Kind of a Little Home: Ingrid Laubrock & Andy Milne Speak
Andy Milne & Ingrid Laubrock. Photo by Caroline Mardok, courtesy of the artists.
by Sarah Thomas
After releasing Fragile, their first collaborative album in May 2022 with Intrakt Records, Ingrid Laubrock and Andy Milne come to The Jazz Gallery this Saturday to belatedly celebrate its release. Featuring Laubrock’s compositions, Fragile is her third duo album with Intrakt and features a wide array of musical textures that range from poignant to haunting that yet create a driving throughline across the album. We chatted with Ingrid and Andy last week about themes of the album, their collaborative processes, and what’s next.
The Jazz Gallery: You have your album release show coming up this week. How do you conceive of the connections between the pieces on the album, whether that's the trajectory as a whole or connections or themes between just a couple of tracks?
Ingrid Laubrock: In this case, apart from a few improvisations, I wrote the music, so I'll talk about this to start with. Andy and I had never played together. We met a long time ago and we’ve met in various situations, including the orchestral writing workshop at JCOI [Jazz Composers Orchestral Institute] in Los Angeles and SIM [School for Improvisational Music] in NYC where I have taught workshops. Over the years, we have met quite often.
So we do see each other even if we have been physically apart. Andy, I’ve heard your music, I’ve been to your shows, and I had always been curious about playing with you. But my normal way of writing is to write for people that I’ve already played with. So this was a deviation, a different way of approaching the compositional part.
I had written three or four pieces that felt a little bit more fleshed out and that were longer, and I wanted to have these connection pieces that were like shards or fragments—really just little sonic zones that were almost like a path going through the whole record, connecting the larger “movements”, for the want of a better word.
One piece is titled, “Kintsugi,” which is the Japanese art of putting broken shards back together with gold paint. It gives a different relationship to shards and broken pieces. They become something beautiful by remaking them. This is basically the thinking behind the titling. So there are three pieces, “Fragment,” “Shard,” and “Splinter” that are these kind of sonic zones that are almost like a path through the game plan. I also wanted to make sure there was plenty of room for improvisation, and a chance to explore each other's playing.
TJG: One of my favorite tracks on the album is “Shard.” I love the haunting quality of that track. The sound world that you found there really struck me.
IL: That’s the piece with the held signal generator note. Andy is playing prepared piano and I'm using a signal generator and playing close microtones on the soprano that create these aural illusions and beatings.
TJG: And “Splinter” ends the whole album, so that's also cool to be able to track these pieces throughout the album and then have that closing it out.
IL: Right. It's a modular piece, so “Fragment” and “Splinter” are really the same page of music, if you want. But I picked different zones, basically just orchestrating Andy’s as if it was a prepared piano concerto.
TJG: So this is the first project you've done together. When did you start working on this? How did this specific project come about?
Andy Milne: Ingrid outlined how we've known each other over the years and we have lots of mutual musical acquaintances. We had that very pivotal sort of artistry-changing experience when we were both together at the JCOI orchestral writing experience back in 2012. I think sometimes when you share experiences with people, even though each of our adventures are unique there's also something common about them, allowing you to kind of look at somebody and wink and go, “Yeah, I was in the trenches with you there and I had my own kind of revelation as you did.” And you don't even have to speak about the details, because you just know you both had this similar reorientation, in a way. It’s great being able to move through life connecting with artists you know and respect who you share experiences and goals with.
But I know when Ingrid reached out to me and said, “Would you be interested in doing this?” I was like, for sure. And it was in the middle of the pandemic when you originally asked me—in the first year of that whole insanity. So it was something to work towards and look forward to. I think the only thing I said was, “Don't write anything too hard for me that I won’t have time to learn.” And she was super gracious. You got me the music on time, and because it was in that “you're not doing much else” kind of zone, I was able to practice the music a lot, which was a really great experience for me to be able to work on music in advance of making a recording.
I found that having that time in advance of getting together—because we'd never played it before and never played together before—I felt it was great to have that time to work on your music. Having the chance to prepare was fantastic, because then when we got together we could jump into roadmapping things, but also just to try to get an affinity for the sound that we were each bringing to the music. Because that’s so much harder to do if you're really bogged down with, “What's this note?” But just to be able to listen to the sound that you're bringing to it and connect with you that way, that was a luxury, almost.
IL: Yeah, it was really nice. Because that was your summer, right? So you had time. You were away from school. You didn't have to sit on Zoom the whole time.
AM: Exactly. The way it lined up was perfect because I really got to focus on this music for about three weeks. I could really hit it every day.
IL: I lucked out!
AM: Sometimes I need all that time, even with my own music.
IL: Same here. I don't like having not enough time, because I want to hear it rather than read it. I usually have a session with somebody before asking them to join a project, because you need to feel out whether you have any chemistry. But with you, I knew that was going to be alright.
AM: Yeah, it's funny, right? When you can kind of just go, “I’ve got faith.”
IL: Well, there’s a sensitivity. I mean, you are a great pianist, I know, but there's also a sensitivity and a smartness about your playing. I knew that was going to be great. And we had hung out already. Sometimes you can just tell. You need to like a person, and I still believe in that. It works better if you like a person and you can have a conversation, you know?
TJG: Ingrid, this is your third duo album in the last few years with Intakt Records. Did you plan this to be a series from the beginning? What is the relationship between those albums and how did your collaborative process evolve?
IL: This really started out as Patrik Landolt’s baby, in a way. Patrik Landolt is one of the founders of Intakt Records, and he did a similar series with the pianist Irène Schweitzer, who recorded five records—starting (I think) in the ‘90s with different drummers. Louis Moholo was one of them, Günter “Baby” Sommer another one, and I think Hamid Drake was in there too. It was a project that he really loved that was recorded over a period of 10 years. So a few years ago, he asked me whether I wanted to do a similar thing with pianists.
The first record was with Aki Takase. It actually came about because I was offered to play with a Berlin-based musician of my choice at the Berlin Jazz Festival. Aki is actually the first woman I ever heard play jazz live. She was playing a duet with Maria João, the fantastic Portuguese singer, and she was really, really throwing down. I remember I was a teenager and I was like, “Oh, OK.” It was important for me as a woman to see a woman do that. It was an honor for me to be able to invite her and to play with her. We had a good rapport. We played her pieces and my pieces and both wanted to make a record, so that seemed to be a good way of kicking off this series.
The second installment was with Kris Davis, who was one of the first musicians I met here and have a very, very longstanding, ongoing partnership with going through many different projects of hers, of mine, and of other people's. So that seemed a very logical choice. And I'm hoping that the duo records will all be different. The idea is to find something personal every time.
AM: I mean, duos are such an expansive configuration. I find even trios and quartets and quintets, it's much easier to literally just fall into playing a role. And I find that duos, it's really conversational. You just think about human interaction, in a way. Thinking people, sensitive people really do just like—this is this moment with this particular individual. And it's so removed from anybody else that you’re like, “Oh yeah, this is who I'm dealing with.” I find that it's pretty rich territory. I love playing a duo because of that, because you have all this potential new kind of conversation to have. So in a way, it doesn't matter what the music is because the format is so rich. But then, if you've got rich music, well now you've really got something to talk about.
IL: Yeah, and it can really go anywhere, which is also so great. Because there's only one other person to deal with, you can really have a different journey than if you have big arrangements with a lot of people. You also have to work though.
AM: You do. There’s no vacation.
IL: No coasting, ha!
TJG: Do you have plans for more collaborations together in the future?
AM: Yes. We’ve had such a positive rapport in this first outing the two of us. I forget when exactly I asked you, Ingrid—it was probably sometime in the mid-spring when I said, “Hey, would you want to play on my recording?” It's interesting how these things generate new ideas and new awarenesses and just new curiosity. That was something that kind of sparked. Ingrid was just in the studio with me recording with my trio last month. So it’s nice how these things can have an ongoing relationship.
We did a show in Canada in Winnipeg at the jazz festival a couple months ago. And that was technically the first gig, but we had such a terrible time getting there—Ingrid, mainly. I started the concert solo because she was so delayed and we couldn't push it any later. And I was like, “Well, maybe I'm doing a solo piano concert, but I hope she makes it.” And she did, but she was fresh off of an entirely hideous day of travel. It was one of these things—I love it, because it was like we threw the gloves off. We were like, “OK, let's just see how not precious we can play the music,” because we had no sound check, no dinner. It was just right into it. I was playing, and she came up and started playing.
IL: There was also no light on stage.
AM: No light. You couldn’t see the music.
IL: So I was looking at the music like, “I can't see anything.”
AM: It was rough. It's interesting to have that just like, “All right. Just go.” It's almost like if you forgot your music and you had to just say, “OK, well what do I remember?” You can't get so delicate about it. You’re just like, “OK. Just go in. Throw the gloves off.” And it was a really fascinating way to have our first gig. You never would have planned it that way because it’s too stressful, but in a way there was some really cool stuff that it illuminated for us, I felt.
IL: There was something incredibly fun about just letting the music go and just having fun with it.
AM: It was incredible, actually. I don't think I've ever done a first gig like that.
IL: I've had this many times actually on tour. I don't know about you, Andy, but when you have these incredibly long journeys, everything is going wrong, it’s freezing, your suitcase gets lost, and whatever…and the only thing you know is playing, right? It’s the only kind of little home that you have at that moment. And you just have to give everything and just get everything out there, and that's what our gig in Winnipeg felt like.
AM: It’s the one thing you can say, “OK, this I know. This, I can own. With this, I have control or some sense of freedom, at least. Did I get an aisle or a window? Doesn't matter. I can play the piano.”
Ingrid Laubrock and Andy Milne present “Fragile” (Intakt Records) in their album release concert at The Jazz Gallery on Saturday, August 20. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. EDT. $25 general admission ($10 for members, FREE for SUMMERPASS holders), $35 cabaret seating ($20 for members, $10 for SUMMERPASS holders), $20 Livestream ($5 for members). Purchase tickets here.