House in order (...1)

 

It's really not definite that there will be a (...2) following this - but there could well be. I'm thinking ahead here XD

Aaaaaaanyway... I mentioned the other day that I am trying to get myself back up to speed by putting together an exhaustive (and accurate... above all, accurate) list of all the different recordings of B's music in my possession. Naturally these will end up running the gamut from single tracks of dubious provenance on the one hand - or single oddities such as "Vanguard" by Ran Blake* - to nine-CD box sets, and pretty much everything in between. (OK, and as I also mentioned last time out, I shan't actually need to list all the albums I own as official releases, since they are now all in one place anyway and I'm finally in no danger of losing track.)

Advance notice: this post may appear to be complete filler, but it contains a number of useful observations - and will end up bringing any fully attentive reader up to date with my understanding of B's music, in all its head-spinning, complex glory; in the (admittedly rather unlikely) event than anyone is actually following at this point with that in mind, they will want to be sure they read this one carefully. (Then again, this month's second 1973 post also contained "new knowledge", or at least new working hypotheses... and hardly anyone read that one...)

The updated photo included in the second half of a post from March shows how many CD-Rs I amassed, back in the days when (apparently) all I did was listen to music and burn CDs and write out track listings. I must point out that the intimidating stack** on the left of the picture consists of all the stuff which is not related to B. as such - although there are doubtless a few exceptions which have slipped through the cracks. Those on the right are the ones I've been working through - not listening to them all, obviously, but making a brand-new list to replace the outdated one I made in 2012***. As it turns out, much to my relief, the list of bootleg live recordings I made back then was still usable. Another list of the box of tapes is also fine, for the simple reason that I never got round to dealing with the buggers (yet). But although I have now got a workable list of the actual albums (and fragments) featuring B. - and which I do not yet own in official form - there are a few things missing. Familie is accounted for, but where is The 8th Of July 1969? Marion Brown's Afternoon Of A Georgia Faun is probably with the other albums by that player-leader in the left-hand stack, assuming I even have it (and at this point, I honestly can't remember whether I do have that one); but I didn't come across Jacques Coursil's Black Suite or For Players Only by Leroy Jenkins and the Jazz Composer's (sic) Orchestra... definitely got those. Most irritatingly, I didn't come across Royal Vol. 1; that one is going to piss me off if I can't find it (and I am hoping it's just tucked away with a load of other Derek Bailey titles). The others... I can live with that small degree of uncertainty, for the time being.

Some observations which I made, along the way:

1. I seem to have collected more Circle recordings than I will ever need, most of which feature the same material over and over again (especially Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti" and the standard "There is No Greater Love"). Most of the longer sets also include at least one piece of B's - oddly enough, the composer least featured in these outings is Corea# - but generally this tends to be (inevitably) Comp. 6f. However the March 1971 Hamburg## concert also includes Comp. 6a and Comp. 6i, the latter being a special favourite of mine (and a cause for some excitement, whenever I came across another rendition of it); so I will actually make a point of listening to this one again sooner rather than later. 

2. Something which I have looked at carefully, but not yet found time to play - as is the case with most of this stuff, obviously - is identified as The Rare Music Curator's Podcast #22. There is no context with that, to tell me at this point who this person was or how many other episodes s/he produced - but the one featuring B. was enough of a curiosity that I burned a copy, despite what must evidently have been decidedly "lo-fi" sound. Wouldn't you know it, included on there is "Confirmation", the number most obviously missing from AB's Charlie Parker Project. (Funny how these things work out, isn't it?) 

There's no precise date with that, just October 1993 at the Bimhuis. Amsterdam, in turn, is listed as one of the venues which supplied the material for the NBH box set; but then, given that in that case we are clearly talking about a live date, is it really the case that Han Bennink was only present for that one night, in Zürich? I'm not at all sure I can buy that. (I was prompted to check the list of tapes, and I don't have a recording from Amsterdam, only from Antwerp - so, another live date.) Yes - confirmation is exactly what will be needed, before I can assume that those detailed recording credits listed on Discogs are fully reliable. 

3. Woody Shaw's The Iron Men is another one of those "sideman" dates for B. - see above for some further examples - and I'd forgotten I even had this. The maestro is one of two reedmen, however, and he only plays on three of the six cuts; rather disappointingly, Eric Dolphy's "Iron Man" is not one of them (but then if he had played on that, I would have made a real point of seeking it out - and would probably never have forgotten about the album). He does play on the second track, which is another one Shaw knew from the Douglas sessions which he recorded as part of Dolphy's group: Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz", where B. played clarinet (and which I somehow managed to "listen" to without actually registering his playing at all). But the third track, Andrew Hill's "Symmetry", features B. on alto - and he sticks out a mile with a fierce solo. ["Symmetry" is also part of the programme for the CIMP album which I highlighted the other day as being near the top of my current wants list. More synchronicity.]

Side two of the album is given over to Shaw's originals, where two shorter pieces bookend a much longer one, featuring both B. and Arthur Blythe; but the piece itself ("Song of Songs") is heavily indebted to modal-era Coltrane, and I didn't find a great deal memorable about it. Pleasant enough, but - 

4. I flagged up recently the fact that the version of "Yardbird Suite" on ABCPP features B. on piano, not alto sax, and that possibly this was because he had already recorded the tune in 1985. What I had completely forgotten was that he recorded it again in 1988, with Ran Blake. Like anything featuring Blake, it's totally different from B's quartet version for Magenta; indeed the whole album sounds fresh and vital to me###. Unfortunately - and this came back to me as I was trying to listen to it - the files from which my copy was burned were corrupt, and there are annoying little sound faults every few minutes. This eventually became a form of water torture, and I gave up after three tracks. But the album is good enough that I will now look to buy a copy - I know! me, a standards album..! - there is nothing "standard" about these readings.

5. Two trio recordings from late 1979 with Ray Anderson and Richard Teitelbaum must, of course, be among the earliest performances of Comp. 94. The groundwork for this conclusion was laid when I read Lock's detailed liners for that album; as we know, by the time of the performance captured for eventual release, guitarist James Emery had replaced Teitelbaum, but these are examples of the prototype. I have a recording from Berlin lasting 48 mins^, and one from Rome which lasts 95 mins. Good to know! - and figuring this out prompted me then to check...

6. ... whether I might have another trio, with Lewis and Dresser this time, from Antwerp in '85. I don't, at least not among the CD-Rs... but there it is among the tapes, a full hour of it. When I move on to the tapes at last, this will very probably be the first one I listen to {{{{@@@}}}}

7. CDs containing the various performances which made up B's 65th birthday celebrations in 2010 brought back a lot of stuff I had (again) forgotten. Tzadik's outer packaging for the eventual CD featuring "the forces trio" playing collage-era repertoire makes reference to the big event, where Zorn himself was also present, but over the years, a lot of this information had just vanished from my memory. If you had asked me without giving me a chance to check, I would have said that the material the three players prepared for the CD included both Comps. 23c and 40(o), which is not actually true. What is true is that the live set in 2010 contained both numbers, and that I found this to be a disappointingly "safe" choice^^. (Only Comp. 23c made it to the CD, however.) Coming back to this stuff now, I was also startled to find a one-off quartet comprising Zorn, Dave Douglas, Brad Jones and Hemingway playing (among other things) Comp. 23d. 

Everything about this event was not only known to me - not quite at the time (I didn't attend, for a start, nor was I asked to), but not long afterwards - but the story of how things had unfolded was gradually pieced together, right here in the blog..! (Those long years of inactivity just ate up chunks of my memory.) I did remember having written rather a lot about the Tzadik release, later; but most if not all of the events from 2010 had just evaporated. Well, the posts themselves have not gone anywhere. 

I still think the trio was playing it a bit safe on the album, and especially with the material for the live performance - but there you go. In my first post about the latter, I was right about "Impressions" representing an unusual choice - this band tackling a standard, I mean, even if it's one by Coltrane^^^ - but still wrong, because it wasn't the first time they had done it. I wrote very recently (in the tenth footnote to another piecing-together-of-ideas post) about what may (or may not) have been the first such occasion of this, in 1992 at Victoriaville; back in 2010, I don't think I had that CD in my collection (although the information on its track listing, at least, was available on Restructures). 

As for Zorn's quartet rendition of Comp. 23d: that was the only recording from the 2010 extravaganza which I revisited this weekend, and it was pretty cool. As far as I can remember (for all we can trust my memory on such things, ahem...), it was the first version I've ever heard of this piece which doesn't just start straight in at the beginning; the quartet ambles up to it, little by little, with Brad Jones teasing out a reference to the opening theme - which is then not picked up right away by the band, which works some other ideas around in its collective mouth for a minute or two, chewing away, before swallowing that and moving on to the piece proper. It's nice to hear such familiar material handled in such an unfamiliar way; although in the case of this tune, above all, it so obviously deserves to be considered a modern standard in its own right that there is also nothing wrong with playing it "straight", just so long as it gets played. 

- Right, I'm calling it there: there were other entries on the list, but the process of sorting through stuff has not completely finished anyway, and this post is now in danger of getting unmanageably long if I don't break it in half. So as it turns out, there will be a (...2) after all - ! 

Oh, one thing which is strikingly obvious but still bears pointing out: my collection of (unofficial) recordings comes sharply to a halt in 2012. That is, I don't think I have anything recorded after then; I was already pretty well (self-)isolated from the online community by that point, and of course that only became more and more true over the next ten years. The process of picking up the threads - trying to add to the collection by gathering various bits and pieces recorded after that date - is not one I am in any position to embark on right away; but that's OK, because as you can see, I have plenty to be getting on with in the meantime..!

* This is the only track on Blake's Rapport album which happens to feature B's playing.

** There's a whole extra shelf which is not visible in this picture. In the case of the Braxton collection, that bottom shelf contains only a few things - a handful of CD-Rs without paper sleeves (which I've just been looking through, this very weekend - oh, and yes it is still the "weekend" here in the UK, today being the Spring Bank Holiday. They haven't taken those away from us yet...) - but the unit on the left contains another shelf crammed full of discs. There is so much material there, indeed, that I'm awfully glad I did not continue to indulge this particular obsessive habit of mine beyond a certain point...

*** The house move in 2014 didn't work out too well, in most respects; and specifically, as regards my present purposes, we ended up with tons of unsorted stuff crammed into cupboards and drawers "to be sorted later", which never got looked at again - or not until we were getting ready to move again, last year. Most of that painstakingly-annotated music spent eight years tucked away out of sight, while my recollection of exactly what was in there grew gradually hazier - and the likelihood of my being able to organise my thoughts sufficiently to resume writing about it receded, with each passing year...

# This does seem awfully ironic, when one considers the prevailing tendency these days to file Circle under Corea's name. (To be fair this is not his fault, nor is it unique to this group: labels and discographers etc tend to treat Air as a Threadgill project, too. There will be other examples.)

## This appears to be a widely-circulated recording. Individual tracks or excerpts from it turn up all over the place, but the complete concert is both in my CD-R collection and in the box of tapes...

### From memory - of London in this case, not Vienna: the Penguin Guide... was rather sniffy about this album, summing it up as "a trifle mandarin, and more than a touch pointless" (yes, this really is from memory - so I can't guarantee I have remembered the exact wording). Doesn't sound that way to me at all; but then I am not attempting to write a guide to a squillion CDs by different artists, to meet a publisher's deadline... so can take a little more time over my opinions instead of just phoning them in. 

^ A copy of the Berlin date among the tapes purports to run for 55m. Hmm... interesting :)

^^ I exchanged emails with Alex Hawkins not long after writing about the Tzadik album, and he agreed with me that the choice of material hadn't seemed terribly adventurous. (Still, I daresay that this was at least partly driven by Zorn, who was producing the recording.) I still think that in my "ideal world", the trio got thrown a brand-new score they had never seen before - and just let themselves go wild with it. Just imagine..! But that would represent a completely different type of project, of course.

^^^ The idea of this band being asked to play "All the Things You Are" or "Body and Soul" makes me feel quite queasy. Naturally this says a lot about me, and not so much about anything else, but... well, no, let's leave that there. (For now, at least...)

The continued adventures of Georgina... and other stories

 

I posted originally about the musical forays of (my old friend/ former C#9 blogger extraordinaire) Atanase back in December... when I last updated the blog about his saxploits, I was in the doldrums, although (in the grand scheme of things) it didn't end up taking me too long to escape them. Anyway... he and his co-conspirators have been busily establishing their own label, and there is quite a bit of stuff on their Soundcloud page (and/or their Youtube channel) already. To help with the navigation of same, here's a bit of info from the man himself, who participates in three bands, to wit: "GRB3 (our original more restrained, smoother effort), GEORGINA BEASTLY (this has a punk leaning guitar player and consequently material is somewhat more feral) and DYNAMO-81 (this formation is made up of guys with roots in prog-rock, fusion, 70-s hard rock, hence the tilt in that direction)".

To be clear about this (as I perhaps may not have been last time), these are not A's "solo projects" or anything of that sort; rather they are all fully-cooperative groups, put together by friends, which just happen to include a friend of mine in their line-ups (two other groups, Marching Dog and Two Professors, do not feature A.). Naturally, A's sax was my reason for knowing about this stuff in the first place, and also very much the reason for my listening to it; but I have to say, the more I listen, the more it grows on me. Each of the groups features a hard-to-categorise mishmash of styles and influences, the function of the different players with their different backgrounds, striving to reach a common ground where none of them has to compromise (if possible). There is (apparently) no precedent for this stuff in A's native Georgia, no scene into which they can fit themselves - which leaves these guys building one of their own, from the ground up.

Given that my route in was via the ripping tones of A's tenor (... I confess I have hardly listened to the groups where he's not a member), and that this is a blog very much centred around the life and work of my favourite woodwind master, I am still inclined to focus on that aspect of the music here, even while I'm increasingly learning to appreciate the other elements of it too. A. has mentioned to me that he finds a freshness in trying to present (what are traditionally) free-jazz sounds within a non-jazz context, and I certainly understand what he means there in principle. In practice, where I have heard other musicians' attempts along similar lines previously, I have often concluded that the overall effect suffers when the players have no real grounding in free jazz, even if they aren't trying to play it: mainly, the issue for me is with sax players who think they are blowing hard enough to flatten walls, but who barely can barely raise a cool breeze, never mind a firestorm. It takes someone who is really familiar with the history of such blowing, who can properly appreciate the pioneers of such an approach, to inject the necessary edge and power. Needless to say, A. has this familiarity down and inside-out, and when he leans into his playing, it gets me every time. (As well as tenor sax, as I have mentioned before, there is also some bass clarinet and some shehnai, and indeed not all of the latter is played by A. himself. But tenor remains his main axe, and is where he has developed his most distinctive voice.)

So much for my blather - the music is really capable of speaking for itself. A first gig is imminent, about which I hope to inform the blog in due course, Test pressings for an actual first album have also just arrived! Exciting times... it's always refreshing to get some good news, in this troubled future-present of ours, and I'm happy to pass it on :-D

***

In other news: as part of my continued efforts to get my Braxtonian house in order, I'm gradually working my way through the amassed collection I've built up over the years, taking stock of exactly what I've got (and in some cases, what I haven't yet got - but would particularly like to acquire). It's (happily) not necessary to list albums I own as official releases, since these are of course finally all in one place these days (...with the obvious exception of official downloads - but what ya gonna do). Furthermore I did make a detailed year-by-year list of those infamous cassettes back in the day, so that's another task I don't have to undertake at this point (just as well, since I'm still not ready yet to deal with those). What I do have to sort out is an exhaustive list of all the recordings I have of B's music on CD-R (both whole albums/live performances, and single tracks/fragments) or in purely-digital format. This will take a bit of doing - these days, I don't allow myself to get completely immersed in such things to the exclusion of all else (that way madness lies... or at the very least, domestic disharmony and personal turmoil) - so I'm going to be doing it gradually, as time permits. 

I only really started last night, and already turned up some things I'd forgotten I even had (e.g. the Vandermark 5's version of Comp. 69L - along with three other random tracks from the same album*) - I'm going to enjoy rediscovering some of this stuff, even as I have to manage the frustration of not being able to listen to all of it at once... one thing I did find time to listen to already was Ten Compositions (Quartet) 2000, one of several releases issued by CIMP around this time (and which, again, I'd forgotten I even had). I recently restated my less-than-average interest in jazz standards, and even more recently qualified that by saying that of course it depends on what standards one is talking about; in this case, most of the pieces are by the late, lamented Andrew Hill - which puts the album squarely within my field of interest, even if some of its other characteristics (I remain stubbornly squeamish about undistorted electric guitar for the most part, unless Mary Halvorson or Joe Morris are involved) might seem to argue such a thing.

Closer inspection reveals that this album was one of two recorded during three days of sessions in May 2000, which very much centred on Mr Hill's compositions; this album gathers together all the quartet recordings, while the other comprises quintets and sextets, the core group augmented on those days by Steve Lehman and Paul Smoker (him again). As it happens, the quartets included a handful of pieces by other writers - two by George Coleman, one each by Wayne Shorter and Billy Lester - but the overall flavour of the album is definitely that of Hill. CIMP's notoriously fussy approach to engineering is not to all tastes**, and as I say, in my own case the "clean jazz" guitar would make it hard for me to get into at the best of times - but I must admit that Kevin O'Neil does a great job here and really goes to town in his solos. Kevin Norton, too, really works over every surface on his kit in the course of this one, and of course the maestro - well, I don't always like hearing him in these contexts as I've said before, but I enjoyed him here, at any rate. (Bassist Andy Eulau is generally inaudible - this is CIMP after all - but sounds pretty good when I can actually hear him.) "Pumpkin" being a particular favourite of mine, I have played that one four or five times in the last 24 hours; only the second take was released. 

... and for once, that's all I want to say about that. The companion album, by the way, is now firmly on my wants list, not least because Lehman (one of a few contemporary players whose career I actively follow) actually wasn't featured on that many of B's recordings, even if he was very much involved in a pretty famous one. I am going to have to be patient, as the album in question is evidently a pain in the arse to get hold of... at some point in the near future I will post separately about which albums are actually at the head of that list; in the meantime, if anybody would care to hip me up to an online rip of Nine Compositions (Hill) 2000, I'm all ears...

* I have no recollection of where I got these from, but the only tracks I've got are trs 2-5 of disc one. (Those include the studio version of Vandermark's arrangement of "Saturn" by Sun Ra, which - along with Don Cherry's "Where is the Bomb" - was frequently played live by V5 around this time, if I recall correctly...)

** This is putting it mildly. One blogger of my former acquaintance could hardly stand to hear this label mentioned; he was a bass fanatic, which goes a long way to explaining it. Rusch father and son have been credited by various musicians with being the only producer/engineer to give them back exactly what they played... the complete lack of reverb on their recordings does quite possibly serve to render a very faithful account of the instrumental voices, although it is true that bass does not seem to figure very highly in their priorities. Not for everyone, as I say.

Building blocks

 

This brings the blog up to date both with some recent acquisitions, and with my latest thoughts on the conundrum represented by the "track listing" (this phrase seems ludicrously inappropriate, but I'm really not sure what else to call it) for the album Ensemble Montaigne (Bau 4) 2013, which I bought a month or so ago; I detailed (what were then) my latest musings on the problem earlier this month, just before taking a short break to escape the royal coronation. At the time, I hadn't managed to get hold of a copy of Comp. 174 - that is to say, a copy of Composition No 174 (For Ten Percussionists, Slide Projections, Constructed Environment And Tape), the 1994 Leo Records album. (This is the only place to find that particular work, until the 2013 release noted above - except really I suspect it's the only place to find it, full stop.)

I wasn't about to pay a silly price for it, no; but as it turned out, I hadn't actually missed out on the one I'd come close to buying before - the seller relisted it, and this time I snagged it. (This, despite the fact that by now, I was more or less persuaded without even hearing the album that a mistake had been made with the listing of materials on the Ensemble Montaigne project... see below.) At the same time, the seller was also listing another Leo album which I didn't already have* - and had similarly never heard: Composition N. 169 + (186 + 206 + 214), the recording of a June 2000 performance at the Ljubljana Jazz Festival.

The obvious problem with the idea that Comp. 174 might be the primary territory for the Ensemble Montaigne performance organised by Roland Dahinden is the instrumentation. The only thing which fits here is, by a happy accident, the number of players: the Ensemble Montaigne - at least on this occasion - numbered ten players, whilst Comp. 174 was previously described as a work for ten percussionists. That numerical synchronicity is where the similarity ends, however, as the European group features a mixture of horns and strings - without a single percussionist of any description. Granted the inherent adaptability of the vast majority of B's works, which allow for (almost) any piece to be performed with (almost) any instrumentation... is it nonetheless even possible for a piece written for ten percussionists to be meaningfully interpreted by a group of horns and strings?

Composition No 174 presents a work which is essentially very similar to the one immediately before -  Composition No- 173 (For 4 Actors, 14 Instrumentalists Constructed Environment And Video Projections) - in that it's effectively a short play, with musical accompaniment for written dialogue (delivered, in this case, via a prepared tape-recording rather than by live actors**). In both cases, the written text is witty and entertaining, charmingly eccentric in some of its phrasing, and self-referential (in that prescriptive instructions, which relate to navigation of a physical territory within the world of the play, also appear to relate indirectly to movements within the musical score). Anyone who has come across any of B's previous efforts along these lines will doubtless have a pretty good idea of what I mean. That said, the "percussion-only" nature of the instrumental voicing here makes this one unique, and with its frequent use of tympani and steel pan (as well as vibes and other assorted bits and pieces), it's certainly not without drama or colour. 

However, I wasn't very far into the album before I'd confirmed my previous conclusion: this really is extremely unlikely to be the same piece which forms the backbone of the material for the 2013 performance. It is far more probable that a simple typo has occurred, then has been repeated passim: for Comp. 174, read rather Comp. 147. (This is another work hitherto unknown to me; that is, the original version from 1989 was something I had never heard until this weekend. It did, however, seem on the face of it far more likely to have been the kind of work one would use for extensive collaging in a live performance, it being an opus number I knew I had already seen on various different albums - always as a secondary or tertiary territory. For further details, see below.)

The second of my Leo Records acquisitions is a very different beast. Comp. 169 - which by one of those happy serendipities is another work much used as a secondary or tertiary territory in performances of other pieces - is dedicated to George Lewis and is designed somewhat in the tradition of B's legendary Comp. 82 (For Four Orchestras), although the notes make it clear(ish) that for this comparison to be fully realised, it would be necessary to experience "a fully engaged" example of the work - either work - and regrettably this had*** never been possible (owing to budgetary problems - or as B. puts it "It's a C word thang (coins)"#).

The notes are... not especially easy to understand, so it would be rather challenging to try to summarise them here. The piece did however represent a new direction of sorts, being a Tri-Centric work - and (apparently) the first of its type. The term Tri-Centric is itself rather confusing, as it has meanings for B. on multiple levels; in a relatively simple sense, one of the things it means here is that the orchestra for this performance was divided into three sections, each of which was responsive to one of three area conductors: James Fei, Chris Jonas and Jackson Moore. The entire orchestra is ultimately under the direction of one quadrant conductor, in this case B. himself. So what we have here is four reed players guiding a medium-sized## string orchestra.

As the full title of the album indicates, three secondary territories are worked into the overall music here: all three of these are "Ghost Trance structures" as B. describes them in his notes. (Comp. 186 is one of the very earliest GTM compositions, one of two such works debuted in Istanbul in 1996; a shorter version of the same piece appears on the Cygnus Ensemble's Broken Consort album###. Comp. 214 comprises disc two of the fourth Yoshi's ninetet set. Comp. 206 on the other hand may not have been officially recorded, other than here.) The complex tensions worked into the fabric of the music as a result of this choice are a key part of what makes this album interesting; I will admit to having been won over gradually. Early on, it sounds bizarrely as if somewhere between a third and half of the string players are out of tune^, although this is probably a designed dissonance, and my attention was only really seized by the reeds (B. himself sticks out a mile of course). But as the lengthy piece develops and grows, it does also manage to hold my attention more. The incorporation of the three GTM themes - and the consequent rhythmic and melodic tension - definitely has a lot to do with that. The principal characteristics of Comp. 169 itself, as far as they can be inferred from this performance, seem to be that it deals in repeated attacks of a single note, initially held, then played staccato with increasing rapidity before moving on to the next such note^^. 

It's probably fair to say that neither of these albums will feature high on the "personal favourites" list of many friendly experiencers; Composition No 174 especially seems destined to remain a charming oddity, a one-off interpretation of a piece which will very probably never be played again by anybody. Composition N. 169 + (186 + 206 + 214) is somewhat more significant, as representative of a key step in B's continuing development as a visionary composer and conductor of large ensembles. They are both welcome additions to the burgeoning collection, even if the main thing I seem to have achieved here is to rule out Comp. 174 from inclusion in the 2013 event...

***

Comp. 147 "... allows for creative exchanges between three solo clarinets and chamber orchestra" - this is from B's notes to the Hat release 2 Compositions (Ensemble) 1989/1991^^^ (which premiered this particular work, played by the Ensemble Modern on 23rd October 1989; the album's other piece, Comp. 151, was played by a completely different (but - as it happens - also German) orchestra sixteen months later). Now, doesn't that already sound like a much likelier choice for the primary territory being explored under Dahinden's scrutiny in 2013..? Admittedly the Ensemble Montaigne only contained one clarinettist, but there are three woodwind players (actually four, including the flautist). Before I had even looked into the specifics of when and where the piece was first unveiled - I only knew that I didn't have it (yet...) - I was already angling towards this being a far better candidate than its typographical near-doppelganger, Comp. 174.

Here's why: in the few years immediately following Comp. 147 being recorded in Frankfurt, the piece was used again and again in collage contexts, especially in performances given by the reconvened "Forces" quartet. 

It was heavily featured in the first part of the June 2nd, 1991 quartet concert released as the third and fourth discs of Willisau (Quartet) 1991, the box set (of which only the studio half has so far been reissued (this being something I finally picked up late last year)); #147 is collaged into the first, second and fifth primary territories. The following year it was again much used as a secondary collage territory, worked into three of the four pieces~ played by the quartet at Victoriaville in 1992; it was not used at Yoshi's in Oakland in 1993 (or not on any of the pieces captured on the official recording, at least~~)...

... but does find its way into the closing number of the July 19th Santa Cruz concert. It's safe to say this was a popular choice for supplementary material, with this extraordinary group. (Actually, the only example I found so far of the piece being used in any other context besides performances by this band was also the latest: it next turns up in 1995, again collaged into a duo reading of Comp. 168 - yes, that one again - with Joe Fonda.)

As you can see, the more one looks into this, the more likely it seems that Comp. 147 was the primary 2013 territory. Still, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say; I don't have the original Hat album, as I say, but unlike Comp. 174, this one was easy enough to find on Youtube... I listened to the piece in its entirety over the weekend, giving it only partial attention; when I came to do a comparison with the 2013 recording, I only had to get thirty seconds in before I'd concluded that yes, this is surely the correct answer. I'll go into some more detail on that when I finally work my way round to writing about the 2013 album itself, hopefully in the next couple of months; for now, I'm leaving it there.

* Funny story about that: the same person actually had a whole clutch of B's albums for sale, all of them on Leo. Hands up if you can guess what's coming next... yes, these were all the same CDs which used to get listed on the Leo Records xmas sale year after year, and of course I already had the majority of them for that reason. (The seller dangled the offer of free postage if I bought three CDs from him, but the only other one I didn't have already was the second volume of Knitting Factory standards by the piano quartet - that is, a quartet with B. playing piano, Marty Ehrlich on reeds - and a quick revisit to vol. 1, which I do already have, persuaded me that one is really all I need of these. I mentioned again recently that standards generally aren't my thing, even when B. is playing them - of course there are exceptions to this, it depends what one means by "standards" - so collections of standards where B. isn't even playing reeds are quite some way down my list of priorities. No offence...) - I have since discovered at least one other seller doing the exact same thing, but asking rather higher prices for all of the same items. Good luck with that.

** This may or may not reflect the original intentions as regards the composed work. The nature of the written text is such that it makes sense to have it delivered as a form of public address rather than as live dialogue, and the liner notes (as well as the subtitle of the album itself) do very much imply that this is the effect B. had in mind all along - but without the composition notes and/or the score for perusal, how are we to know for sure?

*** Still hasn't, as far as I know...

# All text in inverted commas here is quoted from B's liner notes to CD LR 320 / 321.

## This is referred to as the Slovenia Radio Orchestra, also (in B's notes) as the Slovenia String Orchestra; but either way, we're not given a list of players and or even a precise breakdown of the instrumentation. When I say "medium-sized" I am going purely by the sound of the recording: clearly the ensemble is large enough to be divided into three sections, but it doesn't sound like a full symphony-orchestra string section, put it that way.

### This curiosity from 2000 features works by eight different contemporary composers; needless to say, I've only ever heard the piece by B.

^ I wasn't imagining this: the same effect is replicated in the second half of the performance. It's really quite noticeable in the upper registers especially. We'll discard the idea that the players were not professional enough to tune their fiddles, or that nobody else noticed; it has to be something which was coded into the performance, but apparently this level of detail went beyond the remit of the notes, which (as is usually the case with B's own liner notes) concentrate on the nature of the composition itself, rather than the individual interpretation thereof. If I ever run into one of the three area conductors, I'll be sure to ask..!

^^ In the maestro's own words: "Composition n. 169 is an "identity prototype" continuum that demonstrates staccato line (logic) distribution strategies with intervallic (focused) sub-plane manipulations (interjection) strategies". So now you know ;-)

^^^ Unusually, this album is yet to see any kind of reissue at all: it's the original version or nothing.

~ Here, the live material consists principally of the same "C-class" compositions which were debuted in the studio at Willisau the year before - the ringer being Comp. 148, itself collaged extensively, whilst Comp. 161 is interpreted on its own. (When I say "four" pieces I mean four of B's; Coltrane's "Impressions" is an encore, a rare example of this band playing a standard.)

~~ This was a short residency; the eventual double CD incorporates material from three different nights. Clearly this was heavily whittled down, especially so considering that only one piece was chosen from July 13th...

Thumbscrew pt 4: Composition 157

 

Previous musings on Thumbscrew's Anthony Braxton Project:

1. Some feeble excuses for why it was taking me so long

2. My first attempt to address in detail the "track 7 problem"

3. A full examination of the actual album 

4. A recap of the "track 7 problem", in response to a comment

5. Comparative analysis of the three versions of Comp. 14

- all of which means this is really pt 6, right? Well, not exactly: in my own perverse way (and - dare I say it - in true "Braxtonian spirit") I ended up deciding that pt 1 had two subsections - essentially linked by their all being disquisitions on the challenge(s) of writing about the album at all - and that pt 2 was the rest of it; except that even at that stage, it was obvious that I was going to want to deal with Comp. 14 separately, and (once I looked into the history of it) probably Comp. 157 as well. So I suppose I could have designated the previous post on the subject pt 3a, and this one pt 3b; but fuck it, B. hasn't always been consistent, so why should I..? If it's good enough for him... XD

This, at any rate, is absolutely the last post I plan to write about this album (... unless, of course, I am contacted directly by somebody involved in the actual recording process - a member of the band, or perhaps Carl Testa who helped choose and prepare the materials - with actual concrete evidence of some sort). Just in case anyone was wondering ;-)

It wasn't until March, when I was finally getting ready to tackle the actual album (instead of just explaining in detail why it was hard for me to get round to doing that), that I realised Comp. 157 had previously been recorded. That is to say, I already owned the album on which it first appeared and had heard it more than once, but not for some time (as is indeed the case with a great many of my CDs) - I did know actually that the album of duets with (the late German bassist, journalist and musicologist) Peter N. Wilson comprised mainly works with opus numbers in the 150 range, but I'd forgotten about that; and when I was looking seriously at the Thumbscrew track list it didn't occur to me at all to go back and check (in this fairly obvious place) for a previous interpretation. When I did, imagine my surprise to see that there was not one, but two: the first take is track two on the album, and a second take is also included, tacked on the end as a sort of "extra" (though not literally an extra, since the album only exists in the form of this eight-track CD). 

Insofar as there is any real significance to this, it's as follows: the principal aim of the Thumbscrew album was to showcase compositions which had never previously been recorded*, but it begins with two pieces which had been recorded (and on more than one occasion, in the case of the opener) - as well as including a third which also had been recorded before, though under a different title/opus number... that leaves eight out of eleven tracks, and three of them are of course versions of the same piece... so, just six different premiere recordings, then. (Maybe..! All this really means is that if prior readings of any of those others exist, I haven't yet identified them.) I have already said that I don't think the trio was aware of the duet with Mario Pavone, and it kind of seems likely that they might not have been aware of the duets with Wilson either - odd coincidence, that both of these relative obscurities should have been duo encounters with bassists.

Comp. 157, then, was one of a clutch of "hot off the press" new works unveiled in 1991: #s 152-157 were laid down in Hamburg (Wilson's birthplace and home city) over two days in February, whilst #s 158, 159, 160 & 161 were debuted in the studio at Hotel Mohren, Willisau, in June of the same year by the "Forces" quartet**. My understanding is that Comp. 158 was itself the first of a new series of "C-class prototypes***" - meaning presumably that Comp. 157 is the last of a previous series. In any case the compositions mentioned in this paragraph share similar graphic titles, all of which feature B's cartoon-style drawings of people involved in various activities - in this case, basketball. The significance of the titles' assuming this form is no more clear to me than it is for any other phase of the canon, and may not necessarily have been very clear to B. himself#; and although I'm sure these works will still have had dedicatees in mind, nothing is mentioned about this on the recordings which include them. As I've remarked recently, the Composition Notes don't get anywhere this far... and the Hamburg duets album has pretty good liner notes, but they don't really say anything very specific about the actual album, or the music which it contains.

***

Reading #1: duet with Wilson, take one

A typically-acrobatic written line gives way fairly quickly to a "loop" segment, in which B. settles into a continuous repetition of a "sawing" phrase on sopranino while the bass provides any actual movement which is present. The horn line employs circular breathing, so that the effect is almost hypnotic; there is finally a pause and a sharp inbreath at the point where this second phase ends and we revert to the first phase, the initial written line containing some small variations, and after an even shorter return to the second phase, we take off for an extended improvisation. During a very intense sopranino workout B. riffs occasionally on the opening line, the bass now fulfilling the "loop" role - although Wilson doesn't just repeat one written phrase: rather, he varies it continually, maintaining only an unbroken rhythmic pulse over which B. soars and snarls his way through a very exciting and inspired solo. 

At some point during my listening session I realise that what this piece recalls for me above all is Comp. 6n, specifically the version with Lindberg from 1982; the balancing of the sawing, steps-down-to-step-up written line with a longer melodic phrase reminds me of so much about the 1991 piece that once I've noticed it, I seize on it in near-certainty that the earlier recording is what B. had in mind when he cut this later one. (So we're back to duos with bassists again, even though this time I don't think there is anything merely coincidental about it; of course, Comp. 6n  itself is much older than the Lindberg session, having first been played a full decade before that at the Town Hall concert; but still, the duo version with Lindberg has a very distinctive feel to it - which is just irresistibly recalled for me by this 1991 recording.)

Reading #2: duet with Wilson, take two

- Essentially the same, though with more of a marked pause between the second phase and the brief return to the first; and there is rather less of a sense of urgency at the beginning of B's extemporisation, which takes a bit longer to get going (but ultimately blows just as hot). In both cases, the sax solo takes long flights out into space and returns every so often to fragments of the written material, as if for refreshment, or perhaps grounding; this reminded me of the approach B. can often bring to his solos on standards, as for example discussed (rather excitably, perhaps) with reference to the second half of Trio and Duet (1974).

The first take sounds pretty successful to me, and it's not clear why a second would have been required (though once it was in the bag, I can see why it was included on the album, the playing being just so good to leave out). What does come across very clearly from the two takes of this number is that it was intended as a vehicle for improvising... so it's far from obvious what would be the value in playing it without that element. 

Reading #3: trio

Mary Halvorson picks out the written theme slowly and meticulously on guitar, with Michael Formanek naturally doing what Wilson did in the original (though - as noted above - who knows whether or not the group was even made aware of the original); Tomas Fujiwara takes an approach on the kit which encompasses both a "straight" reading of the line and a sort of pulse track, supplying most of the actual movement (not for the last time, on this album). If this is the first phase of the piece, the second is nonetheless entirely missing: obviously I have no idea what is on the score as such, but the "loop" section - which seems essential in the two duo takes to the unleashing of energy which eventually takes place - just isn't present here. Instead, we get a very short improvised passage on guitar (can't really call it a solo, it's too ephemeral for that), some more busy activity from the drums, and then - no, wait, we're done. The reading has lasted less than two and a half minutes.

For all the potential and promise here - as I've said before, this album sounds great, three really good players captured with terrific fidelity by an excellent engineer - this ultimately comes across as nothing more than a preliminary sketch. If one takes this as being (at least somewhat) emblematic of the album as a whole, it unfortunately highlights (again) how badly the group needed more time to prepare and record the material. As it is, this track is so transitory that one can be left wondering why they bothered with it at all - 

- which is a shame, because if you go back and listen to it again, paying really close attention this time to ensure that you notice every little detail (knowing how short this is), you can hear that this cut is emblematic of the trio's approach to the album as a whole, in which territories are "miniaturised", treated rather like a little copse of bonsai trees, each replete with scintillating details, but on a tiny scale. What might occupy a segment or phase in another reading is crammed into a few seconds here, minute and subtle changes in the soundscape being deployed in order to cover more ground in less time. The music is so well played that if you do focus in carefully, you can just be carried away by the sheer beauty of it; but the conclusion still inescapably seems to be that this intriguing approach was nonetheless born of necessity: in bringing full focus to the music, you cannot possibly escape feeling almost shocked at how truncated most (if not all) of the readings are. And that remains the unfortunate paradox regarding this album.

That is it!! I really have said everything I have to say about this one now ( - unless, as I noted above, something really juicy and substantial gets brought to my attention regarding the rehearsal and recording process). That doesn't mean I will just shelve the album and never touch it again... I will definitely still play it again from time to time, and who knows? Maybe with practice, I will eventually discover how to pay just the right level of attention to it, and no more than that...

* This isn't just me remembering "somebody having said it", don't forget: Carl Testa affirmed it in his short essay. 

** As brilliant as this band was, I can't now quite bring myself to describe them as the great quartet (even without caps..!), notwithstanding everything I said last autumn: this sort of "best-of-ism" is what I have never stopped trying to escape from, I suppose (being in essence one who is driven to flee the centre). Never mind (ever...) what professional critics would do.

*** As per Lock's typically-excellent liner notes for the Willisau box set, reproduced (in part) for the reissue of the studio material. [Lock may (have) be(en) a professional journalist, but - as far as B. was concerned at least - he was always far more than "just a critic".] The "C" in this context stands for connector. What that meant in practice was (of course) quite complex, and it's - fortunately, no doubt - irrelevant to the material under consideration here.

# I definitely have read statements from the maestro acknowledging the instinctive, extra-logical nature of the graphic title system(s); at the time of writing, I wouldn't know where to begin trying to track any of them down. (At some point he has said that the meaning of the titles was only gradually starting to become clear to him, years after he first began using them.)

1973 (& 1976) revisited

 

I suppose that before I get on with anything else around here, I need to tidy this up: after my last post about the 1973 Châteauvallon performance - which really does appear to be the only live recording in general circulation by that version of the group - I went back and listened to the rest of the set, and discovered a few things which are worth discussing. [I say "worth discussing": I am well aware that this will be of almost zero interest to anyone besides me, not least because I will be analysing a recording which as far as I know is not currently available online* and which some people who happen to read this may, therefore, not have heard. Still, if I don't get it out of the way here, I shan't feel ready to press on and cover other things...]

At the time of my previous post it just seemed like too much hassle to do the extra research and check which pieces were actually played in the concert - which took place on 25th August, something I don't seem to have got round to mentioning last time - besides those included in the video. A comment on YT said Comps. 23a and 6f, which seemed entirely plausible; but I could see that at the time of my original Braxtothon stop in 2007, I wasn't yet able to make a positive identification of the opening theme, only to say that it sounded familiar (something which tended to happen rather a lot, to be fair). In turn, it now seemed likely to be a bit too much of a distraction to have to go and track down the full recording - I know where my original CD-R

is, but not precisely where - given that we're talking about a part of the performance not covered by the video anyway. 

However, what I hadn't remembered is that I did have the files backed up on an external hard drive, and in the end it was a much easier job than I thought to locate the recording. Hence, very shortly after publishing the post, I had the answer anyway. Sort of. (All will not be explained, actually - but quite a lot will be..!)

First things first: something else I had forgotten (until I revisited my 2007 post) is that the French radio broadcast begins with a single track from a solo recital given (allegedly) three days before, at the same festival. The Braxton Project "gigography" confirms(ish) this performance, where B. supposedly filled in for Lee Konitz; however the only piece listed under that entry is the Konitz tune "Sound-Lee" and there is no precise date, only the general guideline 18th-26th August (the same as is given for the quartet performance). The French radio announcer, for reasons which will forever remain unclear, introduces the piece broadcast as being Monk's "Ruby, My Dear", which doesn't resemble the music played even slightly; the sound file I have is entitled "solo 8h", which at least gave me something I could easily check and confirm or rule out, and sure enough: the single solo piece broadcast was actually Comp. 8h  ("dedicated to artist Murray De Pillars"**), as waxed for posterity on For Alto (where it appears as track 3). It's (luckily) extremely simple to identify, as it makes much use of trills. (Whether there is also a random recording of B. playing a Lee Konitz cover... who the hell knows at this point. I suspect not, as the gigography appears to be relying on Coda for its information on both performances - and what was written about the quartet concert is factually inaccurate, however well-meaning it may have been at the time it was printed.)

The French radio announcer's link is at least partly captured on the sound file. The date for the solo concert is given specifically as Wednesday 22nd August, and it is explained that three days later, on Saturday 25th August, Braxton was joined by an "orchestra assembled for the occasion", which had nevertheless been well-rehearsed beforehand in the themes which B. wanted to play***. Wheeler is described as "an excellent English trumpeter" - an understandable mistake, since he was indeed based in the UK by that time - and Shaw is said to have been "borrowed" from the St. Louis Black Artists' Group. Jenny-Clark is said to be one of the best young French bassists, which was definitely true enough, but all this does make me wonder exactly how much of a working group this really was - and where I got that idea in the first place (... see below). The link cuts out just at the point - frustratingly - where the announcer is detailing the graphic titles of the pieces which make up the quartet suite which is about to be aired. But...

...the quartet file has another link included at the end of the main set, from which it emerges that the announcer, at any rate, is under the impression that the suite (which actually comprises at least four different compositions) has a single overarching title; and who knows, at that time, maybe that is indeed the information which B. passed along. The (alphanumeric content of the) title is given as: 4M/ JB15/ 73°-2 #. This, in turn, now puts to bed the idea that the TV people were simply making titles up (which never seemed very likely anyway), and explains why that (garbled) title appears onscreen at the beginning of Comp. 23c; we now know that titles were provided to the festival organisers before (or perhaps after) the show. Of course... we don't know if the right titles were given, or if they were scrambled somewhere along the way, or what; we do know that what is shown on the video (or announced on the radio) does not represent the final titles which were given to the pieces which were played. (But that's about it...)

The set does indeed begin with (what would later become known as) Comp. 23a. But all that really means is that for the first two minutes of the set, the quartet plays out the written theme which would eventually be associated with this piece; as soon as that is completed, they effectively switch territories: after a few seconds of floating space (with just some sparse bass and drum flashes in it), B. begins playing what appears to be a version of the Comp. 6f theme on sopranino. You really have to be paying attention for this, as once he finishes with that - and it could of course be mistaken for just one of his solos - the next fifteen minutes or so  of music do not include any reference to the distinctive written 6f theme, with its fast "swooping" line followed by the short descending chromatic run, at all. This in turn is (at least somewhat) in keeping with other performances of this piece, which is the original## repetition structure: once the written part has been played (a few times, usually - as one would indeed expect from a repetition structure), the music tends to depart for hyperspace, and the musicians at that point will end up exploring something entirely unpredictable and special. That, for sure, is what happens here - we end up with some really intriguing passages, including ethereal vibes accompanying some unusually fierce playing by Wheeler. - But if anything identifiable as another composition is played during this portion of the set, I wasn't able to get hold of it. Eventually the whole group comes to the boil, with Shaw bashing hell out of his kit, and this is brought to an end when B. enters on flute, just before the 19-minute mark. At about 19.10, after a brief pause, Comp. 23c begins - and here of course is where the video comes in.

Unfortunately that's not quite the end of the story, though. By this point I had remembered that the main set is separated (in the audio files) from the "encore", Comp. 23d - which of course explains why I handled that number as part of the following session, in the original Braxtothon (once again, I had forgotten this... I think I can be excused after fifteen and a half years!). The video, on the other hand, includes that piece - and lasts almost exactly thirty minutes in total. Hence, the remaining part of the audio file for the main set should run about twenty-two to twenty-three minutes from the start of Comp. 23c... and it doesn't. It's longer, by several minutes. This was the kind of anomaly I simply couldn't overlook; fortunately, I was able to ascertain pretty fast that it's Comp. 23c itself which is the source of the problem. In the video it runs for about three minutes (which is normal, and basically matches the eventual studio recording); in the audio file, it is considerably longer. Once I played it through and listened very carefully, I figured out what happened here: the piece is almost completed when, in the radio broadcast (or at least in the files of it which were originally shared online back in 2006-7), but not in the video of course, it skips very nearly back to the beginning and continues from there. (This sounds as if it "should" be easier to detect than it is, in practice - because the piece itself keeps restarting and adding parts to itself, you get used to hearing it go back to the beginning; and unless you are paying very close attention - closer, apparently, than I was paying back in 2007! - it is incredibly easy not to notice this error.)

This glitch unfortunately renders this version of the file - at least until such time as I could fix it (using Audacity or something similar; I am well and truly out of practice at this sort of thing and no longer even have current software for it) - unsuitable for sharing, so even if I could clear the other hurdles to that*, I would not be doing it at this point. It also finally answers another question which I had, years ago, about whether all performed versions of this composition are the same: I had intended, a decade ago or more, to do some sort of comparative analysis of the various live renditions of Comp. 23c, as I was convinced that I had heard at least one recording of it which lasted longer than the standard three minutes. I now know that I was right... but also wrong! (Needless to say I did not get round to doing the post, or even to starting it.)

OK, so... that almost concludes my recapitulation here. But not quite... 

The radio announcer, as I say, gives one title which supposedly covers the entire set, not including the encore (which itself is described as ARF/KM/CK, which - again - explains what we see onscreen at the start of Comp. 23d). He says further that we can forgive (B.) the peculiar title, as his music was some of the most beautiful heard in the past year - surpassing free jazz, and encompassing simply music ### ... which, for what it's worth - and very possibly none of this was communicated to the composer at the time - is precisely the sort of compliment/ recognition which B. had wanted all along, but never seemed to receive; well, there were some people after all, even then, who "got it". But what about this idea of a suite with a single title, and the suggestion (per Coda, as quoted on the gigography page) that the quartet's music was prepared specially for the occasion, and that the group was likewise convened ad hoc? 

I am starting to suspect that this line-up never was a working group, as such - which at least would explain why there are no other recordings of it. Did anybody ever say explicitly otherwise, or did I just assume it? I would have got this impression above all from reading Forces in Motion - but although B. definitely reminisced to Lock about how good the line-up was, and how he regretted not having got them into the studio, maybe he never actually said that they were together any longer than it took to rehearse for this show, and to perform it. Obviously Wheeler was already a familiar face and voice, having played in a quartet with Holland and Altschul more than two years earlier; but the quartet, as such, does not really coalesce until 1974, and I think now that this festival line-up was just one of several excellent pick-up groups B. put together along the way.

As regards the titles, well, I am beginning to think they were just another work in progress. The three pieces which make up most of the set here in 1973 - and which later formed Side One of New York, Fall 1974 - were fully worked out by now (though probably not written for this occasion, as such); Comp. 23a is itself probably a work in progress, and Comp. 6f appears in a sort of fragmentary form, lending part of its graphic title to the title of the suite, but otherwise just helping to initiate the launch into the outer realms. Maybe B. did indeed decide at the time that the suite was one presentation, to be considered under one titular banner, as it were; and as for Comp. 23d - maybe the only thing which changed about that was its eventual graphic title. Maybe one day all of this will become clear... but very possibly it won't.

At some point - later this year, I hope - I will dig out the CD-R which came with the box of tapes. I shall be very interested to know if that contains a better recording, and especially intrigued to know whether the "extra bit" of Comp. 23c is missing from it. If so... I shall have to try and figure out how to transfer the music to digital form and share it.

***

As regards 1976, then - all that remains to say here is that whilst trying to verify whether the August 1973 set includes Comp. 6f, or not, I decided that the quickest way to answer that question was with recourse to the Wildflowers set, or in my present case^ to a single-disc anthology from it which I acquired years ago (before this blog was dreamed of). That contains a 1976 version of the piece with a jaw-dropping septet line-up; and it did the job. But it also immediately made me think: hang on, what the hell was this piece being revived for, at that point in time? I had to go back and check whether I had covered it in the Braxtothon... and was relieved to see that I not only did, but I addressed both the oddness of the selection and the piece itself, in far more detail than I would have attempted for this article. It's been a long time indeed since I read any of those early entries..! - and apparently I put more into some of them than I had remembered :)

* It's probably available somewhere online, I just wouldn't know where. But I can't point to it, nor can I share it just yet; the version I wrote about in 2007 wasn't the best quality recording, and - as I explain later in this post - it contains a really annoying fault (which is surprisingly hard to detect). I have no idea any more where would be a decent sharehost for such a thing, nor do I have the right software to "zip it up". I have no plans, therefore, to share any music files any time soon. (Or do I?! see the end of this post...)

** I had not personally heard of this dedicatee, so I looked him up whilst writing this. Murry/Murray Depillars/DePillars was a Chicagoan visual artist and educator, apparently. He died in 2008.)

*** Obviously the announcer's links are in French. Except where noted by inverted commas, I have not translated directly here, but rather paraphrased what was said.

# This also explains how the word "bis" ended up onscreen in the video: JB15 was misread as J bis (!), and the "degree symbol" was also misread as a zero, at some point in the editing process. (The part "73°-" refers specifically to Comp. 6f, and would usually be followed by the designation Kelvin.)

## That is, the original one as regards the recorded canon. If memory serves, there were numerous others which just got lost along the way. At some point I will check back to see what is said about all this in the Composition Notes. 

### "... on peut lui pardonner le titre curieux; sa musique était une des plus belles que nous ayons entendues cet an dernier: cela dépasse le free jazz, cela retrouve la musique en particulier, en général, la musique éternelle - avec les thèmes qui signifient quelque chose"

^ I do actually have a three-CD-R version of the Wildflowers collection in its entirety (courtesy of the late blogger known in his day as glmlr). It was sort of intended for the blog Church Number Nine, but the latter ended up closing before we could post it. As with all of my CD-Rs, I know where it is without immediately being able to put my hand on it. I do however still have the one-disc "greatest hits" version, released on Douglas Music as Jazz Loft Sessions, and picked up randomly (and cheaply) in a (defunct) local record shop almost twenty years ago... little did I know, at the time...!