Nels Cline Consentrik Quartet

Ars Nova Workshop presents the Consentrik Quartet, led by Wilco guitarist and legendary six-string groundbreaker Nels Cline, at Solar Myth on February 9-10. 

Born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in the summer of 2019, the Consentrik Quartet consists of Ingrid Laubrock on tenor and soprano saxophones, Chris Lightcap on acoustic bass, Tom Rainey on drums, and leader Nels Cline on electric guitar. The repertoire consists of pieces Nels wrote during the pandemic, one or two pieces written by others back in the 1970s, and a hefty helping of spontaneous improvisation. When not adding his particular strange beauty to the music of Wilco, Cline blazes a pioneering trail through a prolific four-decade career spanning myriad forms of jazz, rock, punk and experimental music. In addition to the Consentrik Quartet, Cline leads his audacious group The Nels Cline Singers, his quartet The Nels Cline 4 with fellow guitar wizard Julian Lage, and the duo CUP with his partner, Yuka Honda. Laubrock, whose collaborators include Anthony Braxton, Myra Melford and Kris Davis, is a dauntlessly experimental saxophonist and composer interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds, while Rainey is a spellbinding drummer who has worked deeply with the likes of Tim Berne, Fred Hersch and Mary Halvorson. Lightcap’s brilliant bass work has graced music by Marc Ribot, Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Jason Moran and James Carter, among others.