Emma Rawicz Quartet At Alter Schlachthof

Emma Rawicz Quartet
Alter Schlachthof
Eupen, Belgium
May 14, 2025

Foaming streams of clotted blood surged over the concrete floor of the Alter Schlachthof Eupen for almost a hundred years. Now, amber beer gushes into wide-bottomed goblets and catches the last sparkles of daylight as the sun sinks below large windows that line one external wall. Four young Europeans are getting into full flow on the purple-lit stage at this spotless modern venue.

The former abattoir lies 20 minutes south of Belgium's borders with the Netherlands and Germany. It welcomed a full house on this Wednesday night, where 23- year-old British saxophonist Emma Rawicz lead a quartet of pianist Rasmus Sørensen, bassist Freddie Jensen and drummer Marc Michel. It is a group marked by active listening, sensitive interplay and effervescent spirit.

Those characteristics shine out from the first song of the night, "Rangwali." It began with a loose-lined passage of tenor saxophone. The four players then swelled and subsided around the contours of this typically organic and free-ranging Rawicz composition. The saxophonist writes modern jazz with no audible traces of the bones and ligaments that hold it together. As a soloist, she uses every part of her instrument—from crystalline altissimo notes down to fluffy-edged low tones, with bends and bite in the middle register.

"Xanadu" gets hacked into three chunks on Rawicz's album, Chroma (ACT Music, 2023). At this concert she served it in a single big lump. It is another knife-edge piece that leaps into euphoria and tumbles into timidity. Sørensen's solo repeats phrases, changing a note with each iteration, a contrast with Rawicz's tendency to hook a pattern and nudge it around her range intact.

Two tunes paid homage to influential figures from the saxophonist's life. "The Oak Tree" is dedicated to a former teacher. It features a ferocious solo from Michel, who pulled his left arm high and let it hang as a threat before lashing down into the body of his kit. He switched to soft brushes on "Middle Ground," a light-headed ballad composed for Rawicz's father's birthday.

This fresh-faced quartet delivered a truckload of soul and vitality into this old slaughterhouse in Belgium on May 14. They breathed life into Rawicz's high-spirited music that oscillates between anticipation and elation. When the show reached its terminus, the pristine concrete floor bounced beneath a standing ovation—and quite right, too. They killed it.