tune. The variety of her playing is wonderful, not only the full use of dynamics but also the way she employs the full range of the instrument often beginning a phrase from the very lowest notes, so often avoided by other players as the tone is hard to control.

Ingrid Laubrock, a member of the Fire collective, with a new quintet of her own including cello, has a lot to give the tough male dominated jazz world provided we are prepared to take the time to listen. At the Spin she got the solid applause she deserves.

© Paul Medley