Electronissist-composer Cecilia Lopez and saxophonist-composer Ingrid Laubrock celebrate the release of their first duo album MAROMAS (Relative Pitch Records) with a double program focused on works for saxophone and electronics. This concert will feature a performance by the improvising duo that combines Laubrock’s artistry on tenor and soprano saxophones with Lopez’s electronic processing techniques. MAROMAS refers to tricksters, conjurers and equilibrists, which is reflected in the duo’s dark music – harsh but also playful in its pirouettes. The electronics process the saxophone as much as the saxophone plays the electronics. Both voices become a third, two-headed creature — sometimes alienating the sounds of the instruments to the point where they disappear.

The first part of the program will be a World Premiere of two pieces for electronics and a saxophone quartet put together specially for this occasion. Through graphic notation, Lopez’s piece “Le Diplomat” combines improvisation and composition. The piece utilizes one of Lopez’s first sound-objects “Chapas,” an amplified large sheet of metal used to alter the sound of her saxophone. Laubrock’s piece “Wingding” is a loosely structured exploration of sounds.

Cecilia Lopez Analog synthesizer
Ingrid Laubrock Soprano and tenor saxophone

Saxophone quartet + electronics featuring:
Ingrid Laubrock soprano saxophone
Erin Rogers tenor saxophone
Michaël Attias alto saxophone
Steve Baczkowski baritone saxophone
Cecilia Lopez synthesizer

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.

Cecilia Lopez is a composer, musician and multimedia artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina currently based in New York. She works across the media of performance, sound, installation and the creation of sound devices and systems. Her work has been performed and exhibited at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (AR), Center for Contemporary Arts (Vilnius, Lithuania), Roulette Intermedium, Issue Project Room, Ostrava Days Festival 2011 (Ostrava, Czech Republic), MATA Festival 2012, Experimental Intermedia, Fridman Gallery (NY), Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo, Norway) and the XIV Cuenca Biennial, among others. She was a Civitella Ranieri fellow in 2015 and has participated in various international residency programs.In 2019, Lopez curated the intermedia festival Folly Systems co-produced by Roulette Intermedium and Outpost Artists Resources that featured 11 international artists. She is also co-curator with Brandon Lopez of the series Morir Soñanando at Fridman Gallery in NYC. Collaborators include Carmen Baliero, Gerald Cleaver, Aki Onda, Brandon Lopez, John Driscoll, Carrie Schneider and Lars Laumann among others.

Ingrid Laubrock is an experimental saxophonist and composer, interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds. A prolific composer, Laubrock was named a “true visionary” by pianist and The Kennedy Center’s artistic director Jason Moran, and a“fully committed saxophonist and visionary” by The New Yorker. Her composition Vogelfrei was nominated “one of the best 25 Classical tracks of 2018”by The New York Times. Laubrock has performed with Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, Jason Moran, Kris Davis, Nels Cline, Tyshawn Sorey, Mary Halvorson, Myra Melford, Zeena Parkins, Tom Rainey, Tim Berne, Dave Douglas, Wet Ink and many others. Laubrock has composed for ensembles ranging from solo to chamber orchestra.Awards include Fellowship in Jazz Composition by the Arts Foundation, BBC Jazz Prize for Innovation, SWR German Radio Jazz Prize and German Record Critics Quarterly Award. She won best Rising Star Soprano Saxophonist in the ‘Downbeat Annual Critics Poll in 2015 and best Tenor Saxophonist in 2018. Ingrid Laubrock has received composing commissions by The Fromm Music Foundation, BBC Glasgow Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Yarn/Wire, Grossman Ensemble, The Shifting Foundation, The Robert D. Bielecki Foundation,The Jerwood Foundation, American Composers Orchestra, Tricentric Foundation, SWR New Jazz Meeting, Jazzahead, Wet Ink Ensemble, The Jazz Gallery Commissioning Series, NY State Council of the Arts, Wet Ink, John Zorn’s Stone Commissioning Series and the EOS Orchestra. She is an 2022/23 Artist-in-residence of The Wet Ink Ensemble.She is a recipient of the 2019 Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize in Music Composition, the 2022 Herb Alpert Ucross Prize in Music Composition and the 2021 Berklee Institute of Gender Justice Women Composers Collection Grant. Ingrid Laubrock is part-time faculty at Columbia University and The New School. She holds an MFA in Music Composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts.