For those unaware, the wholly improvised set entitled Insubordinate Lunar Transgressions (out now via Denouement Records) from the Los Angeles Improvisation Ensemble shows strong coherence and agreement among the players.

The woodwind, piano, cello, and bass quartet format might be an unusual grouping, but in their skilled hands it leads to unexplored musical textures that are alluring and satisfying.

Where jazz disintegrates and classical explodes, the Los Angeles Improvisation Ensemble emerges with a defiant first statement with this brand new album.

Their debut is a boundary-obliterating journey through spontaneous creation - no charts, no safety net - just four virtuosos channeling sound from the void.

Pianist Louis Stewart, bassist Michael Valerio, cellist Andrew Shulman, and woodwind player Rob Hardt deliver an intense, genre-defying fusion of progressive jazz, classical modernism, and avant-garde sonorities.

Drawing inspiration from icons like Charles Mingus, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Copland, the ensemble crafts a soundscape that is unpredictable and exhilarating—turbulent yet graceful, chaotic yet meticulously crafted.

Insubordinate Lunar Transgressions is an invitation to witness four musicians navigating the raw, uncharted territories of sound.

This is not background music. This is a sonic expedition. Play loud. Enter freely — exit altered.

1. Tunisian Hookah Bar
2. Sergei’s Diabolical Circus
3. When Johnny Comes Running Home
4. Igor’s Infernal Rite to Sacrificial Square Dancing
5. Insubordinate Lunar Transgressions
6. Warsaw
7. Solar Voyage
8. Humoresque For Clarinet and Contrabass
9. Sussex Elegy
10. Easy Steps
11. Adrift Through Unmeasured Time
12. Excursions Into The Unknown

This magnificently sculpted new recording opens on a sense of creative energy that drives Tunisian Hookah Bar and the spirited Sergei’s Diabolical Circus and then we get the dutifully playful When Johnny Comes Running Home, the hypnotic Igor’s Infernal Rite to Sacrificial Square Dancing, before both the freely improvisational Insubordinate Lunar Transgressions and the somewhat darker fare of Warsaw are brought forth.

Along next is the joyfully jaunty Solar Voyage and the infectiously sculpted Humoresque For Clarinet and Contrabass and then we get the simply mesmerizing Sussex Elegy, the stylistically improvised Easy Steps, the set rounding out on the cunningly thematic Adrift Through Unmeasured Time, coming to a close on the carefully frenetic Excursions Into The Unknown.

Musicians:
Robert Hardt (woodwinds)
Louis Stewart (piano)
Andrew Shulman (cello)
Michael Valerio (bass)