Noted for her abilities as a saxophonist, Ingrid Laubrock is also a composer of considerable skill, a fact her new 2CD set Purposing the Air wondrously illuminates across 60 short pieces from four different duos with the commonality of the human voice. Laubrock doesn’t play on the set, instead handling compositional and organizational roles, setting the words of poet Erica Hunt to music played by vocalist Fay Victor and cellist Mariel Roberts, vocalist Sara Serpa and pianist Matt Mitchell, vocalist Theo Bleckmann and guitarist Ben Monder, and mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway and violinist Ari Streisfeld. Structurally, interactively, and linguistically brilliant, the set is out now via Pyroclastic Records.
Ingrid Laubrock is unimpeachable as a player, but as a composer, she is far from a greenhorn. If still primarily known as an instrumentalist, Purposing the Air will go a long way toward balancing the scales, as Laubrock the saxophonist can’t overshadow Laubrock the composer; the pieces, all numbered koans sourced from Erica Hunt’s text “Mood Librarian – a poem in koan” progress through the four duos, with the lineup deliberately chosen and written for by Laubrock.
The first 15 koans feature vocalist Fay Victor with cellist Mariel Roberts. Victor often sings in a traditional manner across the pieces (it’s no surprise she’s performed as a blues singer) but also slows down to a spoken method. At other moments she flutters, clucks, whispers, groans, ululates, and even delivers delicious raspberries like a consummate avant-gardist.
There’s as much human emotion in Victor’s utterances as there are bursts of intensity and pure beauty, her range only heightened through interaction with Roberts’ bowing and plucking. The cellist’s breadth in execution is comparable to Victor’s as the strings rumble with sustained tones, spit out rapid fire wiggles and squeaks, saw like a carpenter, spiral upward like an ecstatic spirit, or groan like an aged wooden staircase under the heals of a fat man.
Sometimes Roberts taps into tried and true chamber energies. In the tenth piece, she drones like a disciple of La Monte. All the way across the 15 pieces both Victor and Roberts are equally attentive to the structural necessities of the pieces, the loose, sometimes funky profundity of Hunt’s words, and letting the communicative spark truly catch fire.
The second set of 15 koans are tackled by vocalist Sara Serpa and pianist Matt Mitchell. Serpa’s singing is tangibly jazzier as it flows forth, though that shouldn’t suggest her progressions are recognizably trad in any way. But she has a lilt in her delivery that contrasts with Victor’s heft, and the decision to pair her with piano was wise.
Because there are moments where the interactions take on an appealingly Modernist classical bent, for the most part, Mitchell approaches the 88s in the manner for which they were originally laid down, meaning it sounds like someone is playing the piano. But in a few spots Mitchell gets inside the guts of his axe very nicely, but not with wild abandon. Likewise, there isn’t much in the way of slam bang keyboard cacophony, and yet there’s no shortage of intensity, even when the exchange gets sparse. The almost art-pop tension of piece 21 (koan 42) is a particular highlight.
The next set of 15, performed by vocalist Theo Bleckmann and guitarist Ben Monder, ushers in a striking shift, for one obvious reason that a male is doing the intoning. Bleckmann can utter crisp and cleanly, a bit like Ernst Stötzner in Heiner Goebbels/Heiner Müller’s classic The Man in the Elevator, at other moments he can dish out buzzy reverberations in throat-singing mode, and he can even swagger like he’s on stage at some late-night back alley cabaret.
Monder traverses similar distances in his playing, belting out passages of amp roar, unfurling agitated note tangles or more temperate cascades of glisten, conjuring up ambient-adjacent atmospherics, slow pulsing warmth and edgy drones. He can even strum like some emaciated fringe art-folkie. When Bleckmann joins in it can sound like they are playing in some hole-in-the-wall place for a bottle of absinthe.
The last 15 are realized by mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway and violinist Ari Streisfeld, aka Duo Cortana. To absolutely no surprise, Calloway’s voice is operatic, but there is an ease to her manner that establishes flow rather than the brusque high-art belting of so much longhair emoting. She can get nicely geometrical in her syllables, which works in consort with the sheer fleetness of the violin bowing.
The combo of instrument and voice here make total sense. Kudos to the pair for getting together and making ago of it and also a tip of the hat to Laubrock for roping them into Purposing the Air’s bountiful landscape. Streisfeld and Calloway reintroduce the classical aura established early on by Victor and Roberts, which gives the set a circularity that is quite engaging. There are so many layers of mastery here but it is all set in motion by Ingrid Laubrock.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
