Spirit Fire Fact [CD]

Grammy Season brings together some of the leading voices in American jazz around Ingrid Laubrock; more specifically, the vibrant Brooklyn scene, where musical genres intersect and intermingle. The saxophonist, who hails from Germany and has lived in New York since 2008, has steadily expanded her scope over the past decade and found new ways to inspire, organize, and contextualize improvised music. She is active as a composer in her many projects, moving nimbly between the structured and the spontaneous. There are harmonically and rhythmically structured elements, free improvisation, chamber music-and even orchestral passages. Many contrasts, from fiery, explosive moments to rock-inspired passages. It's always fun to see what the other musicians come up with, Laubrock says, describing the way her latest band works. Like, how do they connect the puzzle pieces and how do they do it differently each time out? There are plenty of individual contributions on Spirit, Fire, Fact, Laubrock's eleventh album as a leader for Intakt. Indeed, no member is shy when it comes to speaking their mind. But this new program of emotional shifts and textural transformations has as much to do with conceiving the puzzle as supplying it's elements, writes Jim Macnie in the liner notes.