Free-jazz quartet Grammy Season, led by saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and drummer Tom Rainey, plays the MAC Birmingham.
Ingrid Laubrock brings her quartet Grammy Season to the Midlands Arts Centre on Wednesday 18 November, with the set starting at 8:00pm. It's a free-jazz group built around the long-standing partnership between saxophonist Laubrock and drummer Tom Rainey, two of the most active players on the creative New York scene. They're joined by guitarist Brandon Seabrock and bassist Shawn Lovato.
If you're not familiar with them, the record to start with is That Last Quiet Place. Critic John Fordham reviewed it for Jazzwise, calling it "a terrific outburst of jostling free-jazz" and singling out the title track as a soft-strummed guitar groove by Seabrock that becomes a swaying reverie with Rainey's percussion and Laubrock's soprano lines. That's a good way to get a sense of what they do: it can be wide open and jostling one minute, and then settle into something much more melodic and atmospheric the next.
Laubrock and Rainey have worked together for years, and that partnership sits at the core of the quartet. With Seabrock on guitar and Lovato on bass, they've got a full rhythm section to lean on, which gives them plenty of room to move between those more open, improvisational stretches and the kind of melodic grooves Fordham describes. It's a New York-rooted ensemble, so the set will likely carry that same creative, free-jazz energy.
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The show is recommended for ages 14 and over, and tickets start from £12.95. It runs for about two hours, so it's a full evening of music rather than a short set. You can find it at the MAC in Cannon Hill Park, B12 9QH.
