In December of 2010, the year marking her 65th birthday and 25th anniversary as a composer/bandleader, Dutch violist Ig Henneman assembled a sextet of improvising "kindred spirits" and embarked on a European tour. The group included four musicians with whom Henneman had worked over the years -- reedman Ab Baars (also Henneman's husband) on tenor saxophone, clarinet, and shakuhachi; bassist Wilbert de Joode, a veteran of basically all of Henneman's ensembles to date, and pianist Marilyn Lerner and clarinetist Lori Freedman, two Canadian musicians from the Queen Mab Trio, which Henneman had joined in the early 2000s -- along with German trumpeter Axel Dörner, the group's only member who had no previous performing/recording history with the violist.

A total of 16 concerts were presented, featuring a program with pieces dedicated to artists who had inspired Henneman over the years, including Thelonious Monk, Emily Dickinson, Jimmy Giuffre, Misha Mengelberg, and Morton Feldman. At the conclusion of the tour, the sextet recorded its debut album, Cut a Caper, at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam on December 19 and 20; the album was released by Henneman and Baars' Amsterdam-based Wig label in April 2011. In June of 2012 the sextet set out on a tour of Canadian festivals from Montreal to Vancouver; the tour immediately followed a three-week Henneman and Baars residency at the Banff Arts Centre in Banff, Alberta that began in late May. New material had been composed by Henneman during the residency and premiered on the tour, which ended with a concert at Vancouver's Ironworks venue as part of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Pleased with the recording that had been made of the show, Henneman decided that it was worthy of release, and Wig issued the unedited recording as the sextet's second album, Live the Ironworks Vancouver, in September of 2012. ~ Dave Lynch, Rovi