Michael Wollny Trio & Emma Rawicz’s INKYRA

Opening the evening is multi-award-winning British saxophonist and composer Emma Rawicz, who performs an hour-long set. Having emerged on the international stage to critical acclaim with her first release on the prestigious ACT label at the age of just 21, she has now sown the seeds of a major career, and become known as one of the leading artists of her generation.

Her INKYRA ensemble takes the form of a sextet, featuring UK heavyweights Gareth Lockrane, David Preston, Scottie Thompson, Kevin Glasgow and Jamie Murray. With just a handful of shows under its belt, the band already has palpable chemistry, and each musician contributes a huge amount of their own personality and spirit.

For pianist Michael Wollny, his trio with bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Eric Schaefer is the constant in a musical cosmos which is otherwise undergoing constant change. The three players are united by a musical vocabulary which is more or less inexhaustible, an outstanding sensitivity in their interplay and the ability to create new music of tremendous tension and dynamism in the moment.

Their newest album, Living Ghosts, is like a fast-flowing river; the only way to experience it is to feel its intensity, to revel in its twists and turns, be carried along and to experience its sudden and unexpected depths.