Elegiacal by Perch Hen Brock & Rain

Perch Hen Brock & Rain featuring Ab Baars, Ig Henneman, Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey is an improvising quartet drawing on myriad experiences and backgrounds. Each member is conscious of their own weight and power to add to the communal conversation, understanding silence and restraint can be as powerful a contribution to the whole as density. Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey represent the best of the New York scene while Ab Baars and Ig Henneman are key members of the idiosyncratic Dutch improvised music community. Either duo showcases the kind of telepathic interplay that comes from years of dedicated playing. Together, the wealth of experience allows limitless possibilities.

The quartet gathered for a first extensive European tour in November 2014, followed by appearances at amongst others the North Sea Jazz Festival, a Canadian Jazz Festival tour and in 2018 the Dutch Summer JazzCycleTour. The day after they went into the studio and this is the music that is released on their 2nd album 'Elegiacal': a collection of oddly enchanting improvisations as Tom Rainey calls them.

(...) The cd 'Live @ The Jazz Happening Tampere' proofs that stunning music can be created without making any appointments. The interplay between timbre and dynamics is so well balanced that the listener however suspects a composers hand in the whole form. (...) You hear the musicians on the top of their focus. What happens next is a real miracle. -Mischa Andriessen


(...) The quartet's first tour together in 2014 yielded this live date from Finland. This intersection of the newer Dutch swing and post- Downtown New York sound evidences a newly refreshed improvised music. Not free jazz, nor exactly free improvisation, the pieces make mannerly and urbane connections. (...) Pieces that gather momentum as improvised music, but coalesce as seemingly composed music. Such prestidigitation is evidence of music making at the highest levels. -Mark Corroto
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