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ARTIST
TITLE
Acutance
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
RA 044CD RA 044CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
8/14/2026

Laura Strobl is a Viennese, classically trained violist (and violinist), who focuses on featuring the viola as a contemporary solo instrument. She is a long-time member of German pianist and composer Georg Graewe's Sonic Fiction Orchestra, which is based in Vienna. Stroble has played with such innovative improvisers as Frank Gratkowski, François Houle, Gerry Hemingway, Martin Siewert, and Günter "Baby" Sommer. She initiated the free-improvising trio with her mentor Graewe and British master drummer Mark Sanders, who has worked with many greats in the British, European, and American free jazz and free improvised music scenes. Sanders first collaborated with Graewe in his quintet in the 1990s (Concert in Berlin 1996, Wobbly Rail, 1999), and continued to work with Graewe in the Frisque Concordance band. This trio first performed live at London's Cafe OTO in March 2026 during Sanders' three-day residency in the club. Actuance was recorded in Vienna in November 2025 and offers eleven chamber pieces for the uncommon instrumentation of viola, piano, and drums. The album's title refers to the abrupt transition from light to dark in a physical, objective measure of an image at the edges of objects. It defines the steepness of the tonal gradient across boundaries, directly influencing the human eye's perception of sharpness and clarity in a photograph. It is an apt description of how spontaneous, improvised ideas, a brief and evocative melody, or just an abstract sound gravitate organically into instant, coherent, and often complex and intense compositions.