| Jazz |
Sometimes discovery begins not with sound but with sight. A record sleeve catches the eye; a single name glows with quiet authority. You may not recognize the bandleader, yet one familiar presence is enough to tip the balance. Here, that name is Ingrid Laubrock, composer, saxophonist, and longtime collaborator of drummer-composer Willy Rodriguez. For listeners attuned to the outer edges of contemporary jazz, Laubrock’s involvement functions as a kind of imprimatur: expect structural ambition, tonal curiosity and an aversion to complacency. Press “Play,” and the promise begins to unfold.
The album opens sparely. A brushed cymbal trembles at the threshold; a low piano figure hovers, unresolved. Then the voice of Allan Harris enters, measured, intimate, almost confessional. His phrasing resists melodrama; instead, he leans into restraint, allowing silence to contour the lines. On the title track, a subtle harmonic pivot, Genovese shifting from a luminous major voicing into a shadowed cluster, creates the sensation of the floor giving way beneath the lyric “I will find you.” It is a small gesture, but it signals the album’s governing principle: emotional revelation through structural nuance.
What follows is less a sequence of songs than the gradual erection of a musical architecture. The compositions interlock, motifs resurfacing in altered guise. A rhythmic figure introduced in the drums reappears as a fragmented saxophone phrase; a harmonic tension left unresolved in one movement finds quiet resolution in another. The music may not yield immediately to the casual ear. Yet for those fluent in its language, it offers the pleasure of discovery, the sense that every detail has consequence.
No introduction is required for the formidable pianist Leo Genovese, whose reputation for fearless harmonic exploration precedes him. Here, his playing oscillates between crystalline lyricism and percussive abstraction. In one passage, his right hand sketches a nearly romantic melody; seconds later, he fractures it into polyrhythmic shards, nudging the ensemble toward turbulence before restoring equilibrium with a single, resonant chord. He functions as both destabilizer and anchor, a duality that mirrors the album’s emotional arc.
That arc is rooted in loss. Rodriguez has described the project as emerging from a period of profound grief, the death of a close family member that left him navigating absence as a daily presence. Rather than memorialize directly, he composes around the void. In The Unknown (I Will Find You) becomes a meditation on how memory persists in fragments: gestures, textures, recurring rhythms. The album does not dramatize mourning; it metabolizes it. Through repetition, motifs returning insistently, sometimes almost obsessively, Rodriguez enacts the mind’s refusal to let go, even as the music gradually opens toward acceptance.
Laubrock’s contribution is essential to this process. Her tone, at once incisive and burnished, introduces what might be described as an urban nocturne. In the album’s central movement, she enters after a prolonged stretch of near-minimalism, her saxophone tracing a line that feels less like soloing than like searching. She avoids virtuosic display; instead, she sustains a note just beyond comfort, allowing its overtones to bloom. The effect is haunting, unresolved, deeply human.
Harris, appearing exclusively as vocalist, provides narrative contour. His restraint heightens the sense of interiority; when he allows his voice to swell, it feels earned. The ensemble never overwhelms him. Each member is indispensable, and Rodriguez’s writing makes that interdependence audible. His compositional language braids his own rhythmic sensibility with Genovese’s harmonic daring and Laubrock’s tonal intelligence. The result is neither fusion nor pastiche, but synthesis.
The sonic identity is further shaped by sound designer Chris Connors, whose role proves integral. Connors crafts distinct environments for each movement, gliding between synthetic atmospheres and organic textures with subtle precision. On one track, a faint electronic hum undergirds the acoustic ensemble, creating a sense of suspended time; on another, reverberation expands the piano into cathedral-like space. These choices are not ornamental. They reinforce the album’s thematic preoccupation with presence and absence, solidity and echo.
Listening to the record in full feels akin to entering a dimly lit gallery. One thinks of wandering past the inky canvases of Pierre Soulages, where black is not void but variation, surface revealing depth upon sustained attention. The comparison is apt: this is music that reveals itself gradually, through patience. It resists the culture of immediacy.
Indeed, calling the individual works “tracks” feels reductive. They function as movements within a single, intricate organism. The album demands continuity. Heard in fragments, it intrigues; heard whole, it coheres. The complexity is deliberate, but not gratuitous. Rodriguez understands tension and release, density and air. His drumming, subtle, textural, rarely ostentatious, guides the ensemble with quiet authority. For listeners unfamiliar with his work, the effect is bracing: here is a composer unafraid of ambiguity, yet committed to emotional clarity.
This is not an album that courts background listening. It asks for sustained attention, and it rewards it. The repetitions are provocations; the silences, invitations. Art, at its most vital, should not be fully mastered. It should remain open, an offering rather than a conclusion. That openness defines this project.
For adventurous listeners willing to enter uncertain terrain, In The Unknown (I Will Find You) offers more than aesthetic pleasure. It offers passage: from grief toward articulation, from fragmentation toward fragile coherence. Step inside as you would a shadowed gallery. Stay long enough for your eyes, or ears, to adjust. The shapes will emerge. And when they do, you may find that the unknown no longer feels quite so distant.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, February 26th 2026
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Musicians :
Drummer, composer, and bandleader: Willy Rodriguez
Saxophonist: Ingrid Laubrock
Pianist: Leo Genovese
with spoken word contributions from Allan Harris
Track Listing :
In the Unknown (I Will Find You)
The Perplexity of Eternity
Curie’s Notes
A Room Full of Confusion
Where I Saw You Last
The Route
Follow the Light
Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder Studio
Sound Design: Chris Connors