In Cahoots, Ingrid Laubrock

Featuring: Frank Gratkowski

After playing complete improvised music with no constraints from 2016 on and releasing their first Album “Torbid Dayligtht” the quartet “Gratkowski / Zoubek / Landfermann / Mahnig” got renamed in 2023 to “In Cahoots” and now performs compositions by Frank Gratkowski, still with plenty of space for creative improvisation. In Cahoots also extends to a Quintet featuring Ingrid Laubrock on Tenor and Soprano Saxophones. The new Quintet version had its debut in Darmstadt 2023.

 

“Beneath the subatomic particle level, there are fibers that vibrate at different intensities. Different frequencies. Like violin strings. The physicists say that the particles we are able to see are the notes of the strings vibrating beneath them. If string theory is correct, then music is not only the way our brains work, as the neuroscientists have shown, but also, it is what we are made of, what everything is made of. These are the stakes musicians are playing for", says T-Bone Burnett.

 

Frank Gratkowski was born in Hamburg in 1963 and studied at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. He has extended his instrumental skills to include almost the entire spectrum of woodwind instruments, including flutes. He works intensively on tonal extensions and modifications of his instruments in solo projects and small formations using unorthodox playing techniques and microtonal concepts, some of which he has developed himself. As a bandleader and composer, he traverses the broad context of contemporary improvised music. There is no clear distinction between composition and improvisation in his work.