New York-based German saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock has been a strong improviser and composer for over 25 years, expressing herself in bands of various size and configuration.

This new offering is arguably her most daring as she chooses not to play but instead presents 60 short compositions issued on two discs performed by four different duos. Vocalists Fay Victor, Sara Serpa, Theo Bleckmann and Rachel Calloway are joined by various strings or piano. With lyrics drawn from Erica Hunt’s poem Mood Librarian, in which there are images of ‘broken glass subsumed into a bottle’ and a ‘sky broken into letters’, the music is beguiling for its blend of stillness and motion, understatement and vigour, and indefinable timbres that capture the abstraction of the words.

Miniature ballads they may be, but the pieces occasionally unleash giant dramatic energy, particularly when the long held cello drones and gruff bowing of Mariel Roberts combine with the sung-spoken phrases of a singer as magnetic as Fay Victor. The largely dark austerity of their work contrasts with the lighter planes of Serpa and Matt Mitchell while Theo Bleckmann’s throaty overtones and feathery soprano flow potently into Ben Monder’s cracking guitar distortions, making for atmospheres that are both primeval and intimate. Rachel Calloway and Ari Streisfield are the most playfully fleeting, sometimes heard and then gone in a flash, but the impression created is no less powerful. An ambitious, challenging, rewarding work by Laubrock, who also co-produced with David Breskin.