The trio explores the boundaries and shared space in and between the realms of composed and improvised music, drawing on their own diverse influences of jazz, musique actuelle, rock, new music, early music and 20th century classical music. The Queen Mab Trio has been creating and performing for almost six years now making concert tours across Canada, the USA and Europe.
Lori Freedman (Canada) is a Montreal-based, independent free-lance musician who performs with the double bass and bass, as well as B-flat and E-flat clarinets. She sight-reads and improvises music in various settings from orchestra, through ensembles to solo pieces. Lori Freedman also composes scores for concert music as well as for dance, film, video and theatre, as well as performs in all of these arenas both live on stage and in the recording studio.
Marilyn Lerner (Canada) is jazz pianist and improviser who has performed to acclaim internationally, from her native Montreal to Havana, from Jerusalem to Amsterdam and the Ukraine. Her groundbreaking recordings have garnered recognition, including “Best Jazz Recording 2004” for her Special Angel duo with legendary guitarist Sonny Greenwich. Lerner’s work spans the worlds of jazz, creative improvisation, klezmer, and a 20th century classical repertoire. She also composes for film, theatre, radio and television. Current commissions include a jazz-classical crossover project, creating improvisations on the work of Eric Satie and silent film scores for Karl Theodor Dreyer’s Joan of Arc (1927) and the 1923 Yiddish comedy classic, East and West.
Ig Henneman (Netherlands) began her working life as a viola player in symphony orchestras before co-founding the rock-band FC Gerania, for which she also began composing. She is for the most part a self-taught composer, though she did receive some two years of coaching from Dutch composer Robert Heppener. Nowadays Henneman is counted as one of the ‘New Dutch Swing’ improvisationalists of the Amsterdam scene, as well as a prolific and sought after composer. In 1985 Ig Henneman began leading her own groups showcasing improvisation as well as her own formal compositions. As an improviser she currently focuses on the Henneman String Quartet, on dueting with Ab Baars (cl & ts) as well as the Queen Mab Trio.