Thumbscrew pt 3: Composition 14

 

Welcome back, my friends, to the - OK, that's enough of that. But considering how I had originally planned back in June 2021 to write "a bit" about this album (and back then, "a bit" is all I would have ever thought about even trying to write... not that I managed it), it sort of feels as if I have either been dealing with this album, or putting off dealing with it, forever. And there's still more to come! I probably have even still yet one further post in me relating to this album, but in the meantime, I always said I would tackle this particular number - or rather the three different interpretations of this composition - in a separate article. Here goes:

1. a) The composition notes

Comp. 14 dates from 1970, and is dedicated to Joe Chambers. (*) B's notes make it sound as if the piece was performed many times in different contexts, but of course, as we know, it was never officially recorded until Thumbscrew got hold of it. The score - described in the notes as "a 15 x 24 inch page of schematic material", but not reproduced in Composition Notes Book A (although see 1. b) below) - "can be performed in any time length and or (sic) direction", but what never changes about the piece is that it's intended for solo performance. The nature of the graphic score, meanwhile, is consciously designed "as a means to have an elastic structure for any solo single-line instrument"; this in turn is not intended to imply that only single-line instruments can be used to interpret the piece, rather that the score was designed in such a way as not to disadvantage such instruments. Do I really understand what is meant by this, however? I do not.

- There is a theme here: as I mentioned in (what I suspect will become) a significant recent blog post, the composition notes do rather have a habit of failing to clear up the various questions one might have regarding the compositions themselves - although presumably this is far less the case if one has actually studied with B. in person and understands how his methodology works in practice - and in this case, for sure, what I found in pp. 213-220** of Book A led mainly to further confusion. What does seem clear is that Comp. 14 is critically linked to B's concept of language music. (B. explicitly states on p.214 that the work "was conceived to be a vehicle for language music participation" - and similar statements are made throughout the notes.) Beyond this, it is asserted several times how much flexibility is allowed to/required of the individual interpreter (the "procedure gives a new flexibility to the extended interpretive musician") - so much so that when I first read the notes through I found myself concluding that the performer is effectively granted complete licence (and with it the freedom to disregard the score altogether); B. himself realises that is what he is in danger of appearing to say, and clarifies on p.217 that this "should not be viewed as a work without its own particular demands... (it) is not an 'anything goes' work of creativity". To perform the work, he writes, "is to have real insight into the language music foundation that necessitated its construction". 

The reason why such emphasis is placed on flexibility is that before any performance, the musician is expected to "choose a central time unit" (from a table of seven shown on the score - see 1. b)); this will then govern how long the overall performance will last (see 2. below). Any given performance may incorporate multiple run-throughs of the sequence dictated in the score, and a player "is free to repeat or omit any section of material" (p.216). Furthermore, "the language categories can be re-arranged for every performance - which is to say the instrumentalist can basically choose the application terms... regardless of context". At this point, as noted above, it's beginning to sound more or less as if the individual performer is being given carte blanche - hence B's need to dial that idea back a bit. Nevertheless, the performer is expected to make certain choices ahead of time and is then free to make modifications ad hoc during the actual rendition; the piece "is designed to... bring forth new surprises for the creative instrumentalist because its underlying science procedure is open to the dictates of the moment" (p.216). - Which is all well and good; but as I pencil-scribbled during my reading, isn't this true of any (piece heavily reliant upon) improvisation..?

1. b) The score

For whatever reason, this is not actually shown in the book** (although it is described - sort of). Instead the only illustration - on p.220 - is a "floor plan for No. 14" which, unfortunately, sheds no light on matters at all. It is indeed totally unclear how the plan even relates to the piece being delineated in the notes; my best assumption here is that it is somehow germane to one specific performance (?). [All it shows is a hand-drawn rectangle with CONDUCTOR written underneath it, at the foot of the plan; above this, there is a space and then four underlined crosses, designated 1-4 going up the page (or away from the conductor, one behind the other). As I say, how this relates to the piece described in the notes is opaque, given that we know the four crosses clearly do not represent separate performers - unless this was indeed from a particular performance, in which four players took turns interpreting the composition.]

Where we can see the score is in Carl Testa's essay on the TCF site, as I have previously mentioned. There would not appear to be any obvious issue with my reproducing it here - but if anybody legitimately thinks this is problematic, just let me know:

- the "table of seven time units" referenced on p.216 of Book A is visible in the upper right corner. (Tape marks in the lower left corner rather imply that a similar insert may have become detached from the main sheet at some point. What could be missing, I wonder?)

As you can see, there really is minimal information here. There appear to be (at least) two different points of entry to the "map", and once in, there is almost nothing to tell the performer what/how to play. Realistically, there are only three places on the score where precise graphic information is provided - and since there is no explanation of these given in the composition notes, it is to be presumed that anyone working with B. around the dawn of the seventies would have been told how to use them. (A table of "sound classifications" is provided at the beginning of Book A - on pp. v-x inclusive - which lists dozens of symbols and their meanings, but it's still not clear whether these can be used to decipher the symbols shown on the score, or if those latter represent specific instructions for this piece.)

What we do know is that the basic focus was language music... and with that in mind, we may well now ask:

1. c) What do we mean by language music anyway?

This term is so prevalent throughout B's works that it rather feels as if every friendly experiencer worth his or her salt "should" know the answer off by heart by now, without having to ask. But... hell, I don't have to finish this sentence, do I? Ahem... anyway... for what it's worth, my understanding of this term is that it refers at the most basic level to the isolated classification of different types of attack; in practice, when deployed in the context of an actual performance, it tends to indicate that in addition to the score(s) which relate to the primary and secondary territories the musicians will be exploring, the players will be provided with sheets of different symbols - representing different "language types" or units, which is to say different types of attack (trills, buzzes, smears, "bent" attacks etc etc) - and that there will be corresponding places throughout the accompanying scores where the players will be expected to use these language units as they see fit. 

In the context - at once wider, less specific, and yet also more specific since we are told that this is the main focus of the composition - at hand, what then does it mean for the performer-interpreter? It would seem, basically, to mean that each musician is free to decide before playing which language types are going to constitute the focus of his or her performance (as well as choosing the time unit, as outlined above). That's my best guess, anyway... one need hardly add that I could easily be wrong.

So much for the theory..! Now to examine the actual readings, as given by the three members of Thumbscrew.

2. The performances

No matter what other conclusions may be reached here, one thing seems inescapably obvious: that all three musicians decided beforehand on one of the shorter time units for their interpretations. Tomas Fujiwara's reading, comfortably the longest of the three, lasts just three and a half minutes...

2. a) Track 3 (Guitar) (2.24)

Never mind any steps taken by the composer to ensure that single-line instruments were not disadvantaged - Mary Halvorson isn't happy just playing her (chordal) instrument here: she uses a delay pedal (or similar effects unit) to create short-duration loops from her attacks, thus quickly building up a layered tapestry of sound, all of it produced by her. Starting with one single picked note, which promptly repeats, she then weaves in some simple, bright-sounding chords which immediately open up the soundscape - and straight away introduces her trademark whammy-swoop effect. The next variety of attack to appear chimes almost like a bell, but although the sounds being produced are quite different, if there is a language unit at play here, it seems to be that of a decisive, down-picked "declarative" attack. In the second half of this very brief reading, MH introduces some little three-note phrases incorporating large interval jumps. All of this naturally works pretty well with the delay in use, and before you know it, she ceases playing altogether and leaves the pedal looping quietly to a fade.

2. b) Track 6 (Drums) (3.32)

Tomas Fujiwara plays this on (what sounds like) tympani (or another tuned drum/pair of drums) and several cymbals, and creates such a marvellous vivid and evocative soundscape that if one listens in closely, the effect is electrifying. He opens up with quiet little runs of two or three rapid beats leading to a decisive single beat, with a higher pitch; the bigger cymbals are as waves crashing on a beach, or dawn exploding across the sky. The performance gathers pace as TF switches to rolling attacks, punctuated with taps on the hi-hat, and some subtle changes in the rhythmic figures or the playing surface are magnified here. Whilst still a short reading of the piece, this version lasts long enough to pass through two more phases before it ends: from here, it builds to a pitch of excitement with real (controlled) intensity in the playing before settling back, barely perceptibly, minute shifts in the dynamics and pace heralding a slightly more subdued phase at the end. Here, the basic language unit appears to be a short burst of tuned drum beats capped with a cymbal strike; the variation comes above all in the hand-speed, as well as the dynamics, but if all this sounds dry in the description above, it really isn't: as I have enthused previously, TF shows himself to be a superb interpreter of B's music on this recording, and if one pays careful attention here, the result is enthralling.

2. c) Track 9 (Bass) (3.03)

Michael Formanek opens with single notes, careful to avoid playing anything that might sound like a "tune", quickly introducing some tremolo and/or vibrato to most of his attacks, eventually developing this into a strategy of shortish legato phrasings in which a stopped note is dragged up or down the fingerboard a way. Surprisingly, breath becomes an essential (though surely accidental) feature of this reading: the mic is close enough to MF and his instrument that the listener can quite clearly hear the player breathing in and out, throughout the performance.  Single notes are replaced by double stops, and Formanek also plays with creating chords by way of stopped notes and simultaneous open strings. As with the other two readings, this one gathers pace and intensity in its second half. Other than noting the "bent" effect of many of the individual attacks, I am not sure I really identified the basic language unit in this case - assuming there is one.

3. Any conclusions?

Yet again I seem to have doomed myself to being the "bad guy" here, pointing out remorselessly the way in which the trio's presumed lack of studio time led them continually to produce very brief versions of these pieces (- or, in this case, three rather brief versions of the same piece.)

Nevertheless, there is enough to go on here to detect some similarities between the three interpretations, which would seem to imply a degree of discussion and prior agreement as to the way in which the score was to be navigated. All three start with something very simple and develop it quickly, and all three display a notable acceleration in both pace and intensity in the second half of the performance. It's also notable (as pointed out in 2. c) above) that all three musicians use their instruments as sound-producing devices, rather than to play tunes; but given that all three are pretty seasoned improvisers with wide experience of different musical settings and approaches, this in itself is not especially surprising.

Beyond this... I'm not convinced that I really understand the essential nature of the composition much better now than I did before I heard the CD. Unfortunately, it really would appear to be the case once again that the brevity of the readings undermines the fundamental intention behind the recording: in order to shed real light on the essence of the composition - to show how and why the piece is so intimately tied up with B's "language music pedagogy" - we would need longer and more developed readings of the score, and in order to get those, the musicians would need quite a bit more time, and probably a chance to discuss the work directly with the composer (or at least to hunt down any surviving players who performed the piece back in the early '70s, and ask them what they remembered about working on it). Compared to B's later (much more personal and idiosyncratic) scores, this one is largely devoid of signposting and the composition notes don't really help very much in terms of filling in the blanks. Of course, in the "ideal world" which I keep positing... these are merely the first, exploratory attempts to interpret this piece, soon enough to be followed by many others. In this world here, it's quite possible that nobody will ever touch the piece again - but damn, I would love to be proved wrong.

As for the other conclusion, it remains much as it was before: this album can be experienced in two very different ways, depending on the listener's focus (or three ways - the inevitable third being as a quirky set of background noise, but we'll disregard that). Heard out of its larger context, as a set of creative music, this is an extremely rewarding album by a very skilled and well-matched trio, all wearing full explorers' gear. Experienced as a ground-breaking presentation of unheard works by this composer... it can't help but fall short of what it might have been. Sorry, but it just can't. Still, I'm grateful for the attempt and I will continue to enjoy listening to the results. 

* This dedication is pretty interesting in itself: in 1970, Chambers had been making quite a name for himself - at least among creative musicians - as a restless and curious composer. But the sort of work he had brought to Bobby Hutcherson's Components (1966) was so defiantly uncommercial that it couldn't last... and didn't. The idea now of a piece like this being dedicated to Chambers is resolutely incongruous... still, did Fujiwara take it into account when he prepared his own reading?

** p. 218 is completely blank, at least it is in my copy. It's tempting (and therefore slightly maddening) to suppose that this is where the score was meant to appear; maddening, because if this got missed from this one set of notes, what else may have been overlooked..?

(Re)construction

 

A postscript, really, to the previous article: if anyone (upon listening to the Charlie Parker Project) finds themselves wondering why the leader robbed us of the chance to hear him play Parker's alto lines on "Yardbird Suite", the answer is probably that as far as B. was concerned, he had already chalked that one off. 

When pointing back to previous standards recordings made with more conventionally jazz-based musicians, I only linked to volume one of the two which B. recorded for Magenta; I'd never personally heard either of them (produced from two days of quartet sessions at the end of January 1985) - until this weekend. I haven't mentioned this much lately, but I never used to make a secret of the fact that I'm not a huge fan of standards... this of course sounds utterly heretical to most jazz listeners (who generally love that kind of thing), but then I'm not straightforwardly a jazz listener either. I do take an interest in some of the modern jazz-based player-writers, and albums which focus on works by particular composers are more likely to be of interest to me than (say) a collection full of hoary old chestnuts from the Great American Songbook - such as we find on Seven Standards 1985, Volume I. There, three modern-era pieces by Cliffords Brown and Jordan, and by B's idol Warne Marsh, are joined by four of the kind of songs which I would never go out of my way to hear, no matter who is playing them; and for that matter, I was seldom in any great rush to acquire B's own standards recordings, or even to hear them: being a completist, I will eventually try and hear everything the maestro has been involved with, assuming I live long enough, but things like this are so far down my list of priorities that it could take me a very long time to get around to them. 

Volume two is the only one which I would consider buying, and ironically it is the one which never did get issued on CD; vinyl copies are not at all difficult to come by, but I don't currently have a record player set up in the house and there would really be no point - I only buy CDs*. The track list for this one comprises bop and post-bop era compositions exclusively, and purely by chance, I found myself listening to it online yesterday. (It wasn't even nudged my way by Youtube's algorithms - I was actively searching for Comp. 174 and for some reason, this is one of the videos which came up..!) Kicking off with "Moment's Notice" (originally on Blue Train of course**), the programme consists of five harmonically-complex minefields to showcase the leader's dexterity, and two ballads for light relief to showcase his (eccentric but undoubted) melodic sense. Dizzy Gillespie's "Groovin' High" and (the original) "Milestones"*** are accompanied by two Monk numbers - a sweetly reflective "Ruby My Dear" and (with typical Braxtonian bravado) the breathlessly-rapid rip through "Trinkle Tinkle" which closes proceedings - plus Horace Silver's "Nica's Dream" and, of course, "Yardbird Suite". [It's worth adding here, particularly with regard to an observation I made about the Parker Project, that on the LP itself the credits list "John" Gillespie and "Charles" Parker, though there is no indication of who instigated this restoration of dignity.]

So... if anyone truly is (Hank) jonesing for the sound of B's alto negotiating Parker's lovely melody, this is where you can find it. It's everything you would expect, and no more than that, this being after all exactly what it says on the tin: a standards album, with a respected trio of sidemen very much from the jazz tradition# - who in this case, at least, were presumably happy enough to be playing with him. It's worth hearing just to marvel at B's facility with "Trinkle Tinkle", a horribly-difficult piece taken at a speed which seems at first to terrify the rest of the band into subdued near-silence (Jones does recover enough to grapple with Monk's unique chordal algebra in his solo, at least) - the maestro of course makes it sound easy. I've never been completely convinced that his approach is especially well-suited to standards, and I would (naturally) choose him playing his own music any day of the week; but once in a blue moon, given appropriately testing material to navigate and sympathetic sidemen for company, he can tempt me over to the "light side". I have no idea why this one never got issued on CD - did the first volume not sell, or did the label itself fold before the reissue could happen?## - but if I were looking to acquire a set of standards from this leader, this would probably be it. (Maybe I will buy the LP, one day...)

* I still own hundreds of records, but the vast majority of these were acquired before I started buying CDs, and there is hardly any jazz in there. I would never willingly part with them, and of course, one of these days we will eventually get a record player set up again and I will be able to listen to the buggers. But I can never bring myself to buy B's stuff on vinyl, simply because there is no realistic prospect of playing it for the time being; I do own one of his albums in that format, which was given to me some years ago by Atanase. (Given the number of crucial '70s releases which are still not available on CD, I am probably going to have to change my mind on this at some point...)

** Worth adding that, just 'cos I had to check it myself. Blue Train is one of those weird outlier albums, considered a "classic" by people who know nothing whatsoever about jazz - largely because of its iconic cover, the poster of which still adorned many a student wall in my day - but not really thought of as a major Coltrane release by anyone who is seriously interested in his music. (At least some of its iconic status undoubtedly stems from the fact that it was the tenor legend's only session (as a leader) for Blue Note.)

*** This is (now) the name of two entirely different compositions, both (now) credited to Miles Davis. The second, far more famous one - which kickstarted Davis' fascination with modal music - was originally just called "Miles", but as it appeared on an album called Milestones, the name change was inevitable, particularly as the earlier piece never much caught on. But it is that earlier piece which is interpreted here; it was apparently penned by John Lewis, actually, but "gifted" to Davis by way of thanks for getting Lewis the gig (with Parker) where it was recorded. It is also the source of the notorious "too hard for a country boy like me" quip from Parker, and (as noted by Ian Carr in his biography of Davis) does sound a bit overwritten, packed full of chords in a way that Davis would soon enough abandon completely. (It's the sort of challenging piece that only a leader like B. would willingly take on, in fact.)

# Hank Jones is obviously a legend and would have been a first-rank collaborator; I'm not sure that the other two quite were, but they both had extremely solid credentials. I have no idea how the sessions came about, or who approached whom - but at least this time, unlike that earlier occurrence, there is no suggestion that B. was taking some other cat's place at the last minute. 

## The Restructures entry for the album did include mention of a CD, but with no catalogue number for it - which could just have been an oversight, or might have indicated that a CD issue was planned but never happened. Given that the first volume was released on CD ten years after the original release, it seems unlikely that there was never any intention to do the same for the second volume - but I can't see any evidence that a CD ever appeared, even in Japan.

Parker (and) recreation

 

(Thoughts on Anthony Braxton´s Charlie Parker Project (1993))

The date for this recording remains October 1993 - yep, basically three decades ago - whichever version of the album you're working with, but (for reasons best known to Herr Uehlinger) only the original release included the year in the album title. When the album was remastered and reissued, a couple of writing credits had been tidied up - "Hot House" and "Bebop" were both misattributed to Parker on the initial release - and the year had vanished from the title, but otherwise the album remained the same. (The huge cache of unreleased recordings from the studio sessions remained untapped until the complete, definitive - and sadly unobtainable - edition finally saw the light of day in 2018.)

... and whichever version of the album we're talking about, I still don't have it; that is, I still don't have an official version of it. As recently recounted, I came quite close to acquiring a copy of the reissue, but missed out on it - for the time being! Still, this just reminded me that I do have a perfectly serviceable CD-R copy on my fifth shelf, long overdue for an outing...

***

I suppose the first thing to note about this album is to highlight the choice that wasn't taken: unlike George Lewis before him (or Chris Pitsiokos, much more recently *), B. did not attempt any sort of reclamation with Parker's name. This is of course entirely understandable; unlike Charles Mingus, who successfully got label bosses and club owners to credit him under his "proper" name from relatively early in his career**, Parker was billed as "Charlie" for every show he played and every session he cut - was never billed any other way during his life. What he might or might not have wished for is not necessarily known to us either; but we can readily understand why Lewis made the decision he did - and in that light, it might seem a little strange that B. didn't follow suit. Then again, as I have just noted, all the music which Parker made was recorded by "Charlie Parker", so to follow Lewis' lead on this would also have been a little odd. Both Lewis and Pitsiokos are rendering homage to Parker the man, the creator; B. is specifically dealing with Parker the recording artist. 

Regardless of how much umm-ing and ahh-ing might have taken place behind the scenes over what name to use for the project, B. had clearly decided ahead of time that he wasn't looking for any sort of straightforward tribute (as if...). Unlike some previous standards dates, where he had utilised sidemen with a more traditional jazz background than his own***, the maestro organised this one with musical mischief in mind. Towards the end of a fairly busy 1993 - which had seen him play the London Jazz Festival with Evan Parker (and Paul Rutherford#), then reconvene the "Forces" quartet for a selective US tour, but which had also included (what I presume is) a more "standard" standards date## earlier in the year - we find ourselves in continental Europe, in the kind of fast company which is bound to mess things up a bit. Misha Mengelberg - generally more associated with the music of Monk and Herbie Nichols than with Parker - brings with him the veteran prankster Han Bennink, who always has an eye for trouble; imported from the States are B's soon-to-be new bassist (for all seasons###) Joe Fonda, and another trickster, small brass wizard Paul Smoker (who had participated in B's incredible one-off line-up at Victoriaville in 1988, having first managed to snag B. as a special guest for an album under his own leadership four years previously). Also along for the trip is tenor (and soprano) player Ari Brown, a musician I confess is otherwise unknown to me - but who joined the AACM in the early '70s, and had already recorded with the likes of Kahil El'Zabar and Lester Bowie by the time B. recruited him for this project.

Mengelberg and Smoker in particular are basically guaranteed to pull the harmonic fabric of any standard into configurations which its composers probably could never have imagined; as far back as 1964, Mengelberg was trying to loosen the floorboards beneath Eric Dolphy^ by slipping in his own set of secret chord substitutions on "Epistrophy", and B. would have known exactly what to expect nearly three decades later. As for Smoker, some of his own "bent standards" dates were a good few years in the future at this point, but clearly B. had formed a pretty good impression at some point of what kind of skills the brassman had to offer. Brown seems mainly to have been picked here for tone colour, rather like John Stubblefield back in 1972 at the Town Hall (or Lucky Thompson, with Parker): he is not given a lot of work, never mind solo time, although he does have his moments. B. obviously heard/felt/saw (at least some of) the potential arrangements in terms of three horns, and however the choice was made, Brown was the man who got the gig. (Maybe B. just liked being able to employ another cat with the same initials...)

Of course, Bennink himself was only available for the live date; or rather, however many shows were actually played with this line-up, only one set - at Rote Fabrik in Zürich, on October 21st - was recorded and made it onto disc. Six numbers were played, one of which - a fairly brief rendition of Neal Hefti's "Repetition" - was jettisoned from both the original release and the reissue, only being restored to the setlist in 2018 when the monster limited box set came out on NBH. This much, at least, I have been able to figure out; that, and the fact that for whatever reason, the actual running order of the live show was changed for the original double album ("An Oscar for Treadwell", the third cut on disc seven of the 2018 box, closes disc one of the Hat release; only the first two numbers on the album are actually presented in the order in which they were played at the concert). Trying to figure the rest of the details out, not having a copy of the actual box set for reference (or even screenshots of the liners), is pretty much impossible - so you'll have to forgive me if I don't try very hard. The dates seem all wrong, or at least difficult to parse: going just from the two-disc album, one would infer that a live concert with Bennink on the 21st was followed by two days of studio sessions without him, which is easy enough to understand; but the box set appears to comprise eleven discs, with recording dates starting on the 18th (three days before the Swiss set with Bennink) and ending on the 24th, and Bennink is only credited with the six tracks which make up disc seven: the drummer for all of the other recordings is listed on Discogs, at least - and the obvious assumption is that their credits come directly from the liner notes, since where else would they originate? - as Pheeroan akLaff.

Phew... OK. We already knew, anyway, that akLaff was the drummer on disc two of the album which is under consideration here ( - B. was sufficiently impressed by his playing on this material that he hired the drummer again for subsequent standards projects back in the States). And we're told that the ten tracks which make up that second disc were all recorded at Großer Sendesaal WDR in Köln on October 22-23. Any more precise details are, presumably, exclusively available to those who have the NBH box set (or who have at least got scans of the liner notes, if not the actual music). When I said above that this 11-cd box is unobtainable, what I really mean is "unobtainable at a reasonable price"; there are two copies listed on Discogs at time of writing, the less expensive of which is on sale for a mere $570 plus shipping; this also happens to be the only one of the two which is available in my part of the world, but alas, it's a little out of my price range. (I presume that anyone who wanted this set had to be very quick off the mark when it was released - probably needed to have it on pre-order, in fact.) So the full details of which sessions generated the tracks on disc two of the original album - or what exactly took place on the three days preceding the Zürich set, or on the 24th - are beyond my current reach. But ostensibly at least, the ten studio tracks released by Hat are the pick of the Köln sessions. The original liners make for rather odd reading when B. talks (to Graham Lock) about how he can't believe he never used to play "Confirmation" in particular - when this track is not included on the album anyway. Lock obviously realised how that looks and added a footnote to the effect that AB did record "Confirmation" for this set but because of technical problems... this track (and several others) have had to be omitted. "Several others", indeed - ! Quite the understatement there, Mr Lock: besides the live tracks with Bennink, I count sixty-two tracks across the ten remaining discs of the box set; sixty-two, of which just ten were selected for the original release. Yes, those ten remaining discs incorporate other sessions besides those from Köln; but still, that would appear to be some pretty brutal culling - and no, "Confirmation" is not included on the original album.

***

One detail worth pointing out on its own, since neither the original release nor the reissue seem to mention it: that's B. playing piano on "Yardbird Suite", not Mengelberg. I repeat, neither of the Hat releases addresses this fact; but the credits for the box set are unequivocal: across all eleven discs, this tune only appears twice, and the leader plays piano on both versions (and on only two other cuts, neither of which made it onto the Hat album). This would be significant enough to flag up, one would think; B. was just starting out playing piano on standards dates, something he would practise rather more in the next few years, but although the desire to play piano is mentioned to Lock in the album's liner notes, we aren't told that it was already happening. That is definitely him, though: he has an eccentric piano style all his own and besides, where else is he? Listen to that cut (disc two, track three) if you don't believe me... one brass, one (tenor) sax, bass - and piano. He's not about to lay out on his own album, now is he..?

***

Now that I've played both discs a couple of times - listening quite closely the second time - what is really clear is that for all the great fun enjoyed in the live set, B. saved all the more adventurous and experimental music for the studio. That doesn't mean that the live disc is sedate or dull in any way; when the band goes out, they really go out, and you can clearly hear the way the two Dutchmen egg each other on - Bennink, in completely typical fashion, really cuts loose on multiple occasions and he and Mengelberg definitely feed off each other's energy. But three of the five numbers here follow a pretty straightforward "standard formula", at least for this leader: "Hot House" kicks things off with the maestro taking a huge long alto solo right out of the gate, running through a whole series of different sounds and techniques, alternating his lovely "singing" tone with rougher, harsher attacks as is his wont, showcasing a decent quantity of his encyclopaedic vocabulary right there in this first solo; but for the most part, the backing is restrained and respectful, Mengelberg only going a bit wild just as B. is getting ready to wrap up, and after him, Smoker and Mengelberg play in that order, some real chaos finally breaking out at that point with Bennink smashing up his kit... but Fonda takes a far more "inside" route for his own solo, and despite some more (barely) controlled mayhem from Bennink, the overall impression is of a rather anarchic, festival-style romp through a jazz standard, rather than anything more radical. Brown is not involved with this first number at all.

"A Night in Tunisia" is one of two crazier numbers on display here, with a properly messed-up tessitura almost from the off, especially once B. has blown his brains out on sopranino doing his own take on Parker's famous stop-time burst; unexpectedly, the contrabass clarinet comes out (this is not mentioned in the credits for the box set, mind^^) and the rhythm disintegrates completely, the soundscape dissipating rapidly into a very sparse dark sky with just flashes and glints of light; eventually this gives way to (what many people might now call) a deconstructed^^^ version of the theme, all the various elements present though not in the familiar order, and this very effectively leads us to a more "normal" finish. But "Dewey Square" - a quartet number with both Brown and Smoker laying out - is basically patterned after the opener, even though the Dutch boys really go bananas on this, not even waiting for Mengelberg's solo to wind each other up, and even when things cool down there is nothing very "standard" about the reading - except for Fonda, who rather incongruously plays it dead straight. Continuing this alternating sequence, "Klactoveesedstene" is another wild number, so much so that even Fonda and Brown get in on the act this time: it's worth remembering that this was actually (probably...) the set closer, despite the revisionism of the album's running order. In any case there is some seriously unhinged playing on this cut, once again led by the two Dutch masters.

For whatever reason, though, this was not the way the producer or leader wanted us to leave disc one, which ends with an almost twenty-minute journey through "An Oscar for Treadwell", easily the most "normal-sounding" number on the whole album, and not coincidentally the only one on which Brown takes an extended solo. He actually goes first, and despite having plenty of time to develop his ideas, never really sounds fully comfortable with this freedom; he does demonstrate some decent (AACM-worthy) chops, but it really seems to take him a good while to get going and it's perhaps not surprising that when Smoker takes his turn, he too sounds a little subdued. Basically, this number is a big long standard, nothing more or less, and even the leader keeps things relatively sweet; one can understand how this might have helped calm everyone down a bit after "...Tunisia" on the night, but it does seem a trifle odd to programme it out of order like this. As usual, I'm being super-picky of course.

***

Some of the live stuff, then, does get pretty wild - but it's still basically just a jazz group playing a few standards, albeit having more than the usual quota of fun with that. This is not the approach which B. takes with the studio disc, for the most part.

Basically the order of the day for the studio takes is a series of experiments, bookended by two relatively straightforward high-intensity cookers: "Bebop" and "Koko"are both taken at a blistering pace, with the ensemble all taking short, white-hot solos; Brown seems more settled and confident here, and akLaff - despite being a far less anarchic drummer than Bennink - plays with such great touch and so much fire and energy that one doesn't really feel anything is missing at all. These two burners are a great way to start and end proceedings, for sure...

... but the eight tracks in between are a different matter again. The two wilder numbers from disc one, "...Tunisia" and "Klactoveesedstene", reappear here - and both sound even more radically altered now than they did then. The other pieces selected are new, and each of them is the focus of a carefully-contrived laboratory experiment, elements of Parker's compositions placed under the microscope with different filters applied to the lens, examining in turn aspects of the pieces which Parker certainly never heard played in his lifetime - though who knows, this questing pioneer (who numbered Stravinsky and Bartók among his own influences) may have dreamed of them nevertheless; he certainly glimpsed the possibility of life beyond bebop for his compositional talents, and perhaps B. was endeavouring to grant some of that, here..? Whatever the rationale behind these selections, they do make for fascinating listening. 

The approach taken to "Bongo Bop" rather neatly encapsulates this. A quartet with no bass or drums, it opens with the horns playing completely freely, and when the piano enters, it is utterly outside any sort of conventional tonality; for the first few minutes there is barely even a hint of what the band is "supposed" to be playing. A theme does finally emerge from this primal soup, the horns playing slowly and totally "straight", whilst Mengelberg does nothing of the sort, supplying the necessary rhythmic figures while continuing to disregard the melody and harmony entirely. Once the theme is played, it all reverts back to joyous chaos. This is the sort of thing we didn't hear on the live set at all. 

"Yardbird Suite", as detailed above, is another quartet, this time for trumpet, tenor sax, bass and piano - B. supplying the latter with insistent stabbing attacks, Fonda largely playing "outside" for once; "Passport is a trio with B. on sopranino plus piano and bass; "Scrapple from the Apple" is another trio with piano and bass, but with the leader on contrabass clarinet this time, in an apparent nod to his notorious 1974 take on "Ornithology" (something for which the jazz world was really not ready at the time), playing this hybrid contrafact~ in a voice its writer would never have imagined, but playing it beautifully. "Mohawk" is a quartet for flute, muted small brass, piano and bass, almost fully abstract; "Sippin' at Bells" showcases the seamonster again^^, with Smoker again using the mute, and Fonda plucking wondrous harmonics from his bass. Track after track, we get nothing remotely resembling jazz at all: the more conservative fans who even bothered to hear the album may have gnashed their teeth at this, but one can somehow imagine Mr Parker weeping tears of grateful joy. Of course, a very casual ear might register only some odd tootling and honking, with fast bop numbers opening and closing the disc, and hence not really comprehend the scope of the programme at all; but anyone who pays attention must surely marvel at B's daring and restless curiosity, and must just as surely be rewarded.

The full story of how these sessions came together, and how the music was eventually selected for the double-album, is not even close to being told here: Ari Brown and Pheeroan akLaff probably felt rather let down, after all their efforts~~, to find themselves barely represented on the eventual release, and a massive quantity of music remained in the vaults for a quarter of a century, only seeing the light of day in a format which most people would never witness. But despite all that, between the two discs we have here and their essentially different perspectives, this album ends up being about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. If, like me, you've let it go a long while without playing this one, do yourself a favour and fire it up now.

* I haven't (yet) heard Pitsiokos' Speak in Tongues, but just look at those dedicatees! (- could have come straight from my wishlist, almost... I shall have to check it out) 

** I can't speak for anyone else, but this has long been my litmus test for determining whether a person is a serious jazz/creative music listener, or an overeducated dilettante just trying to sound hip: anyone who talks about "Charlie Mingus" - unless they knew him personally, and there can't be many of them left - is one of the latter, and will never persuade me otherwise...

*** a) The most obvious "prior art" here doesn't really count: nobody should doubt B.'s love for "the tradition" for a second, but it's well known that he was roped into this session at short notice, filling in for Dexter Gordon of all people - and the (reputedly-unsympathetic) sidemen were not of his picking at all. b) The Monk album was at least partly a homage to Steve Lacy, whose wonderful Reflections will have been one of the very first all-Monk repertoire albums; B. very deliberately used the same pianist and bassist, Mal Waldron and Buell Neidlinger. (Whether Elvin Jones was unavailable, unapproachable or was actually asked and said no, I have no idea; the drummer used for the album, Bill Osborne, is completely unknown to me and certainly never worked with B. on any other project.) c) We could of course add to this list the Tristano/Marsh tribute which I wrote about last October...

# Trio with Parker and Rutherford, and a duo with Parker the following night.

## As can be seen from this entry for the band, the Fred Simmons Trio is an otherwise undocumented working group; however, the equivalent entry for its leader reveals that he taught classes at Wesleyan - which may or may not be where B. first made his acquaintance, but which certainly occasioned the chance for this recording, which I have never heard (and is long since sold out on Leo); it seems a fairly safe bet that the album takes fewer liberties with the source material than the album presently under consideration..?

### Fonda proved so versatile that B. would proceed in the next few years to use his talents for everything from standards dates to the first GTM recordings - and points in between, including an album of duets.

^ In "that" infamous blindfold test, MM remembers how he had figured out his own set of substitute chords for Monk, and brought these to the concert with Dolphy (which saw official release as Last Date); he was impressed at how fast the American got to grips with them. [The interviewer plays a very sneaky trick on MM by playing him "Feathers" from Out There, knowing the pianist is unlikely to recognise it and will end up saying something rude about the composition, which he duly does - and of course he has to explain himself as soon as the solo kicks in, at which point he belatedly recognises Dolphy. What MM is not told is that "Feathers" wasn't written by Dolphy at all, but rather by his friend Hale Smith.]

^^ The Hat album, in either version, lists B. as playing alto, sopranino and contrabass clarinet, omitting flute (and piano of course) and not bothering to break down what was played on which track; the credits for the box set, as reproduced on Discogs, state that contrabass clarinet was used on just one track, "Scrapple from the Apple" - but you can quite clearly hear it on three different tracks, on the original album. (It's not as if you can mistake it for anything else, after all.)

^^^ This is absolutely not the time or the place to go into this, but... speaking as someone who studied both French and Philosophy at degree level, I have to try not to get annoyed at the way the term "deconstruction" has entered the common vocabulary, without anyone having any idea what it actually means. Contrary to what experimental chefs (and the public in general) seem to think, if it were simply a synonym for disassembly, M. Derrida would not have needed to coin a new word in the first place. (Derrida was also very fond of the strikethrough, of course...)

~ Head based on "Honeysuckle Rose", middle eight on rhythm changes... thanks to Wikipedia for confirming that XD

~~ Again, according to the box set credits per Discogs, Brown cut thirty-six different tracks overall. Pheeroan akLaff was similarly busy that week. Neither of them would really know it by what was originally released

On the problem(s) of identification

 

I have several things in the pipeline right now, including not one but two follow-up posts relating to specific aspects of the Thumbscrew album (the gift that keeps on giving...); but most of these are stalled in the planning stage, as I keep running into the same obstacle... or series of obstacles.

If a listener/collector is presented with, say, a live performance by an artist and is told only that it contains a number of different themes by Monk, it won't generally be too difficult to nail down the specifics. Indeed I remember doing just that, once upon a time, back in the Golden Age of Music Blogging: this was a time when I (along with numerous others) was online every night, feverishly exploring the new music blogs which were sprouting seemingly on a daily basis, trawling for downloadable goodies... and I came across a set which was listed very much as in the example above, a live performance (can't remember who by) in which the pianist ran through 15-20 different Monk themes in pretty rapid succession. Someone had posted a comment asking for help in identifying any of the themes, and as it happened I was ideally suited to this task at the time: I recognised all of the themes, could identify over half of them straight away and was very quickly able to pin down the others. With the right degree of familiarity, one could do the same with Ellington... Parker... Mingus... and so on. 

Attempting to do the same thing with a performance based on works by Anthony Braxton is rather harder, in a sizeable proportion of cases.

Generally speaking, it's not overly difficult to do this with sets based exclusively on compositions from the four creative ensemble books - the 6, 23, 40 & 69 series - as most (if not quite all) of the pieces in question have readily identifiable written themes, which will always be quoted in such cases, however free the subsequent interpretations might go on to be. Some of the pieces turn up more frequently in the recorded canon than others; any friendly experiencer can probably identify Comp. 23d or Comp. 40f, but these have become almost staples. Some of the pieces are a lot more obscure; and some of them are teasingly similar to each other, so that even a listener with a fair degree of experience might end up confusing, say, Comps. 40b and 40m. But most of us have probably got enough recordings easily to hand that we can check this kind of thing pretty fast, and obtain a definite match. 

This is by no means the case with all of B's work (just in case anyone was wondering). 

I mentioned last time that I'd bought an online copy of the Leo release Ensemble Montaigne (Bau 4) 2013. This arrived after the Easter weekend, at which point my hopes were dashed for detailed liner notes explaining which territories were used in what way, etc (the main puzzle being the fact that Comp. 174 is listed first on the album, it being a piece written (primarily) for ten percussionists - and whilst the 2013 album does indeed feature ten players, that breaks down as five strings, four woodwinds and one brass, with nary an idiophone or membranophone in sight). There are liner notes, but they are pretty brief and go into no real details at all. As it happens, I don't have the official recording of Comp. 174 in any form, so I stand no chance of recognising it, or not without further research; but, again as mentioned in the last post, the other works which are listed in the performance include three which I had only very recently listened to  - Comps. 94, 96 & 98, the same "highlights from the 90s" which I had written about briefly just before - and in principle, one would think I would at least be able to identify these in the 2013 performance. 

Wouldn't that be nice? In practice, alas, I am some way away from being able to do any such thing. (I can at least say with certainty that at one specific point, the ensemble is clearly working from Comp. 96; I couldn't say for sure that the other two make an appearance, I just have to take that on trust for the time being. It's rather ironic that video performances of Comp. 98 can be confidently identified without hearing a note, just by observing the players and their relative positioning onstage; but it's much, much harder to identify musical interpretations of parts of the score, given a work of such length and complexity.) I mean, I may or may not ever be able to do this; possibly it will depend on whether I eventually learn enough music theory to be able to comprehend what I am hearing not just as organised sound, but as structure, capable of being transcribed.

The inherent difficulty with the three works named above is the same in each case: these are all long and complex compositions with multiple sections or phases, and without being told which parts of the scores were being utilised, it really would be some task to know when they are being "quoted" - or even whether they are, in fact, being quoted at all. Mistakes, you see, do also get made: this is the other big problem, the one nobody apart from me really wants to talk about. 

Still, I thought, I might at least be able to identify the other named element of the performance, with a bit of research: Comp. 136. This seems to turn up a lot in the discography, especially in duo recordings, and I had already noticed that two albums which I bought last autumn both include it; surely a quick comparison of the duo interpretations with Reichman and Robair would sort that out for me? While I was at it, I could also see if I couldn't pin down Comp. 86 for future reference, even though that one is not incorporated into the Ensemble Montaigne recording. 

But... Comp. 136 lasts just under seven minutes in the studio with Robair, despite being collaged with (of course) Comp. 96; live in concert with Reichman, it lasts almost twice as long - and it's not straightforwardly the case that the two performances are identifiable as the same primary territory. I need to go back and listen to those again, much more carefully, before I attempt any proper analysis of the 2013 piece. As for Comp. 86, there is no certainty that this is even the same piece on both duo albums, although that is what the track listing says in both cases; the graphic titles, however, say otherwise: they are not the same! One could go mad here. (Not even Jason Guthartz had picked up on that discrepancy, as far as I can tell: he had pointed out that Comp. 136 was misidentified as "Comp. 134" on the original vinyl issue of the duo set with Robair, but does not appear to have noticed the issue with Comp. 86, on one (or potentially both) of these albums*.)

Anyone who has read this far, then, has a pretty good understanding now of what I'm up against. The composition notes, where these are available (and Book E stops before we get anywhere near as high as 136 in the numbering system, though I can at least look into the question of Comp. 86), sometimes shed some light on proceedings, but in a lot of cases they basically serve only to deepen the confusion, since they - like all of B's prose writing - are written in his own philosophical language, which requires its own (quite difficult) work to penetrate. [There is nothing inherently wrong with that, B. having studied philosophy for his own degree - but it does mean that anyone heading for the composition notes in the hope of making things easier to understand is in for a bit of a shock.]

It's a bit of an uphill struggle, shall we say. That won't, however, stop me from making the attempt...

* Usually in such a case one would blame one or other of the labels for making a mistake... but with these two duo albums, it was the same frigging label - Music & Arts - which released both! Although... the Robair album originally came out on his own label, Rastascan (and the vinyl issue is credited to Robair/Braxton, not the other way round as was the case with the CD reissue)... perhaps here, then, is where the mistake was made? I should know more when I have a good look at the notes for Comp. 86, which should at least clear up the matter of which album carries the correct graphic title...

Never-ending stor(e)y

 

(Despatches from a continuing campaign to acquire all of B's albums)

As mentioned last time, then, I had bought a used ("pre-loved" as they like to call it nowadays... who knows if it was, but it will be from now on) CD copy of Composition 98. So here's an update on what's been going on lately:

1. My new purchase arrived in the post today. As I said before, this wasn't cheap, but then copies of this album never are; as it turns out, it's been very well cared for, even if it wasn't loved by its previous owner(s), and with both the disc and the packaging in spotless condition I was very happy with the latest addition to my collection. 

Contrary to what I previously thought, having this on CD as opposed to vinyl makes no difference to the playing continuity: there is a marked pause between parts one and two, midway through the performance, almost as if part of the plan all along was to be able to split the recording neatly over two sides of an LP without affecting playback*. (I realise now that this was actually flagged up by the timings given for the CD on Discogs.) But never mind any of that, the main thing about having this CD is the pure pleasure of playing it - which I did, as soon as possible. It's an absolute privilege to be able to listen to an official copy** of this amazing recording (which obviously merits a post all of its own at some point). In the extremely unlikely event that anyone is reading this who is not already (at least somewhat) familiar with the piece, which dates from January 1981: B. was joined here by pianist extraordinary Marilyn Crispell (here working with the maestro for the first time, several years before she became an integral factor in his regular plans), trombone wizard Ray Anderson (himself at the other end of his tenure with B., having been a member of the working group since early 1977), and virtuoso trumpeter Hugh Ragin (much better known for his work with Roscoe Mitchell, and here playing what I believe was his only engagement with B.) - and the four of them seem determined to outdo each other in the focused intensity of their playing, negotiating what is presumably a fiercely demanding score with terrific aplomb and incredible speed of thought. I am delighted to own this one at last!

2. At the same time I bought this, I was involved in an online auction for a copy of the double CD Anthony Braxton's Charlie Parker Project, the 2004 remastered version of the album first released in 1995; the seller (whose other stuff was not even vaguely related) seemed to have no idea what he'd got, and the opening bid was only £5. In the way of such things, I allowed myself to get quite excited about this as the days passed and the auction attracted no other bids, nor even any (apparent) watchers; but - of course - right at the death, someone came in with a predetermined "sniper bid" and swiped it from under my nose. (I don't like this sneaky software and would never use it myself, but I can understand why people do it.) So I missed out on that one for now. That's OK: I have a decent rip to CD-R which dates from way back and which (naturally) I haven't listened to in years, so this will be a good pretext to dig that out...

3. ... at the same time, you know how it is (maybe) - I now felt I was somehow "down a purchase" and started fishing around for something else to buy instead. I had been musing on and off for a week or so about buying directly from the label the release from last year: Duet (Other Minds) 2021, with James Fei. I first mentioned this album the day before it was officially released, fondly imagining at the time that it would soon enough be readily available in Europe; but it never has been. Various online sellers list it, but always "out of stock"; however from that time to this I have kept a tab open for it in my browser, at its page on the Other Minds label site, reluctant at this time (owing to Brexit as much as anything else) to order something from across the pond. But I finally thought I'd have a look at how much it would be to do that. The CD itself is available from them, no problem: $15 (perfectly reasonable). The shipping rate to the UK, at this point? Twenty-five dollars. That makes $40 for one single CD... fuck that..! - there's no way I can justify such a cost in the current climate... not happening. Naturally, I am still very much interested if the damn thing ever becomes available a bit closer to home.

4. So in the end I came back to something I was looking at around xmas time, Ensemble Montaigne (Bau 4) 2013 on Leo; depending on where you look, relatively inexpensive copies of this seem to be available. And depending on how you look at it, we could consider this to be one of those "repertoire" projects, given that although it's credited to B., that's purely in his capacity as composer; as far as I can tell, he had nothing to do with the actual recording, which seems to be a collaboration between Ensemble Montaigne and guest conductor/Braxalumnus Roland Dahinden, who played trombone in B's working group during the '90s and was an important early collaborator in GTM. I have had a digital file of this recording for years now and have even listened to it a few times in the past, but never very attentively; last night, determined to spend money on something, I started listening to it on Youtube and decided very quickly that I really do want a copy. It's the sort of stuff which is more or less insufferable as background music, but which sounds better and better the more you focus in on it, and given how much practice I've had recently, it's becoming easier to separate the elements of such larger-scale works and make aural sense of them***. Heard with the right ear, it sounds great, as it turns out - ! So I have bought one - and hopefully the various questions about what the project is, how and where and when it came about etc etc will be explained in the near future, since Leo releases do usually have worthwhile liner notes. 

As to whether or not it qualifies as a "repertoire" album: well, what I had in mind there (admittedly somewhat arbitrarily) were albums which collect a number of shorter pieces, rather than albums which represent one long reading of a single large-scale work; but what actually is this, when it comes down to it? We can get really picky here for a start, in examining the way in which the "tracklist" - i.e. the stated description of the materials, since there is only one fifty-minute track - is presented: it used to be a sort of convention with recordings of B's music that a/b/c would mean a "medley" of Comps. a, b, and c in that order, whilst a (+b+c) would mean rather that a was the basic primary territory, with collaged elements from b and c worked into it. Here, it's not at all clear what we are really dealing with (though, once again, this could all be cleared up pretty soon once I get the actual CD in my hands). If we take it that the main territory is indeed Comp. 174, that is pretty confusing right away, since that work was recorded as a piece for "Ten Percussionists, Slide Projections, Constructed Environment and Tape", not for a varied sinfonietta-style ensemble...

... but look at this! By coincidence - and it really is a coincidence (whatever that means) - I had cycled back around to this recording right after posting about three opus numbers in the 90 range - and have a look at which ones are listed here besides the aforementioned 174: Comps. 96, 94 & 98. Oh, and Comp. 136, besides, which just seems to crop up over and over again (something I first noticed last September after I acquired the duo albums with Ted Reichman and Gino Robair). So, I need to get an angle on the latter piece as well, for sure, but... ah, I do love me a good old coincidence. 

Anyway, that brings me up to date with stuff I have and haven't bought lately... 

***

Finally, while I'm at it, just a quick word or two about something which is definitely creative music, even if it doesn't involve B. for a change (or even - gasp! - a reed player at all)... the other day I stumbled across a recording I had no previous inkling of, namely a live trio date under Albert Mangelsdorff's leadership, featuring J-F. Jenny-Clark and Ronald Shannon Jackson - a line-up which rather looks as if it could never have existed in the real world but was wished into being in some "fantasy jazz manager" game. I found this easily enough on Youtube and it really is a superb listen. Inevitably, most people just talk about the leader's superlative skill on his instrument, but for me, all three players have such individual sounds that it's more like listening to three really creative solo concerts played simultaneously (which just happen to fit really well together via cosmic serendipity). The original release was only ever on vinyl, but apparently there was a CD release of sorts, in the form of a two-fer presenting this album as the second disc (where the first is another date with an eyebrow-raising line-up, this time featuring Jaco Pastorius and Alphonse Mouzon). There we go... just thought I'd mention that :)

* I wouldn't put it past him... of course, this is actually not the only notable pause during the performance, but it is the only one of significant duration, and it occurs more or less exactly halfway through proceedings. By accident, or by design? (and does it matter?!)

** How much difference does it make, to be playing an official copy versus a good-quality rip burned to CD-R? And how much difference does it make to me? Valid questions. But owning something in "hard copy" form is a pleasure for any collector in and of itself - and so long as we don't get too carried away with this sort of thing, I don't think it's unhealthy...

*** Relatively speaking. I am - of course - not claiming to understand the music in the same way someone would who had studied music formally, never mind in the same way as someone who had studied with and/or played with B. But my ears are pretty well educated these days, at least by "lay" standards...

(Some) Highlights from the 90s

... no, not the '90s, the 90s: that is, B's compositions with opus numbers in that range. As far as a decade is concerned, it's really the '80s, since that is when (most if not all of) these pieces first started to get performed*; at a certain point not later than 1981, B's releases start to include** the new "Martinelli numbers" - the opus numbers which have been used ever since, and according to a system which B. first devised with the Italian musicologist of that name - along with the graphic titles for each composition.

[That had not yet been standardised: in 1982, Arista released For Two Pianos, the studio performance (played by Frederic Rzewski and Ursula Oppens) of the long-form work now known as Composition No. 95 - but as far as I can see*** there is no evidence that the opus number was used on the release: Arista had previously put out all of their albums under B's leadership using diagrammatic titles only, and might have not have wanted to change that for this release; equally, at the time of the recording in 1980, the numbering system was still a work in progress (or perhaps not even commenced) #.]

In any case, Comp. 95 is not up for discussion today - and neither is the solo series known collectively as Comp. 99; no, here I'm sticking to even numbers, apparently, to say just a few words about a couple of albums I've listened to recently, and one which I've just purchased.

In "M-order", then: 

1. Composition No. 94 For Three Instrumentalists (1980) was released in 1999, almost two decades after the music was performed, and I acquired it a good few years after that (by which point it was on offer in a Leo Records sale). I played it when I bought it, and until a couple of weeks ago I'm pretty sure I had not heard it since. Insofar as this album is "well known" at all, it's for the fact that the piece is interpreted twice on the CD, as per the live concert from which the recording is taken: forwards, then backwards. I seem to recall a certain British critical team (who shall remain nameless ##) describing that feat as "incredible", clearly having inferred that the written score was literally read backwards, note by note; but of course that's not what it means at all: the score is in three sections ###, which are interpreted in reverse order the second time around. 

The maestro was joined by brass acrobat/Braxton quartet alum Ray Anderson (who may in fact still have been in the working group at this point - April 20th 1980) and guitar wizard James Emery, who had previously played with the star-studded Creative Orchestra in Cologne in 1978 (the "revisited" double-album version of this repertoire), and who here is featured on both electric and acoustic guitars, as well as whacked-out electronics at times. The excellent liner notes by Graham Lock make frequent reference to the Composition Notes, something I have not yet been tempted to do ^, and focus for the most part on how this piece makes much use of B's synaesthesia ^^, it being one of a whole clutch of compositions written around this time in which the groundwork was laid for the polychromatic, semi-graphic scores B. would later develop for his Ghost Trance Music. Examples are provided of fragments from each part of the score, including the third part of Section B (which was not used for this performance), demonstrating the differences between "multiple and symbolic notation", "liquid formations" and "shape formations".

What those terms meant in practice, and how this translates over to the music which we hear, is not something I've even thought of looking into at this stage: I've just listened to the CD a couple of times. It really is a fascinating recording, well worthy of its eventual release despite its inherent drawbacks (the source recording is not of fully professional standard; I don't have a problem with this, but soi-disant audiophiles should take note - and tape deterioration over the years between recording and release rendered the first 5-6 minutes of the second set unusable). The playing by B. and RA is every bit as good as one would expect, and Emery really turns somersaults on both guitars, when he isn't flinging the group into space with his electronics. The instrumentation alone makes this a rather unusual addition to any collection, and the curious compositional strategies make it highly suitable for a more detailed analysis, if I ever get round to it ^. 

2. Comp. 96 - famously dedicated to Stockhausen, one of B's compositional touchstones - is something of a cornerstone work in the canon, as well as being at the time the latest in a succession of long-form pieces for creative orchestra; in the mid-eighties and beyond, this opus number turns up again and again in collage form (even if that usually just means in practice that the bassist is working from it while the rest of the group explores other territories). The performance of it which eventually got released was recorded in May 1981, but didn't come out on LP until 1989 - and then had to wait another four years for release on CD. (The latter, at any rate, should still be readily available I think.)

The "composers and improvisors orchestra" which assembled at the Cornish Institute in Seattle is not an all-star affair at all: bizarrely, it does feature one very well-known name - Julian Priester, a seasoned and well-travelled musician who is otherwise completely unrepresented in B's discography, to my knowledge - but of the remaining thirty-five players credited on the recording (B. himself conducted, but did not play), not one of them is familiar to me. This does not, of course, affect the success of the performance one bit; how successful a reading it really was is something that only the maestro could tell us, but one would never know from the recording that these were musicians not already versed in the Braxtonian languages. 

Again, it'd been way too long since I'd found the time to listen to this album; something which I had forgotten - but which came back to me when I played it last week - is the phasic nature of the work. Several sections of intense, constantly-shifting ensemble activity (in which the conductor must have been worked almost as hard as the orchestra) are interspersed by extraordinarily beautiful periods of calm, in which long and sustained tones foster the illusion of endless time, since while they are underway one can imagine them being continued indefinitely. One of many superb examples of B's ability to raise a set of collaborators up to a level not too far removed from his own, this is another album I shall be coming back to in the near future. For now, though... enough!

3. Finally, I just bought - but have not yet acquired - a secondhand copy of the CD reissue of Composition 98. I have had a decent vinyl rip of this album (and for those who don't know, this is a rare case of the vinyl containing more music than the CD: originally a double album, it comprised both the studio recording - split over the first two sides - and a live rendition of the piece, recorded a few days later) since the C#9 days, but the temptation to snap up a good copy of the CD (which only contains the studio recording, but without a break) was too much to resist in the end. It wasn't cheap, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to feel happy with my purchase. It will probably (can't remember for certain) be the first time I've heard the recording in this format. (Various live versions are in circulation; one which I watched on Youtube ^^^ a couple of years ago now is still available here.) 

I'm really looking forward to this :-D  Happy Easter, everybody...

* Some of them were debuted in the late '70s, for sure (e.g. the solo sax pieces from the 99 series, a few of which turned up in recordings from Milan in January 1979) - and some of them may be hard to locate anywhere in the recorded catalogue. Most of them don't seem to have come into play until the '80s, though.

** I had wrongly said back in November that this didn't happen until 1983, then realised my mistake almost as soon as I had finished the post. I left it there to see if anyone would spot it. Rather predictably, it seems that the only person both thorough enough to notice the mistake and bloody-minded enough to deem it worth mentioning... is me. So there we go: I am belatedly correcting myself. (I wasn't far out, I think: it still seems that 1983 marks the point at which it became a standard thing to list the titles together with their new opus numbers. But Composition 98 is the first one, a full two years earlier.)

*** Discogs lists the album title as being Composition No. 95 For Two Pianos, but I suspect they are mistaken about that. You can clearly see the album cover has no opus number on it. But I have never physically seen a copy and can't swear to its not being on there somewhere.

# By the time of the album's release, Composition 98 would already have been available, so we know that the work for two pianos had now been allocated a number. Whether or not this was communicated to Arista  is another matter.

## These two compiled a well-known and well-regarded guide to jazz which ran through a number of different editions. I no longer own the copy I am citing here and I hope my memory hasn't let me down. (If it hasn't, this was a rare laziness even by professional critics' standards, since the incorrect inference in question could be corrected just from glancing at the CD sleeve - you don't even need to delve into the liner notes for it.)

### Actually the completed score runs to four parts: Section A, then three different parts of Section B. Lock explains in the notes that the final section - dealing in "rigid formations" - was still being written at the time of this performance, so no attempt was made to use it. (He does not specify whether any complete performance of the score has ever been attempted; the work was originally toured in Europe with Richard Teitelbaum in the role here taken by Emery, who replaced him the following year for the gruelling seven-date, seven-city Italian tour which gave us this recording.)

^ This would be a pretty intimidating undertaking, and would probably have stopped me from even listening to the CD yet. I do think it would be a very interesting piece to do in (some) detail, at least in principle, but quite apart from the question of my own productivity, I don't have the actual score - and although the composition notes run to a good number of pages for this piece, the two sets run seamlessly on the recording and it won't necessarily be at all obvious where a section ends and another begins. Might still be worth a try though. Don't hold your breath XD

^^ Lock mentions this in the liner notes as if it's something already well known to friendly experiencers; so it's very probably described in Forces in Motion. I read that book more than a decade ago and don't remember all of it (though I did find it a brilliant read, as others have before and since). Due for a second reading perhaps... anyway, evidently it's established that B. actually does see sound in terms of colour and shape, something I either didn't know or (more likely) had just forgotten. I blame all the ganja I was smoking at the time.

^^^ The concert video I've linked to - which includes other material besides Comp. 98, after that piece's conclusion - purports to date from 21st January in Hamburg, i.e. two days after the studio recording. (The official live version is from Bern, on the 24th of that month.)