Fitting artist to close the 2025 Fall season and celebrate 20 years of phenomenal jazz from the folks at the Firehouse. Laubrock has graced the Firehouse many times over the years and her evolution from squawking busker to compositional wunderkind has been a pleasure to view. The trimmed Grammy Season lineup has Ingrid on saxophones, Brandon Seabrook on guitar, Shawn Lovato on standup bass, Tom Rainey on drums, with special guest DoYeon Kim on gayageum. Ingrid starts with fire and toggles easily from soprano to alto, carrying herself as the bandleader. Seabrook is a Firehouse regular and seems at home with delicate shading or strenuous noodling. At one point, Brandon scrapes what looks to be a small tape player on his strings giving a haunting word-less vocal quality. Lovato’s capable bowing or plucking along with Rainey’s understated timekeeping forms the canvas for the others to spill paint. The gayageum is an odd Korean instrument like a large zither, Japanese koto, the Chinese guzheng, the Mongolian yatga, the Vietnamese Dan tranh, the Sudanese kacapi, or the Kazakh jetigen. With 12 strings, it looks like a diving board with a couple of bridges. The sound could morph from harp, to acoustic guitar with a decidedly “eastern” accompaniment. Laubrock’s excellent recent recording Purposing The Air has her conducting a series of duets based on a book of poetry. Makes sense that one of tonight’s pieces was inspired by a Rilke poem. Firehouse owner Nick Lloyd came out to thank the audience for years of support. The thanks go both ways as I am very grateful to have participated heavily over the past two decades.
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