Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt (Intakt)
Ingrid Laubrock
Released November 20, 2020
2020 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll Top 50 Best New Album
Spotify:
About:
The album Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt follows Ingrid Laubrock’s landmark orchestral album Contemporary Chaos Practices from 2018 (Intakt CD 314). Ingrid Laubrock presents on this double album five compositions in double version. On the first CD, the EOS Chamber Orchestra Cologne interprets Laubrock’s compositions. The soloists are Cory Smythe (piano), Sam Pluta (electronics), Robert Landfermann (bass), Tom Rainey (drums) and Ingrid Laubrock (saxophone). On a second CD of the double album a filigree ensemble around the core trio of Ingrid Laubrock, Cory Smythe, Sam Pluta and the guests Adam Matlock, Josh Modney and Zeena Parkins play the same five compositions. The two CDs of Laubrock’s works contrast, diverge and complement each other. Ingrid Laubrock writes: “While the small-group versions were composed first, I did not just re-arrange those compositions for the orchestra but rather re-imagined them. As I wrote the large-scale pieces, I often zoomed-in on a detail in a small-group version to generate a materially different large-group piece.” As a whole, the two CDs paint fascinating musical panoramas, inspired by the composer’s dream worlds, characterized by Laubrock’s ability to compose and the individual colors and shades of the soloists.
Track Listing:
1. Dreamt Twice 09:58
2. Snorkel Cows 13:19
3. Drilling 18:38
4. I Never Liked That Guy 11:11
5. Down the Mountain, Down the Mountain 08:02
6. Snorkel Cows 12:13
7. Drilling 15:53
8. I Never Liked That Guy 10:22
9. Down the Mountain, Down the Mountain 07:22
10. Twice Dreamt 08:35
Personnel:
CD 1 (tracks 1-5)
EOS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Conductor: Susanne Blumenthal
Violin: Ségolène de Beaufond, Mayumi Sargent Harada, Alex Semeniuc Terese Pletkute, Volhar Hanchar, Christine Schäfer, Eva Csizmadia
Viola: Pauline Buss, Lydia Haurenherm
Cello: Mateusz Kwiatkowski, Tom Verbeke
Double Bass: Pierre Dekker
Flute: Roland Meschede
Oboe, English Horn: Anja Schmiel
Clarinet, Bass Clarinet: Blake Weston
Bassoon: Eugenie Ricard
Trumpet: Susanne Knoop
French-Horn: Chris Weddle
Trombone: Matthias Schuller
Soloists
Sam Pluta: Electronics
Cory Smythe: Keyboard
Robert Landfermann: Double Bass
Tom Rainey: Drums
Ingrid Laubrock: Saxophones
Recorded December 5 and 6, 2019, by Brigitte Angerhausen at Riverside Studios, Köln. Assisted by Nick Benoy.
Mixed May 11-16, 2020, by Ron Saint Germain, at Saint’s Place.
Mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk, Peekskill, NY.
CD 2 (tracks 6-10)
INGRID LAUBROCK SMALL ENSEMBLE
Ingrid Laubrock: Saxophones
Cory Smythe: Piano
Sam Pluta: Electronics
Guests
Adam Matlock: Accordion
Josh Modney: Violin
Zeena Parkins: Electric harp
Recorded December 22 and 23, 2019, by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY
Mixed February 27-29, 2020, by Ron Saint Germain, at Saint’s Place
Mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk, Peekskill, NY.
Recording produced by David Breskin and Ingrid Laubrock.
CD produced by Intakt Records, Patrik Landolt, Anja Illmaier, Florian Keller.
Cover photos: Ingrid Laubrock
Graphic design: Paul Bieri
Review:
Ingrid Laubrock, the German-born, New York-based saxophonist and composer, set out a new marker for the lively relationship between contemporary orchestral music and jazz-rooted improvisation with Intakt’s thoughtfully-titled 2018 release, Contemporary Chaos Practices. Now comes Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt, an adventure born of that encounter, in which Laubrock presents five pieces played in two versions – on CD1 by Cologne’s EOS Chamber Orchestra plus improvising soloists, and on CD2 by the composer and the same improvisers operating as the Small Ensemble.
Laubrock has long been drawn to that shifting interface between through-composed music, jazz, and sound-bending experimentation, and this might be her most satisfying fusion of those volatile ingredients yet. The orchestral ‘Dreamt Twice’ accelerates from pattering percussion, horn-blurts and Cory Smythe’s tumbling free-piano whirls to big-ensemble chordal surges and back to pensively probing tenor sax reflections, and ‘Snorkel Cows’ similarly emerges from torrential piano streams and skittering abstract sounds to sax reflections against soft strings glimmers. ‘I Never Liked That Guy’ arrives in woodwind murmurs and isolated percussive chord-exclamations in the orchestral version, hovering piano trills and startled soprano sax outbursts in the Small Ensemble, while ‘Down The Mountain, Down The Mountain’ is solemnly searching and deep orchestrally, electronically slithery and then tentatively and sometimes anxiously dreamy for the small group. Laubrock seems to be turning composition from improv vocabularies, and improv as outcrops of intricate written materials, into new languages with this impressive release.
John Fordham (Jazzwise)
