[TR24][OF] Ingrid Laubrock (feat. Nate Wooley, Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Taylor Ho Bynum, Eric Wubbels) - Contemporary Chaos Practices - 2018 (Avant-Garde Jazz, Contemporary)

Mary Halvorson, guitar
Kris Davis, piano
Nate Wooley, trumpet
Ingrid Laubrock, saxophone
Eric Wubbels, conductor
Taylor Ho Bynum, conductor
Greg Chudzik: bass; Pat Swoboda: bass; Nanci Belmont: bassoon; Dana Jessen: bassoon; Talia Dicker: cello; Maria Hadge: cello; Katinka Kleijn: cello; Joshua Rubin: clarinet, bass clarinet; Katie Schoepflin: clarinet, bass clarinet; Bohdan Hilash: contrabass clarinet, clarinet, bass clarinet; Michel Gentile: flutes, piccolo; Zach Sheets: flute, piccolo, bass flute; Elizabeth Fleming: french horn; John Gattis: french horn; Christa Robinson: oboe; Katie Scheele: oboe, english horn; Tim Feeney: percussion; Clara Warnaar: percussion; Jacob Garchik: trombone; Mike Lormand: trombone; Gareth Flowers: trumpet, piccolo trumpet; Dan Peck: tuba; Dominic DeStefano: viola; Hannah Levinson: viola; Miranda Sielaff: viola; Sam Bardfeld: violin; Maya Bennardo: violin; Jean Cook: violin; Erica Dicker: violin; Mark Feldman (Vogelfrei only): violin; Sarah Goldfeather (Contemporary Chaos Practices only): violin; Megan Gould: violin; Elena Moon Park: violin; Mazz Swift: violin; Roland Burks: vocalist; Tomas Cruz: vocalist; Chris DiMeglio: vocalist; Walker J Jackson: vocalist; Amirtha Kidambi: vocalist; Kyoko Kitamura: vocalist; Emilie Lesbros: vocalist; Kamala Sankaram: vocalist; Josh Sinton (Vogelfrei only): amplified contrabass clarinet.

From the first startling attack of Contemporary Chaos Practices, Ingrid Laubrock lets the listener know she wants your attention. And the music is certainly attention-grabbing. Or would startling, fascinating, and incredible be better words? For nothing quite sets the table for what the listener will experience on this album. It is as if heaven and earth have been distilled into a musical tome that seeks, justifiably, to confront the anxiety and irrationality that darkens contemporary times.
German composer and saxophonist Laubrock has studied under Dave Liebman and Jean Toussaint and performed with Anthony Braxton. But on this album, with 47 musicians, two conductors, Eric Wubbels and Taylor Ho Bynum, and including soloists of the caliber of pianist Kim Davis, guitarist Mary Halvorson, trumpeter Nate Wooley, and Laubrock herself, she pushes beyond her influences with a bold and original statement. The result is an epic adventure in sound that breaks new ground—not unlike Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" or Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima."
Laubrock begins the album with "Contemporary Chaos Practices -Part 1 & Part 2." The music fluctuates between sudden attacks and an orchestral interpretation of a mosquito humming at one's ear. Halvorson's guitar lines and electronic effects percolate beneath. The trumpet section states the theme and the woodwind players sound off, while the French horn section gives off an elephant roar followed by long notes. There are dark resonant sounds with occasional drum patter and high-pitched howls above. The woodwinds add tonguing and odd reed effects. Laubrock solos with abstractions and a hint of blues over the long legato phrasing of the orchestra; she continues her solo a capella. The string section resumes with a shimmering effect, the woodwinds enter a lull, and the weight of the orchestra turns ponderous. The music appears to break apart and reform like cosmic dust and gas forming planets in some unknown solar system in some distant galaxy. The orchestra begins to heave and hurl. There are clanging sounds, like sheets of metal banging in the wind. The woodwind section offers Braxtonian rasps and fingers as the piece ends.
"Contemporary Chaos Practices -Part 3" is just as driven. The piccolos and violins announce the beginning. The flute dits and dots above the woodwinds and strings. The bassoons and bass enter and one can hear the bass clarinet underneath. Kris Davis' piano lines emerge as the music becomes a sudden wave, crashing on the shore. There is an almost news-bulletin urgency that alternates with orchestral waves of sound. The woodwinds take over followed by a restless orchestra response as the piece dissolves. "Contemporary Chaos Practices -Part 4" starts with long notes and phrases and Kris Davis' piano is heard above the discordant tones of the orchestra. The French horn section creates an ethereal atmosphere. Davis attacks the piano's lower register as the orchestra shifts. The piece suggests the shock of coming upon a great abyss.
The final number, "Vogelfrei" begins eerily. Think orbs floating above ice caps on an otherwise normal day. There is a mysterious stillness to the music, followed by long notes and syncopated phrases and a brief clarinet solo. Davis enters with some strikes at the piano's upper register. She strokes the inside of the piano while playing single notes. The orchestra rumbles underneath with multi-note structures and Davis adds interludes around woodwind phrases. Then the woodwinds and strings begin a counterpoint which rapidly accelerates, disappears, and reappears. The percussion emphasizes ends and beginnings of phrases. Bells and chimes enter as the orchestra explores tones from high to low. Davis splashes on the piano. The strings take off with a long descending line while vocalists and instrumentalists tremor above. The sonics become even more intense. Davis plays dreamy abstractions on the piano, her fingers active and roaming. Violins whirl around her, like a tornado vortex. The slinky piano phrasing continues as electronics and dark orchestra sounds resemble disturbing nightmares. Davis' piano becomes more active over the pounding rhythm. Like a Bartok concerto, the orchestra continues to weave around the piano solo. As Davis rolls up and down the piano, the piece begins to turn in on itself—one part of the orchestra plays rapidly while the other enunciates long phrases and notes.
The music on Contemporary Chaos Practices is certainly profound, and Laubrock deserves all the accolades this album is bound to receive. Is this a response to today's fears and apprehensions? Does it, like Beethoven, shake an angry fist —not at death, but at the death and destruction created by our species? Is it a resigned bewilderment of the known and unknown? Is it a musical treatise on the limits of human comprehension? Or is it a musical interpretation of the probability-based nature of physical existence? Whatever it is, it is certainly worth listening to. Highly recommended.

With Contemporary Chaos Practices the celebrated saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock has provided a conclusive highpoint of creative music in 2018. The album combines Laubrock’s excellent orchestral scores with improvisations from soloists Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Nate Wooley, as well as from the composer herself. I didn’t have the chance to listen to this album properly before I submitted my year end list, as it should certainly have been included (it would have been an impossible task though, to choose one to drop, what a year!). According to Steve Smith’s excellent liner notes Vogelfrei was written for the 2014 second Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Reading, while Contemporary Chaos Practices was written for the 2017 Moers Festival, making both of recent vintage. Smith writes that Laubrock’s initial inspiration for writing orchestral scores came from seeing Anthony Braxton and Walter Thompson at The Irondale center in Brooklyn. The trifecta of composition, improvisation, and conducting was a natural progression for Laubrock, who was already mixing composition and improvisation in her smaller ensembles and had been exposed to the creative functions of conducting via the London Improvisers Orchestra. On Contemporary Chaos Practices her combination of inspirations is seamless, drawing from classical, jazz, and experimental streams of expression and weaving them into a wonderfully strange and multifaceted whole.
'Contemporary Chaos Practices (Part 1 and Part 2)' begins with Halvorson’s hiccupping, pitch shifted, guitar psychedelics bookended by powerful orchestral forays and resonant brass figures. Hovering over this are flute and woodwinds that flutter in quickening runs like dragonflies over the surface of a pond. The strings become more assertive, pushed along by the brass and the liquid guitar playing, culminating in the rapid arco of the contrabass, slowly dimming and taking on gravity as it goes silent. Laubrock takes skirting runs at the edges of the icy string playing, stirring up drama on soprano saxophone. At around nine minutes there begins a wonderful passage of orchestral dialogue that is quite cinematic in spirit, that slowly dissolves into almost pure texture over the second half, utilizing a broad palate of sounds to spectacular effect. 'Contemporary Chaos Practices (Part 3)' begins as the previous track finished, with high pitched textures from the instrumentalists that simultaneously suggest wind chimes, distant playground swings, and insect calls. Around the midpoint, the jaunty contrabass clarinet and trombone precede the return of the orchestra, which delivers powerful galloping passages interspersed with short colorful responses of strings. The shortest piece, 'Contemporary Chaos Practices (Part 4)', begins with a somber introduction from the brass and woodwinds, which carefully builds and grows into something large, dark, and slightly menacing before fading back into the silence. Vogelfrei begins probingly over bowed string harmonics, combining gorgeous orchestral swells with more pointillist playing from the soloists. A little after 7 minutes the orchestra is augmented with vocalists, who provide choral underpinnings for the piece. Kris Davis comes to the fore, dueling with the strings as Josh Sinton makes use of amplified contrabass clarinet to provide a dissonant and subtle counterpoint. The finale utilizes driven percussive statements with chorale accents to establish a churning undercurrent over which the brass and woodwinds combine in a discordant commotion that peels away and leaves a lone scratching fiddle bow.
What I enjoy the most about this album is its ability to surprise, as none of these songs evolved in a manner that was obvious to me. The soloists are also incorporated in a unique way as well. Rather than being provided a break to solo over, they’re generally left to their own devices over specific portions of the arrangement, making them feel less like solos and more like organic outgrowths of the whole. This is a brilliant record in both concept and execution, and the recording quality is vivid, catching all of the subtleties furnished by the musicians across a large dynamic range. Perhaps the most exciting revelation of all is that Laubrock is just getting started with orchestral compositions, leaving a wake of excitement for what’s to come.