Laurence Cousseau Quintet

‘Les Groseilles de Novembre’ is the debut project of a quintet led by Laurence Cousseau, unfolding within an aesthetic of magical realism—somewhere between the tangible and the dreamlike.

Drawing on Andrus Kivirähk’s eponymous book, the music traces states of transition and memory as they surface through bodies, landscapes, and inherited gestures, treating these in-between zones not as abstractions but as material: narrative, tactile, and open to transformation through composition and improvisation.

At the core of the ensemble’s sound is the uncommon pairing of alto flute and bass clarinet, a timbral axis that shapes both density and air. Around it, references flicker without settling: the restless drive of Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus, the saturated colours of Olivier Messiaen, and the fluid, hybrid languages of Magic Malik, Pierre Van Dormael, and Bo Van der Werf. The result is not synthesis so much as friction: tension folding into release, opacity into play, fragility held against a more unruly, raw beauty.

Formed in 2024, the quintet has developed through a residency at Jazz Station, with performances across Brussels, and the recording of a first album in May 2025. The release is scheduled for May 2026 at Werkplaats Walter, on Off Records.

Initially presented as a master’s recital at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and Jazz Station, the project was awarded the highest distinction. In February 2026, the group performed at CC Kultkom in Eupen as part of the 50th anniversary of Lundis d’Hortense.

The ensemble was preselected for Carte Blanche at MetX 2025 and for the Jazz Tour of Lundis d’Hortense, and was one of three projects selected from 80 applications by Werkplaats Walter for a concert and recording within Belgian Music Week 2026.

Looking ahead, the project extends into a research-driven trajectory at the intersection of ecology and music, continuing the leader’s academic work on interspecies relationality. Here, improvisation is approached less as a purely musical strategy than as a mode of organisation—set alongside animal social structures—to test new compositional models and to probe, more insistently, how listening might reshape our relationship to the living world.