Repertoire redux: Jump or Die

Splatter Trio & Debris  Jump Or Die – 21 Anthony Braxton Compositions 1992

(Music & Arts 1994)

The mention of this terrific album in my "coming attractions" post last month seemed to trigger a brief resurgence of interest in my previous post about it... so this may be an auspicious time for the follow-up.

In my recent post I'd teasingly referred to this album as "the original gold standard", with tongue only slightly in cheek*. After I made a long overdue revisit - which I then followed up with multiple plays, and careful study of the unusually good liner notes - I began to realise how apposite that description truly is. And lest we end up with a room full of elephant, so to speak, I may as well tackle at once the question of how this recording holds up in comparison with the far more recent offering by Thumbscrew... It's not merely the fact that this was an earlier album full of Braxton covers: there are other aspects to this which make the comparison not just obvious, but effectively unavoidable.

As with Thumbscrew later, one of the players involved in this recording had studied with Braxton (actually two - but we'll get to that). The project was not conceived in a vacuum, but was very much planned and executed with B's blessing and encouragement (not to mention his cooperation, in terms of supplying the scores). Finally, and most crucially - and this is an aspect of Jump or Die which seems to be been largely overlooked in the years following its release - a concerted effort was made to premiere unrecorded compositions. When Thumbscrew's album was being prepared, those involved in promoting it made sure that it was known that the focus was on unrecorded works from B's huge back catalogue; I don't remember ever seeing any acknowledgement of the fact that in doing this, they were following in the footsteps of the earlier expedition, but that was in fact very much the case. In going back now to examine the 1994 recording, it would be disingenuous in the extreme to make no mention at all of the 2020 one.

But we'll get to that. In terms of the earlier recording, how did it all come about in the first place? It was, after all, almost certainly the very first full-length recording of B's music in which he himself was not directly involved**. The obvious starting point is with Gino Robair, who had recorded with B. in 1987***, but that meeting was itself presumably possible because Robair had studied under the maestro at Mills. (Robair's Wikipedia entry does not explicitly confirm this, although it does say that he studied at Mills - where his tutors included David Rosenboom# and Larry Polansky## - so the timing appears to work out pretty well. B's connection to the Bay Area scene definitely stems from his time at Mills, of course.) Robair had co-founded Splatter Trio with bassist Myles Boisen and saxophonist Dave Barrett; and this group took its place in the Bay Area scene of the time. Meanwhile, over on the East Coast, a similarly-minded group called Debris had come together, in which reedman Steve Norton was joined by cornettist Keith Hedger, drummer Curt Newton and synth-player/all-round "utility musician" Arthor Weinstein; the two groups were aware of each other###. Norton explains that the project was conceived, if not birthed, during a car journey in October 1991: the two bands had played a concert together in Portland, Maine (quite an undertaking for Splatter!) and, as Norton and Robair drove back to Boston the following day, the pair discussed what a great idea it would be to collaborate on a "Braxton album". In retrospect, this sounds like precisely the sort of great idea which would never come to fruition, not least because of the geographical distances involved (and this was in the days before most people had access to the internet); but somehow, amid many phone calls, the project did gradually take shape. 

As well as enlisting their respective working groups, the two men brought a few special guests along to the party: trombonist Tom Plsek was head of Berklee College's brass department at the time, and was recruited by Norton; Robair called up mallet-percussionist Gregg Bendian and reedman Randy McKean, the latter of whom was known to Robair from San Francisco (although at this time both McKean and Bendian were living in New York). McKean, in turn, is listed in Hazell's notes as being the only player besides Robair who had studied or played with B. [I don't have the details on this; McKean was part of a high-class woodwind section for (what Black Saint released as) 4 (Ensemble) Compositions 1992, but that was definitely later, albeit only by a few months; if McKean also studied at Mills, and this was where he met Robair in the first place, that would make sense - but even so, I'm speculating. Just to provide another connection, though: at the time of Hazell's notes, McKean was leading a quartet including Paul Smoker - whose links to B. were already established, even if the Charlie Parker Project was still in the (near) future at this point.]

So that's how it happened, more or less. As to what happened: over the course of nine tracks, twenty-one of B's pieces are examined, to some degree or another; the personnel varies from one track to the next, with (what must have been) a lot of thought going into the specific voicings in each case. The two New Yorkers are both involved in two of the tracks - which deploy the full ensemble, although Robair acts as conductor rather than player in those cases - and Plsek also joins in with one other number besides, as does McKean. I am absolutely not going to attempt to discuss each track in detail: quite apart from anything else, this recording is so brimming over with creative energy that you could literally play it every day for a month and you'd still be coming across little details you hadn't previously noticed. I am, however, going to run through the tracks in order, unpacking who plays on what - and which pieces were being unveiled for the first time; and having done that, I will place just one of these tracks under the microscope.

1. Comps. 40e (+40d)/Comps. 40p (+69q)/Comp. 40(o)

The "super-medley" which opens proceedings is one of two tracks featuring a core septet (comprising all the players from both groups), and concludes with the craziest reading of (Kelvin repetition structure/Marilyn Crispell fave) Comp. 40(o) that any of us is ever likely to hear. Along the way, there's no shortage of hijinks, such as a middle phase which pits the two bands against each other: Splatter Trio plays 40p and Debris breaks it up with 69q. Before we even get there, we kick off with a premiere recording, the "collapsing march" Comp. 40e - which kind of has to be heard to be believed.

2. Comp. 48

This was also a premiere at the time; and it's described as such in Hazell's notes, but unbeknownst to him, B. must have been inspired by the players' interest in this piece to add it to the book for the reconvened "Forces quartet": it actually ended up as the opener of the Twelve Compositions: Live at Yoshi's album. Still, Music & Arts (which released both CDs) maintained a consistent approach to putting stuff out: the sessions for Jump or Die were recorded in May 1992 for an album issued in 1994; the Yoshi's quartets, recorded over several days in July 1993, ended up being used for a double album in 1995. So Hazell, technically correct to begin with (the piece was indeed "never previously recorded"), was still not wrong by the time he was writing the notes: this version came out first. (I have earmarked Comp. 48 for a comparative post, later on.) The arrangement is for sextet this time: Splatter Trio is joined by Hedger and Newton, plus Plsek (the aforementioned third number on which he appears). Newton plays drums, Robair vibes.

3. Comp. 23d (+108a)

See below.

4. Comp. 50 (+53)

Another premiere: 50 was a graphic score originally developed for two woodwinds (B. and Roscoe Mitchell) and two synthesizers (Richard Teitelbaum and Allan Strange), but was never captured on record. Here, Norton and Barrett take on the former roles, and Robair and Weinstein the latter, with Boisen conducting. This is the one "multi-title" track on the album which is not an authentic collage: when it was discovered that part of the score pointed to a written line which could not then be located, a decision was made to use a small part of 53 instead. (On the face of it this might seem a natural enough substitution: 53, another unrecorded piece, was obviously written around the same time. However, it actually belongs to a completely different set: Comps. 52-4 comprise Three Compositions for Quartet (1976), and 52, despite its being chosen much later to kick off Thumbscrew's album, is very much a previously-recorded piece. Still, that's what these guys decided to use.)

5. Comp. 142

The first of two selections for the full ensemble, though - as noted above - Robair conducts. Hazell's notes detail 142 as being mainly a written-out score, but with an improvised section linking the first and second composed parts. This one is also stated to be a premiere - of sorts: "the first recording of the complete piece". 142 had previously been played at Victoriaville in 1988, by B's very special septet; but it was reduced to encore status, the main event being a heavily collaged rendition of Comp. 141. [It's nonetheless intriguing to note that the (incomplete) version from '88 lasts longer than the "complete" reading here: this, then, is another piece I've earmarked for comparison later.]

6. Comp. 15

The shortest track on the album at 4.17, this is yet another recorded premiere, this time of an early Braxtonian experiment in graphic scores: described by its composer as "three pages of regulated symbolic notation for any four instruments", the piece dates from 1970 and challenges the players to translate visual shapes into music (an early adumbration of B's synaesthesia, no doubt). The four players here are Boisen (on guitar) plus Hedger and Newton, with special guest McKean on clarinet. Robair conducts, again. 

7. Comp. 69L/Comps. 122 (+69i)/Comp. 69d

This is the second of two mega-medleys using mainly (unrecorded) works from the creative ensemble books (all from the fourth series this time), featuring the core septet. Unlike track 1, this time when the players split up they don't do so strictly along "band lines": Barrett and Robair play 69i (Robair using knitting needles), while Boisen joins Debris to play 122. All three 69 series pieces were premiered here; 69d later turned up as one of numerous secondary or tertiary territories on the giant, 92-minute 2001 tentet reading of Comp. 286 (which Robair was very much involved with), whilst 69L has the peculiar distinction of having been covered twice (here and by the Vandermark 5, later) without ever being recorded by B. himself. [Comp. 122, for those who might wonder, dates from the mid-'80s and was recorded in the studio by a substitute "Forces quartet" - Rosenboom in for Crispell - having previously opened the Bloomsbury Theatre show on the famous 1985 UK tour.]

8. Comp. 74c

A duet between the two bandleaders, both Norton and Robair showcasing a variety of instruments over six and a half minutes. Yet another premiere: 74a and 74b were both brought to the studio for B's classic duo encounter with Roscoe Mitchell; 74d and 74e were both later used for the duets with Brett Larner; this "one in the middle" can only be found here.

9. (Comps. 120d + 90)/(Comps. 23c + 133)

This concluding monster-mashup is the second number for the full orchestra, with Robair conducting, and each of the special guests gets his time in the spotlight here - although that is a mixed blessing, as in each case they end up getting somewhat drowned out by the rest of the group. Sharp-eyed readers will also note that unlike trs. 1 & 7 I have not attempted to "correct" the presentation of the title from the way it appears on the album; here it is really not a case of "primary territory plus collage" or anything like that. In a method which (as far as I know) was never actually used by B. himself, the first two pieces very nearly begin simultaneously. What actually happens is that Plsek begins playing 120d alone^, and the rest of the group starts playing 90 almost at once; the latter piece is, says Hazell, "a graphic score primarily concerned with manipulating dynamics", and what this means in practice is that Plsek becomes effecively inaudible at times, until the ensemble pauses. The trombonist nevertheless ploughs on gamely, providing the eventual link to the next collage, wherein McKean and Bendian undertake a straight reading of the additive repetition-structure 23c while the rest of the players tackle another graphic score^^, 133. Again, this ultimately rises to such a tempestuous crescendo that the two guests are largely engulfed. The overall impression, however, of this piece is that it's extraordinarily effective. - Hazell claims that everything here with the (obvious) exception of 23c is a premiere recording, but for once he's not quite right about that: 120d was played by George Lewis as part of the collage structure on Comp. 141, the main performance at Victoriaville in 1988. 

***

The  rundown above does little more than explicate the details of who plays what and when, and which of the pieces are being presented for the first time (lots of them). It also highlights just how much work and preparation went into this project, and just how much music was shoehorned into it. (The ensemble takes full advantage of the CD format to squeeze in seventy-seven minutes of music, and not one of those minutes drags.) You can probably also see now why I would not attempt a full-tissue dissection of the whole album.

What I will do is describe in detail the third track, a most unusual take on the modern standard Comp. 23d^^^. The astounding creativity and imagination brought to bear on this piece can absolutely be taken as emblematic of the album as a whole.

Arranged for quartet, in traditional fashion, the third number features Norton, Robair, Boisen and Newton; the latter sticks to the trap set exclusively, whilst the others change axe at least once, during the course of these eight and a half minutes. (Boisen actually uses a guitar/bass guitar doubleneck.) As you can see from the title listed at 3. above, some collaging is factored in by way of the pulse track structure Comp. 108a, but really the wildest activity takes place before that secondary material even starts. 

The number begins almost conventionally, with the quartet just playing the familiar written theme totally straight - it's just unconventional instrumentation, with Norton on baritone sax and Robair on vibes, Boisen loping away on the bass neck of his twin-headed beast; but the second the group finishes with the written section of the piece, we are instantly in far out territory. Norton picks a note and - drills his way right into it and through it, twisting and varying his attack, switching between the "true" note and the higher harmonic attained via controlled overblowing, sustaining this for over a minute - while Boisen and Newton fling themselves around and Robair's ghostly vibes add another dimension to the sound. Focus in on this stuff and you can really be transported, the band immediately finding so much space inside the music that by the time Norton lays out and Robair tears into a frenzied solo with his mallets, it's hard to believe there's less than three and a half minutes on the clock. As the fourth minute ends, Norton returns on bass clarinet, and in due course Boisen switches to guitar, and Robair finally to his toy piano (which might look ridiculous in a verbal description, but is startlingly effective in practice, precisely for being so unexpected). Somehow, in the maelstrom of sound, Norton never completely loses touch with the flavour of the theme, finding phrases which recall the written contours even amidst all the contained chaos.

The storm gradually subsides, and in the relative lull which follows, the trace elements of 108a appear. Around 6.55, Boisen (back on bass for this) and Newton begin playing the pulse track for real, even as the 23d theme returns, this time voiced by Norton and Robair on bass clarinet and mandolin - the kind of undreamt-of pairing which must have simply delighted the maestro when he heard it. As we're back to the written score, there are no more surprises as such, just smiles from ear to ear at how skilfully the quartet closes this out in such an unanticipated fashion. You will probably never hear a more imaginative interpretation of this piece than the one which these guys laid down more than thirty years ago. As I say, it perfectly sums up the unfettered creativity and total commitment to the music which was brought to this extraordinary meeting.

***

Most of Jump or Die was recorded in Arthor Weinstein's living room - albeit by a professional engineer, Peter Kontrimas - and although it would be quite unjust to say that it sounds like it (it doesn't; one would never know), this is the one aspect in which the much later Thumbscrew album, with its startlingly beautiful sound, is demonstrably the superior recording. In all other respects, I'm sorry, but the later album falls short of the bar already set, a quarter of a century earlier - so much so, really, that it's not even truly fair to compare them. It's also not strictly necessary: any friendly experiencer with more than a passing interest in B's music will find much to enjoy about Thumbscrew's album. But if for some inexplicable reason it came down to a choice of only one album of Braxton repertoire to take a desert island... there is only one winner.

Here's why: Jump or Die saw a group of enthusiasts hurdle all manner of barriers, logistically speaking, to put together a set of readings of scores the majority of which none of them had seen before - and the results, as confirmed by Norton in a brief explanatory note, "exceeded all (his) expectations". They set the bar insanely high, yet cleared it by miles. [I've already done to death my conclusions on the later album - and I'm not bringing them up again.] Musically speaking this album set a "games record" so seemingly untouchable... that it's not greatly surprising if no mention of it was made when the later trio release was being promoted. 

It is nonetheless possible to reach a similar level, as it eventually transpired...

[This post was originally conceived as a way into a series of articles about repertoire, and it still is that; only, since then, I have expanded my short-term plans for blog posts to such an extent that this is now just one of several such lines of development. Other posts of this nature will follow, therefore, but I can't make any promises as to when..!]

* The play on words was not intended, although not unnoticed either... in that ideal world I'm always banging on about, at least some of this material would be regarded as standards by now. (Oh, and see my final footnote below...)

** This is the supposition made by Ed Hazell in his liner notes, and although I "should probably" be able to confirm or disprove it at this point, I wouldn't want to be definite about it; but I can't think of anything earlier, anyway. Can you?

*** I wrote a bit about this album last year, when I heard it for the first time; it's definitely something I shall be coming back to, in these pages.

# Pianist/keyboardist/educator/etc Rosenboom worked with B. on multiple occasions, including - as mentioned above in my notes on tr. 7 - filling in for the absent Marilyn Crispell when B. took his quartet into the studio in 1986.

## Polanksy, on the other hand, is someone I had to look up - although the name did sound familiar. I realised in due course it's because I've seen it in the discography, as the creator of an album called The Theory of Impossible Sound - which (apparently) includes a track incorporating a five-second sample of B's playing (!). This was indeed recorded at Mills, which will obviously have been where he made B's acquaintance. However, he is actually of far greater significance to us friendly experiencers as the founder of the Frog Peak publishing house - which has issued, among other things, B's Composition Notes and Tri-Axium Writings. 

### Debris did release an album - Terre Haute, with guest Andrew D'Angelo - on Robair's Rastascan Records, but that only came out in 1993, the year after the Jump or Die sessions; mind you, it could quite possibly have been recorded earlier.

^ Hazell's notes describe Comp. 120d as "a duet for horn and dancer... one of Braxton's most evocative scores"; and never mind the purely-subjective second part of that quote, I can neither confirm nor deny the first part, since the Composition Notes do not quite go that high in the numbering, and Restructures did not have any detail on the piece either. The graphic title is reproduced on the album, and we'll have to take ... Presumably, there exist Comps. 120a-c as well, and who knows how many others in that series, but until someone with proper access to the scores can shed light on this, the details must remain shrouded in mystery... ADDENDUM: see fourth comment to this post.

^^ Again, I have to take Hazell's word for this, but there is no reason to doubt him: scores were sourced directly from B. himself by McKean, who made the journey up to Connecticut for specifically that purpose; and either Hazell got a look at these, or a very good account of them was given to him by the players. [Incidentally, the fact that B. was unable to locate part of the score for Comp. 50 (see notes for tr. 4 above) gives a further hint as to how the sort of confusion I have harped on about recently might have come about in the first place. And that's where I'll leave that, for now...]

^^^ There, I said it! Look, I've been saying for years to anyone who'd listen (not many people, admittedly) that 23d, above all, deserves to have been absorbed into the wider jazz canon by now. And I think it just about has been: for example, tenor sax player Fred Hess (who was too mainstream to figure on my radar, and is indeed only known to me at all because of his tangential presence's in B's discography) recorded the tune not once but twice - even if he seemed confused as to what it was called. I suspect there may be a few jazzers out there who even recognise the theme without necessarily knowing that it's one of B's. I'm calling it XD

A revival of unexpected material (Braxton 75+3?)

Over the last several months, apparently, a 3-day series of performances in Brooklyn was announced, featuring the music of Anthony Braxton.  (I say apparently, because I only heard of it a few days ahead, but googled it after the fact and found an article dating from late March.1)

Originally intended for 2020 as part of a Braxton 75 celebration, the performances were scheduled for this month to celebrate the maestro's birthday. Some heavy hitters of the Braxton world were involved -- performers included James Fei, Ingrid Laubrock, and Nate Wooley, and the event was put together by a group called Experiments in Opera, which includes Matthew Welch and Aaron Siegel. 2.

The brief announcement I saw didn't elaborate much on the material, but described it as "Theater improvisations." A New York Times review over the weekend (and, indeed, the months-old announcements I found) clear things up.  It was, in fact, a high-powered revival of compositions 279-283; the "standup comic" material.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/arts/music/anthony-braxton-experiments-in-opera.html

The review is by Seth Colter Walls, who has been writing sympathetically about Braxton for a decade or more; the review was published online during the 3-night run (but not in print until the following Monday) and encouraged readers to "grab one of the remaining seats while you can."

This material has been mentioned on the blog recently, and neither Cent nor I have heard much of it -- just one short clip that I think I got from CIMP's website over a decade ago. And the Times review admits that "with just two people, sometimes the recording's charm peters out." 

These performances added a third performer; in addition to the narrator (comic?) and an instrumentalist, (Each night, the instrumentalist was different.  Wooley on Thursday; Fei on Friday, and Laubrock on Saturday) the performances featured soprano Kamala Sankaram, who has performed on several of the Trillium recordings, as well as Syntactical GTM Choir (NYC) 2011.

With no written material for soprano voice in the compositions (I assume), the performers took advantage of Braxton's open attitude toward performers combining his compositions. Thursday's performance at one point featured Wooley playing Comp. 23D while Sankaram sang lines from Trillium E. What the comic was doing at the time is not mentioned.

The sympathetic reviewer admits, "on the page, this might not seem like much," and I'm not tempted to disagree. I love 23D, and I love the operas.  I even agree that the operas themselves are funny. It sounds like an entertaining evening.  But does putting these pieces together, with a narrator (comic?), make something greater than the sum of its parts? 3.

Walls muses at one point that the performances deserve "attention, and perhaps documentation" to illuminate Braxton's conceptual side.  And there is a great deal to fill in here, not just to show his conceptual side, but to breathe life into it.

I am intrigued; had I been within range, I might have taken the reviewer's advice & grabbed a ticket. But I'm left to wonder, again, about this material. Decades after a relatively low-profile release, a core group of Braxton luminaries saw fit to bring it back as a Braxton 75 tribute. Was this just the ultimate back catalogue obscurantism? Or is there something special there after all?

McC.S.

1. https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwopera/article/Experiments-In-Opera-Presents-A-Rare-Run-Of-ANTHONY-BRAXTON-THEATER-IMPROVISATIONS-For-Comedian-Musicians-20230329

2. Correction: Welch was a founder of EIO but is apparently no longer affiliated. The graphic involves a magician doing a trick with a rabbit, a hat, and the graphical title for Comp. 101 (doing a card trick with the TCF logo in the other hand, as well?)

https://experimentsinopera.com/portfolio-item/braxton/

3. EIO has posted some info to their various social media; including graphic scores and a list of 300+ potential joke types. http://www.facebook.com/experimentsinopera/ or https://www.instagram.com/experimentsinopera/?hl=en A few photos of the performances, as well.

In memoriam Peter Brötzmann

6 March 1941 – 22 June 2023

Peter Brötzmann passed away late last week at his home in Wuppertal.  He was 82.

Brötzmann was a giant of creative music, with a recorded legacy spanning more than 50 years. May his memory be a blessing.

I had the good fortune to see him perform several times, ranging from his Chicago Tentet to Sonore, his trio with Mats Gustaffson and Ken Vandermark.  His sound was unmistakable, but his playing was full of surprises.

Thaumatogenesis: 1995

 

Four Compositions (Quartet) 1995  (Braxton House, 1997)

It seems like just the other day I was saying - hang on, it was just the other day. Damn, things can move fast when they move at all, around here!

What I was saying was that I really needed to hear this '97 release on (the original, short-lived) Braxton House label, showcasing the very first pieces from a new compositional strategy known as Ghost Trance Music. OK, so the timing was technically a little out of kilter, since anyone who was actually following B's career closely back in the mid-nineties (more than a decade before I myself got hooked) would potentially have heard Sextet (Istanbul) 1996 first: this was released the same year it was recorded, and features a sextet taking on Comps. 185 & 186, which are themselves two very early GTM pieces. But in terms of how the ideas unfolded, and how the new template was introduced to the core group at the time, this quartet of quartets actually came first; it's just that for whatever reason(s), Braxton House didn't get it out until a little later. Of course, in retrospect we can easily correct this temporal anomaly, and slide these first four pieces under the microscope... Istanbul can await its turn*. 

The album which eventually bore the catalogue number BH005 comprises the very first GTM works, then: and these are of course Comps. 181-184**. Without even playing the music, we can see just from a glance at the track list that these are not long readings: the longest is a shade under twenty minutes, and the shortest a shade under ten. (At the time of recording, maybe not even the musicians themselves knew how oddly short this would turn out to be, for music of this type.) This means, among other things, that - as I said in footnote *8 to the previous post - I was wrong when I inferred back in February that the shortest official GTM recording was cut in May 2000. No, it happened right here. Once we play the music, this all becomes clear.

At the very outset, then, this was all simply about laying out the basic template itself, and allowing a few glimpses at the myriad possibilities for expansion and development which that template implied. These first four readings are almost entirely through-composed, consisting of regularly-spaced written themes for the whole group to play without deviation from the score, and to a large extent the growth or movement is to be found purely in the themes themselves: that is, it lies within these specific arrangements of these themes, whereby these four voices bring the material hypnagogically to life. The rather unusual quartet*** which B. used for this date comprises himself, of course, plus Ted Reichman on accordion, Joe Fonda on bass# and Kevin Norton on a whole variety of percussion: some drums may be heard here, some cymbals definitely are, but above all the fourth voice in the written themes is most usually provided by mallet percussion, either vibraphone or glockenspiel. This creates a marvellously rich sound palette which makes a complete nonsense of any assumptions about what a "quartet" will sound like##. Use that palette for the material on display here, and the results are such that an alert and focused listener can find him/herself completely transported to another world within seconds. 

The four pieces are not presented in order: first up is Comp. 182, taken at a very brisk tempo, in which the group tick-tick-ticks its way through the written material in wholly regular fashion, with occasional (fantastic) outbursts from the leader providing what little embellishment there is; hearing this ur-text GTM after all this time, I am reminded very quickly of something I said years ago about the way in which this strategy was foreshadowed, two decades earlier, by Comp. 40f. (The links back there from here seem quite obvious, at this point.###) Comp. 183, which comes next, employs a very similar tessitura, with a subtly different theme taken at a similarly speedy tempo. Here, though, within a couple of minutes we do encounter some subtle but definite variation: even as the group tick-tick-ticks away at the written theme, Norton's crashing cymbals introduce a simple form of rhythmic contrast, revealing an extra layer to the sound - or, really, an extra dimension within the music... since that is how deep this stuff truly is. 

Norton's approach - not at all like a pulse track, even though the basic idea is essentially not dissimilar^ - is twofold, in that he continues to voice the written lines on glockenspiel even while his other hand is following a different clock entirely, at least some of the time. Here, then, within these ten minutes, we already start to get a feel for just how much potential there is for the unexpected to arise, out of what seems on the face of it to be completely regimented written material. Some whistles and whoops are thrown in for good measure: far from coming across as gimmicks, or even as simple expressions of joy, these have above all the quality of surprise, unforeseen as they are within this tightly-controlled soundscape. Even at this germinal stage, it was evidently the idea to generate extra lines of possibility from the written scores; and although hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I don't suppose for a minute that anybody in the studio in 1995 could have foreseen where all this would end up, it is nevertheless completely clear to me that this new musical strategy was always one of limitless possibilities.

Comp. 184 which follows, then, is the longest piece on the album; hence, as more or less experienced listeners, we will expect it to contain more in the way of extrapolation. That is, indeed, how it develops: again, the written theme is fast, and again, it's Norton who is initially in charge of unlocking the door to the dimension beyond; but yes, here we really start to see how the model is really designed, all the players in turn given that little more room to breathe, and by the second half of the piece, it starts to unfold itself marvellously - even as the core pulse is never discontinued: at least two players are right on it, at any given time. And when we reach the last piece on the album, it eventually becomes clear why Comp. 181 has been programmed out of sequence in this way: starting off at a markedly slower tempo, but in equally hypnotic fashion, the piece suddenly gathers pace from around 6.20, accelerating subtly at first, then dramatically, and from this point on the tempo is in fact quite variable^^, which of course produces an effect quite startling in the context of the album: nothing which came before has set the listener up to expect this at all. (The effect is presumably carefully controlled via hand signals from the leader, since all four players accelerate and decelerate in perfect accord.) So this piece introduces a different axis of variation again; I can only repeat what I said above: even at this formative, inchoate stage, we are shown a template in which the potential for extrapolation is simply dizzying. And because the core concept of an infinite continuum, without beginning or end is already encapsulated right at the outset, we can carry the music away with us and live inside it, long after the recording has finished.

***

It remains only to ask myself: have I done certain "cover bands" a gross disservice, in implying that their brief treatments of GTM themes are so short as to be desultory? Maybe... now that I have at last understood how short some of the really early first species GTM works were, I could perhaps be a little more sympathetic to ensembles which take such pieces on. Or maybe not, after all: this would only really get you off the hook if you chose one of those same very early pieces to interpret. If you insist on picking as your primary territory a composition which has been very fully developed in the recorded canon, and then only playing the first couple of pages of it... you do rather invite the suspicion that you're just trying to look more clever than you are, taking on a "difficult" composer - without actually engaging with his work. At the risk of being my old impossible-to-please self... I'd advise anybody trying to take on this material to think very carefully about why they are doing it. Not that they are likely to ask my opinion, of course...

* Now that I've got hold of all this Braxton House stuff at long last, I have every intention of working my way through it... and writing about at least some of it. (The more I write, the more there inevitably is to write about...)

** What became of Comps. 176-180 is something of a mystery, but it seems well established that Comp. 181 is ground zero for GTM. In the brief essay which constitutes the liner notes for Kobe Van Cauwenberghe's Ghost Trance Solos, Laura Tunbridge states that GTM "comprises more than 150 pieces situated between compositions 181 and 363". And it's true: from its inception, this massive compositional experiment would see the opus numbers (almost) literally double. (The statement is slightly misleading, since Comp. 363 is in fact a series, and pertains to Diamond Curtain Wall Music; but the basic point is still true enough.) Future musicologists may, indeed, declare that GTM was the maestro's single most significant compositional framework. [Of course they had better conclude that this was a highly significant figure to begin with, or I will come back down here just to kick their lazy arses...]

*** Quite apart from anything else, it seems weird at this point just to look back and not see THB's name among the personnel; but he was a good few years away from getting involved.

# In the space of less than two years, Fonda was already proving himself to be arguably the most versatile bassist B. has ever had. He was entrusted with practically everything - and never sounds out of his depth.

## About ten years after this, the chattering classes were getting terribly excited about a New York group called the Claudia Quintet, led from the back by drummer Jon Hollenbeck; I was still listening to BBC Radio 3 at the time, and I well remember the fawning attention paid to these guys by jazz journos and the like. A big reason for this was supposedly the group's "unique sound palette", which included accordion and vibes. Unique, my arse: as we can see, this had been done before, and it didn't even take five players to achieve it. (In fairness to Hollenbeck and co, they may not have claimed to have come up with this idea - certainly I hope they didn't, since the accordionist in that band was, in fact, none other than Ted Reichman...)

### I doubt that even B. had so much as a glimpse, in 1976, of where and how this seed would eventually germinate; but it's fascinating to think of all these ideas, simmering away in that fertile brain, vanishing beneath the surface only to rise again much later on...

^ The pulse track is itself just one example of a basic concept which B. has never stopped exploring, i.e. placing two disparate sounds or strategies into contiguity in order to see what emerges from the resulting friction. GTM is arguably an exceptionally sophisticated development of this same idea - although it is not just that, even so.

^^ This of course harks straight back to an earlier piece, again: this time to 1984, and Comp. 115.

Recently acquired / most wanted

 

I did say recently that I would do a post listing recordings which I'm particularly lacking: those which I am most keen to hear among the greater number that I don't already have in some form. First, then: at the time I said that, I also said that I was actively seeking a copy of the CIMP album Nine Compositions (Hill) 2000 - which I have since got hold of. That is, McClintic Sphere got in touch shortly afterwards to pass on a copy, and another friend has since offered to do as much, so I'll clarify here that I do now have this one (in digital form, at any rate).

One item here sort of belongs on both lists... but we'll get to that. In terms of recent acquisitions, I already said last time out that I'd bought a copy of the Creative Orchestra Music 1976 CD; around the same time, I also finally managed to get hold of Duo (Victoriaville) 2005, the officially-released version of B's concert with Fred Frith, which I'd flagged up last year as being something I coveted; copies of it are not exactly hard to come by, but it's not especially easy to get one at a reasonable price, or not in the UK at any rate. In this case, I was delighted to snag a copy at the price which I paid for it (even whilst I got the impression that the seller couldn't believe their luck in getting such a good price for what they probably saw as a worthless item). It absolutely did not disappoint, either: of course I had managed to hear most of it online, but as previously mentioned in that November post, the last part of the recording does not seem to be available in the usual place, even though there is a file doing the rounds which claims to be just that. Anyway: this really does seem to be one duo recording where B's playing was actively affected by the contributions of his playing partner (I say this having previously speculated that this may not always be the case). Frith really turns up the heat at times on this one, and B. definitely responds to that, delving deep into his capacious bag of tricks to unleash some delightfully warped timbral distortions. Safe to say I was not even slightly disappointed by this purchase.

I also picked up a physical copy of something I already had in digital form, Quartet (Warsaw) 2012 - a Diamond Curtain Wall concert which was released in 2013 on the Polish label For Tune. I posted about this towards the end of 2013 - a time when, had I but known it, the blog was on the verge of winding down to almost complete dormancy for the best part of the next decade (weird/scary, but unfortunately true) - but in all these years since I first heard an mp3 rip of it, I had never seen a hard copy; even the scans seemed to be elusive, which rather suggested that there probably weren't any worth seeing (as all too frequently turns out to be the case). However, when my second-hand copy arrived I was very pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the booklet, which contains some very decent colour photos accompanied by an intelligent essay (in Polish, but also presented in an English translation). I don't have anything else on this label, but I'll certainly remember it as one which releases good-quality product. As for the music - where the maestro and his right-hand small brass player were joined this time not by Mary Halvorson nor by frequent DCWM collaborator Katherine Young, but rather by James Fei and violinist Erica Dicker - well, how not-good would we expect that to be? I hadn't listened to this recording in a few years, but have played the CD twice already, not giving it my undivided attention on either occasion; but whenever I tuned right in, there was always something focused and interesting taking place. (As we would expect.)

The third item here is the one with a place on both lists: that is, until just recently it had pushed its way to the very top of my wants list, but I've now unexpectedly got hold of it. And that item is Ghost Trance Solos by the Belgian guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe.

I first touched on this guy's Braxton projects last September, when I came across his Ghost Trance Septet for the first time; a month or so later I had ordered a copy of that band's CD and was impatiently waiting for it to turn up. (It eventually did, after much prompting of the label from my end.) Eventually, I will get round to writing about that; in the interim, I had gradually become more and more aware of the guitarist's having recorded what purported to be a solo album of GTM pieces. That, I had always thought to be impossible: GTM requires two voices at an absolute minimum. Of course, I hadn't particularly thought about loops and multi-tracking... anyway, at some point (having realised how fantastically good that septet is) I decided that I just had to have this album. That seemed to be a bit of a tricky problem, since it didn't seem to be carried by most of the usual online retailers... Discogs had a couple of listings for it, but both were based in the US, and with things the way they are vis à vis international postage, and Brexit-related cockups, I wasn't about to risk ordering from that far away. A few weeks back, a copy turned up for sale in Germany, and I thought OK, that may be worth the risk - and the shipping won't be too exorbitant. I'll look to pick that up in time for my birthday - and then, inevitably, someone must have bought it 'cos the listing vanished. Finally, in desperation really, I did what I ought to have done in the first place and looked up the label (All That Dust) online; I had no idea where they were based, so I just played along with the Add to Basket option, and to my astonishment, it turns out they are based right here in the UK. The easiest and cheapest option by far was, all along, to order it directly from them. Clearly there is a lesson in there (but I doubt that most people reading this will need it...).

So, the CD itself (and the label seems to make most of its profit from downloads, as I guess all labels have to these days: download only = £8; CD + download = £10, which scarcely seems to make sense, but there you go) arrived last week... it was a busy week, leading up to an internal job interview at the end of it, so what with one thing and another, I didn't get round to playing the digital files, just waited for the actual CD. And yes, of course, there is much looping and multi-tracking going on there, which explains how a soloist can take on GTM in the first place... I will try and cover this one properly in due course; for now, suffice it to say that it's a very interesting recording from an extremely interesting musician. I'm just glad I eventually did the obvious and looked into the possibilities of ordering from the label...

***

Moving on, then... now that I no longer need to work out where to get my copy of Ghost Trance Solos from, what follows from here downwards is a (non-exhaustive) list of stuff which I am looking for at present; a few of the items on the list (which will be subdidvided into sections) are recordings which I have heard, but don't own in any form(at), whilst most of them are recordings I've not even heard. If anyone is in a position to hit me up with anything on the list, most likely in the form of an online rip*, please leave a comment (the blog's "official" email account hasn't been used in years, I really must get round to seeing whether it even still exists at this point).

I'm not going to include multi-dics sets here; perhaps some other time. (The 4-CD Piano Music set by Hildegard Kleeb will really have to be obtained at some point, assuming my familiarity eventually reaches the point where I feel capable of assessing the relative merits of Kleeb's interpretations and those of Geneviève Foccroulle, later.)

I will also avoid getting into the whole question of releases on New Braxton House: most of these are digital-only anyway (although while I'm at it, I may as well say that I don't have a hell of a lot of them after 2011, and none at all after 2013, so if anyone is in a position to do me a favour here... well, you know what to do!) and, again, maybe I'll try to tackle that whole subject some other time. 

Finally- in terms of introductory remarks, I mean - I want to highlight something which has appeared in Discogs at some point along the way, but which very probably never existed: a recording credited to Charlie Mariano (meets AB) entitled, supposedly, Elegy For a Goose. Not an item which I ever saw in any edition of the Restructures discography, this was purportedly released in France in 1982, on the "Mariano Studios" label (which itself has only one release cross-referenced to it, i.e. this one). A line-up of B. and Mariano on horns, with Aki Takase, Joe Fonda and Günter "Baby" Sommer sounds intriguing in principle - albeit highly unlikely, given that Fonda's extensive association with B. didn't begin until approximately twelve years after this was "recorded", in late 1981** - and the idea of a twenty-one minute "Geese Suite" composed by B. may sound more intriguing still, but the more one looks into this, the more spurious the whole thing appears; in the final analysis, one can only really conclude that it's someone's extremely recondite idea of a prank. No copies for sale, none ever sold (at least through the only website which has ever mentioned it to begin with)... and wouldn't you know it, literally within the last week, someone calling themselves vitaltransformation has left a comment to the following effect: "Confirmed with Joe Fonda in person that no such recording ever took place". Quite what the point of all this was, I couldn't begin to speculate... but I think it's safe to say that none of us will be adding this "rarity" to the collection any time soon.

***

1. Albums featuring B. (which also include music composed by him)

- in no order:

Eight Compositions (Quintet) 2001 (CIMP) #1 

Shadow Company (with Milo Fine)  (Emanem, 2005)

Anthony Braxton /Sonny Simmons /Brandon Evans /Andre Vida /Mike Pride /Shanir Blumenkranz (Parallactic, 2003) #2 

Toronto (Duets) 2007 (with Kyle Brenders)  (Barnyard Records, 2008)

Compositions / Improvisations 2000 (with Scott Rosenberg)  (Barely Auditable)

Duet (with James Fei)  (Other Minds, 2022) #3 

12 Comp (ZIM) 2017  (Firehouse 12, 2021) #4 

Small Ensemble Music (Wesleyan) 1994  (Splasc(h) Records, 1999)

2 Compositions (Ensemble) 1989/1991  (hat ART, 1992) #5 

Two Lines (with David Rosenboom)  (Lovely Music, 1995)

Duet: Live At Merkin Hall (with Richard Teitelbaum)  (Music & Arts, 1996)

The Aggregate (with ROVA)  (CD version)  (Sound Aspects Records, 1989) #6 

Four Compositions (Solo, Duo & Trio) 1982/1988  (hat ART, 1990)

Ao Vivo Jazz Na Fábrica  (Selo SESC SP, 2016) #7 

1a. Albums on (the original) Braxton House***

- there weren't many of these, but I think the only one I've actually heard is Sextet (Istanbul) 1996. The others, therefore, are very much on the list, as follows:

Composition No. 102 (For Orchestra & Puppet Theatre) (1996)

Tentet (New York) 1996

Four Compositions (Quartet) 1995  (1997) #8 

Octet (New York) 1995  (1997) #9 

Ensemble (New York) 1995  (1997) #9 

Four Compositions (Washington, D.C.) 1998  (1999) 

[Anyone who is really paying attention at this point may note that I have only accounted for seven of the label's nine releases; one of them was a box set (see above) and the other, a double-vinyl-only solo saxophone album, Solo (Skopje) 1995, which supposedly was only released in 2003 (despite bearing the catalogue number BH002); this last one isn't such a priority, since I am behind on listening to the solo sax albums already in my possession, but hey - if anyone happens to have access to it, preferably in digital form, do please let me know anyway..!]  UPDATE: got that one now (see comments)

2. Albums featuring B. (which do not include music composed by him)

Archie Shepp & Philly Joe Jones, untitled LP  (America Records, 1970) #10 

Marion Brown, Afternoon Of A Georgia Faun  (ECM, 1970) #11 

Gunter Hampel, Enfant Terrible  (Birth Records, 1975) #12 

Roscoe Mitchell Creative Orchestra, Sketches From Bamboo (Moers Music, 1979) #13 

Neighbours with Anthony Braxton, untitled LP  (Great Neighbours Music, 1984) #14 

3. Albums featuring B's music (where he does not play)

Roscoe Mitchell and the Sound Ensemble, Snurdy McGurdy And Her Dancin' Shoes (Nessa, 1981) #15 

London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Zurich Concerts  (Intakt, 1988 (1995)) #16 

Steve Lantner Trio, What You Can Throw  (hatOLOGY, 2007) #17 

... and that's about it (for now). I'm sure everyone would agree that's (more than) enough to be getting on with, anyway XD

* Real efforts appear to have been made to stop people sharing this sort of thing - maybe? - at least as far as a well-known search engine goes... and I do take the point... but don't expect me to feel guilty about looking, given the amount of money I have spent on music over the decades...

** Actually the recording date is given as November 31st, 1981 - so, a date which doesn't exist, at a Paris venue supposedly called Foie Gras (which I'm pretty sure also never existed). Somebody somewhere probably has a reason for inventing this, but it's way beyond me...

*** The label was short-lived. Most of its releases are pretty hard to obtain on this side of the pond; imagine my irritation, then, at learning that Downtown Music Gallery (NYC) appears to have surplus stock of most (if not all) of the ones I'm looking for, at knockdown prices. Add international postage to that - and assume that the package ever shows up - and it would not be quite such a bargain. Most annoying.

#1 I have absolutely no clue about the content of this release, except that it's all B's materials, and there are no vocalists involved. I'm assuming it is at least somewhat interesting, therefore (unlike another CIMP release which I've already ruled out)

#2 This untitled album was originally released as a double CD-R by Evans, and apparently later got reissued (also as a double CD-R) on a label called Human Plastic in 2017. I've coveted it for years. I'm pretty sure it's the only place to hear B. with Simmons - and compositions by both of them are included, although what is meant by "508M (+ N. 136)" is anyone's guess, since we are still nowhere near that high in the numbering system...

#3 This recent new release - showcasing B's new Lorraine strategy - is already a bit of a sore point. I had assumed it would be relatively easy to buy, and it's absolutely isn't. 

#4 This would preferably be in digital form, since otherwise I can't listen to it anyway (yet). But of course I'll buy the Blu-Ray anyway if I get the chance (technically it's not a box set, hence its inclusion here - that, and the fact that I really, really want a copy of this stuff)

#5 Contains the original (uncollaged) version of Comp. 147, as recently discussed. 

#6 This has to be the CD version, since I already have a vinyl rip; there's an extra 19 mins on the CD

#7 Brazilian release, discussed last year. 

#8 This album features the very first GTM performances. It also appears to give the lie to something I said earlier this year (about the shortest official GTM recording): Comp. 183 clocks in at just under ten minutes. I really have to hear this one.

#9 These two were both, supposedly, "Recorded November (...) 1995 at the Tri-Centric (Thanksgiving 1995) Festival at the Knitting Factory" - which makes me wonder about all those live boots from 1996 which I got from Volkan, as detailed just recently. How many of these TCF festivals were there?

#10 It's taken a very long time to catch up to the knowledge that I never got to hear this album... the presence of a vocalist/harmonica player suggests that I may yet conclude that ignorance was bliss, after all..? 

#11 I did say recently that I thought I'd got this, and just hadn't found it yet; actually I don't think I ever did get a rip of this one.

#12 A glance at the track listing for this on Discogs suggests that B. and Martinelli may even have had Hampel in mind, when they came up with the eventual numbering system...

#13 Even more than the Marion Brown album, I can hardly believe that I never got hold of this one, but I really don't think I did... 

#14 This looks properly obscure, and the vinyl itself is evidently not easy to come by. I have no idea whatsoever about who these guys were or how this came about; the label itself was obviously theirs too, and seems to have issued a grand total of three albums, this being the last of them. 

#15 Principally relevant here as it contains Mitchell's group arrangement of (what would eventually be known as) B's Comp. 40q, a piece debuted as a duet between Mitchell and B. (coincidentally the recording on which the Braxtothon finally foundered). The presence here of Jaribu Shahid on bass and Tani Tabbal on drums suggests strongly that James Carter borrowed Mitchell's arrangement for his own later version of the piece, including the same two sidemen. (I am interested in the album anyway, and definitely don't have this one yet.)

#16 Two discs, one of which has nothing to do with B's music, the other of which contains nothing but. Not quite sure how I managed to go this long without someone slipping me this one (in some form or other)

#17 Again, this is on here because it contains just one of B's pieces - this time a version of Comp. 23j. I have no idea who Lantner is - but he keeps fast company: Joe Morris (on bass) and Luther Gray. The whole album, which opens with one of Morris's numbers and ends with Ornette's "Broken Shadows", looks pretty tasty actually...

Big bands (and botched plans)

 

I recently acquired a copy of the CD reissue of Creative Orchestra Music 1976, a much-loved release (from what some older listeners probably* still insist was B's best period, i.e. the '70s ), which I first wrote about just over fifteen years ago...

Of course, the problem with some of these Braxtothon entries was that I had set myself the task of analysing only the music I heard, which meant - where possible - reading absolutely nothing about the recordings in question beforehand. The idea was that I would listen to as many recordings as I (practically) could, in strict chronological order, learning only what I could as I went along, gaining momentum from a cumulative understanding of the material  - and so on. After a certain point - pretty early on, really - I gave up on the idea of refusing to "skip ahead"; I couldn't pretend this was all taking place in a vacuum when apart from anything else, people were leaving regular comments in those days and I would (almost) always engage with these. I tried to avoid listening to entire albums if I knew that I was going to be covering them in due course, but I allowed myself to cherry-pick certain tracks for playlists. The idea of being perfectly ingenuous when I came to each recording thus went up in smoke**.  But: when it came time to cover a particular recording, I would still make sure I read little or nothing about it; in particular, I was militant about not touching liner notes, where I had access to these. Most of the time, this probably worked out reasonably well. Occasionally, it came back to bite me... and that was definitely what happened with this album. A look at the notes - which were available on Restructures at the time, and very probably elsewhere - would have been pretty helpful, and would have saved me from one mistake in particular (anyone who wants to know what that was can read about the whole thing in the comments to the original post).

Hence, botched plans: and I should stress at this point that I am talking only about my own plans here, not B's. Nothing remotely botched about those... indeed this album is an absolute triumph of group commitment over adversity, the ensemble successfully negotiating some intimidating charts despite woefully inadequate rehearsal time.

So, to the liners - which tell us all about B's intentions for the project... Firstly, B. says right off the bat that the album "represents (his) first opportunity to have compositions for large ensemble available on record", something which caused a sharply raised eyebrow when I read it, since I myself had already covered the 1972 Creative Music Orchestra album, so I knew damn well that at least one project for larger ensemble had already been realised, not just conceived***. Did that earlier occasion simply not count, for some reason? But no, it didn't take me long to figure out the answer; it was just another case of needing to undo some of my unquestioned assumptions from the Braxtothon: the earlier performance took place on 11th March 1972, but the album was not released until 1977, and at the time B. was writing his notes for the present album (recorded in February 1976 and released by Arista later the same year), it may not have been clear to him that the earlier music was due to get released at all#. (The one source which I did always refer to - the Restructures discography, which listed recording sessions in chronological order, not albums necessarily - did not give a release date for the album in this case and I don't suppose it ever occurred to me that it took several years to get the '72 music released in its triple-album form.)

Secondly and thirdly: we're told that all this music was composed specifically for this project, and that by Creative Orchestra, B. is in fact drawing a distinction with other music(s) of his - though not, in fact, the 1972 concert (even if that had seen the light of the day at the time he was writing). The distinction is between this type of (semi-improvised) date and the fully-notated/through-composed works he was already devising for (just plain) Orchestra: this is made explicit by the notes. As for the materials, I'll come back to that below - but it's just worth noting in advance that all these pieces were written for these sessions, since an attentive listener could easily surmise that some of them might not have been.

The general notes (which appeared on the back cover of the original LP release, and can be found in the same place on the CD, though they are a lot harder to read in the latter format) are neither long nor super-detailed, but serve really as an introduction to the album as a whole; each individual track has its own notes inside, after all. B. wraps up the general intro by saying how fortunate he felt to have had these musicians available for this project, stressing the lack of rehearsal time (this, he claims, was about two hours per piece, on average - and nobody had seen the music in advance). A word on those same musicians, then: last November, in writing about the mid-eighties quartet with Lindberg, I'd said this wasn't really an "all-star affair" (and contrasted it with the return engagement two years later, which clearly was). That was one of those semi-lazy## assumptions: really, when you look at the overall personnel for the 1976 album, the quality of the individual names does jump out. True, there are certain names there which don't: I wouldn't know anything about Seldon Powell, Bruce Johnstone, Ronald or Cecil Bridgewater, Earl McIntyre, Jack Jeffers or Jonathan Dorn if I hadn't looked them up, and even now that I have, a few of them remain pretty obscure to me. But they were all chosen for a reason; and if we look at the ensemble in toto, there is really no shortage of "household" names there (granted that the household in question is the residence of at least one creative music listener..!).

Back in 2007 when I first heard this album, I'm not sure I even realised there had been a CD issue. This came out in 1987, as parallel editions for the US and European markets; both of them were under the Bluebird imprint, and from the look of the packaging, they would have been "budget-priced" (although what that actually meant in 1987, when CD itself was still considered a luxury format, is unclear - and of course any such considerations have long since ceased to count for anything in the resale market###). The original packaging is faithfully reproduced; faithfully, but somewhat inappropriately, since (as mentioned above) this sometimes results in some extremely small print which can really strain the eyes. The booklet is itself encased in a generic "Cool Price Jazz" card sheet, stapled to the outside of the booklet; the series, which included recordings by the likes of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Louis Armstrong et al seems an incredibly incongruous home for our man here, although there were also albums by Air and Ornette Coleman in the same series; this "outer jacket" indeed looks so out of place (see below) that I came very close to removing it^, but didn't in the end, as it's nevertheless unique to this release. It's pretty unsightly, but I guess it's here to stay:

There are a few other things to note specifically about this reissue. On the one hand, every effort was made to preserve the layout and content of the original notes; on the other, those notes themselves could really have benefited from some judicious editing at this point. There are numerous typos and spelling errors in the text; for all I know, some of these may have originated with B. himself, but even if they did, that's no reason to keep them in. Given the obvious (aforementioned) issues caused by resizing the back cover to fit on a CD booklet, would this not have been a perfect chance to sort some of these previous issues out? While they were at it, by the time of the CD's release it had long since been the norm to put out B's albums with the retroactive opus numbers allocated to the pieces, as well as the graphic titles; but here they are still just listed as "Piece One", "Piece Two" etc. Of course, I am well aware that any undertaking such as I've outlined in this paragraph would have necessitated some actual money being spent on the reissue, and heaven forbid that a major corporation such as BMG (which by this point had absorbed RCA) should imperil its profit margins by pissing away money unnecessarily... never mind any "ideal world" considerations, we have to be realistic here. - While I'm at it, the final point to make about the reissue is that although you can see for yourselves the proud boast "Digitally Remastered" on this, back in 1987 they didn't yet really understand what this meant, or how to do it properly. CD was not a widely collected format yet; labels could always promote something by saying it was "digitally remastered" because in order to transfer it to compact disc in the first place, a digital master had to be created; but the process which would come to be understood as "proper" remastering would only come a bit later, as the format itself proved its market endurance (and record labels had to up their game). Hence, as with other CDs produced from analogue source recordings in this era, the volume levels are way too low on this and the sound is pretty flat and lifeless^^. Naturally, I am not trying to talk anyone out of acquiring a copy: it's still a CD release of a classic album and in order to engage with the music, you just have to listen past the limitations presented by the mastering process and focus on the music. It really is that simple.*

***

And so to the material... this is not the time for a track-by-track; for all its faults, I already did that one fifteen years ago. But with my updated and better-informed perspective on all this, I may now be suitably placed to make some observations on the music which would have been beyond me, back in 2008.

The main reason I said above that one might assume not all of the material was prepared especially for this date is the numbering. Tracks two to six inclusive have consecutive opus numbers, assigned to them which is as we would expect: B. is just like most composers, in that he works certain ideas intensively and then moves on from them (although in his case, at least, some ideas take longer to explore than others: GTM occupied at least part of his creative brain for a number of years, and some of the other strategies devised around the same time proved similarly long-lived). In this case, a set of works intended for creative big band instrumentation all date from the same period and were thus located together in the numbering system when the time came. So why is the first piece on the album - now known as Comp. 51 - isolated from the others? The very next number, Comp. 52, is assigned to a piece written for quartet (and not recorded until 1981). Does this indicate a mistake? But no, it doesn't appear to: the Composition Notes - and I have only glanced briefly at these for the purposes of this post - suggest that Comp. 52-4 comprise a short series^^^ of three pieces for quartet including piano, and were also composed in 1976; whilst the six big band pieces are not designated as belonging to a series at all (despite the fact that they clearly were, in practice). If I'm going to be super-picky about this - and when am I not? - I would say that there was a mistake in the numbering: the series of three short pieces for (piano) quartet should really be numbered 51-3 inclusive, and the big band pieces 54-9; but it's a bit late to worry about that now, and it's the sort of minor anomaly which only lends a bit of charm to the exploration of this vast discography.

If there was another reason, it's to do with the nature of the pieces themselves. On the face of it, only four of the six pieces featured on the album are typical big band numbers, and one of these (Comp. 59 which closes the programme) is something of a special case; two of the three others - Comps. 51 & 55 - are "typical" only in terms of their arrangement, both featuring boppish themes which could plausibly have been written for a smaller group, then scaled up to fit a larger ensemble. Comp. 59, for "two soloists" (but specifically conceived for B. and Roscoe Mitchell, according to the liner notes) has an unorthodox ABCBA structure and, beyond the presence of the two soloists themselves, could be scored for anything between (say) six and sixteen players and would still basically work. On this first outing, the arrangement encompasses fourteen voices (plus conductor); there is no rhythm section on this number, although Dave Holland plays 'cello and Jonathan Dorn tuba - but these do not fulfil their traditional jazz-based roles. Comp. 58 is of course the J.P Sousa tribute number, and is really the only piece on the album which sounds as if it could only have been written with a big band in mind. The two remaining pieces, spaced evenly throughout the programme as tracks two and four, are of course Comps. 56 & 57, and these are not typical big band numbers at all, being respectively experiments in spatial and timbral relationships; it will be readily noted that these two pieces were the ones jettisoned for the 1978 redux, nor have they ever been officially recorded again (although other larger groups may still have thought of them: Wet Ink Ensemble took on Comp. 56 at any rate, as previously mentioned last October). It's worth noting, though, that however much this pair may not sound like suitable choices for the ensemble, B. actually used more players on these two numbers than anywhere else on the album: both of these numbers are scored for twenty voices, and even the most "action-packed" of the remaining numbers - without a doubt, the centrepiece march tune (now known as) Comp. 58 - only used nineteen; the others use around fourteen or fifteen each, however much they sound a lot "busier" than the two sonic experiments. ( You could bet money that anyone who was asked to guess whether the first or second track used more musicians would get it wrong, however carefully they were listening.)

There are still some salient points on individual tracks... Comp. 51, a terrific opener, appears to list the soloists in the wrong order in the notes (Cecil Bridgewater plays before B. himself); an attuned ear can clearly hear the leader's alto voice among the ten other horns in the early phases of this tune, even though he takes his actual solo last. Following the solos, the slight increase in tempo which accompanies the next phase of the piece is a very effective way to ratchet up the tension, and the floating, unresolved nature of the eventual ending ensures that this sets up the rest of the album beautifully. Comp. 56 - with its careful use of space - could disappear into the background completely unnoticed for any listener not really paying attention, but it's a most intriguing experience for the close listener. It's also the only number to feature Richard Teitelbaum on synthesiser (besides not one but two pianists, though one would never guess), and he comes across as being the key here, his spare sounds encapsulating the idea of space very neatly. Comp. 57, the study in timbral/textural balancing - so to speak - seems to suffer more than most from the limitations imposed both by the lack of available rehearsal and recording time, and by the single-LP format; B. starts out on flute for this one, but in the latter stage of the piece he switches to contrabass sax, with Mitchell having already moved from flute to bass sax, and unfortunately the wider implications of these to low-end horns working off each other are barely glimpsed, the piece fading away quite suddenly.

Comp. 55 would probably bear closer inspection all on its own, some time: B's liner notes explain (sort of) that this was the first recorded example of a Kaufman repetition-principle piece (Kelvin pieces along those lines being far better known, especially the much-recorded Comp. 6f), though in order to understand what that means, further exploration would be needed. It is notable, though, that the composition pivots continually around one ascending phrase, full of the maestro's characteristic leaping intervallic contours, which is eventually picked out by M.R. Abrams on piano with Holland shadowing him on bass, but the same motif, played by sections of the ensemble, recurs throughout. I imagine that anyone coming to this album in 1976 and reading in the notes that B. was much inspired here by Duke Ellington would have been rather confused; but then I'm hardly the best judge, not being greatly familiar with the work of "Sir Duke" beyond a few fairly obvious compositional highlights, and I can't really vouch for how "out" he may have got in his wilder moments. In any case, anyone working in the big band idiom is likely to end up dealing with Ellington's influence; but whether that influence would normally be expected to manifest itself like this is another matter.

Regardless of how much fun there is to be had with these four pieces, the two original side-closers are the obvious highlights in many ways - though I don't plan to dwell on these in any detail here. What I do just want to pick up on is one thing on each piece. Comp. 58, the crazy, Sousa-meets-Stravinsky parade-ground spectacular, should really be forcibly played to anyone who ever falls into the critic's trap of describing B. as "cerebral" or "academic" in his approach to music. The sheer playfulness of this piece would silence all of them; and it also hints at the maestro's immense compositional range. As for the closing "two soloists" piece: besides showcasing some truly unhinged (in the best possible way) playing from both Mitchell and B., this album closer seems most notable for its use of multiple notational strategies - albeit one would need the notes in order to know that; and for a fuller understanding of how it all breaks down, one would need recourse to the Composition Notes^^^. What we are told here is as follows: the structure, as mentioned above, takes the form of an ABCBA palindrome, beginning and ending in relative calm with some truly mad stuff in between; the A sections are fully-notated, whilst the B sections represent the two solos and employ "a controlled governing format (where events are regulated with regard to cue points and activation-sequences)", if you can get to grips with that; the central C section is "a controlled ensemble improvisation utilizing a tenbral [sic - sc. "timbral"] approach with regard to the long sound with variation". That is actually fairly transparent for once, although in terms of how it's notated, we are none the wiser: it is "conceptually arranged outside of standard functional systems". The point I wish to make here is just that B's restless experimentation with different possibilities for notation foreshadows, of course, the far more detailed and personal strategies he would come to adopt later on.

That's it. It is still a marvellously entertaining and interesting listen, however much I am now incapable of approaching it with any of my former ingenuousness... does it represent the apex of his career? Hardly, but then I was never convinced by this "all downhill from 1979" nonsense anyway, much as I love B's '70s output. Besides, when was I ever in a great hurry to declare that anything is the "best" of anything? Why would I limit myself to that mentality, when there is enough here to keep me busy for the rest of my life?

 

* It actually is that simple, and I should know because I've been doing it for years. To a large extent this was born of necessity: I never had enough money as a teenager to blow on an expensive stereo setup, and rather than save up for one, I typically spent all my money on records (or beer, etc). But the great advantage of this is that instead of allowing my ears to get lazy early in life, and then spend years using them mainly to detect "imperfections" in the quality of sound reproduction - which by the way is what many collectors, and pretty much all self-styled audiophiles, are in the habit of doing - I trained mine to hone in on the music itself, and was thus able to hear all sorts of detail in what others sometimes thought were quite crappy recordings. This doesn't mean that I prefer bad recordings, far from it; but it does mean that I don't have to worry about only tolerating "perfect" recordings which are fit for a super-high-end sound system. I have still never had one of these; this doesn't seem to stop me hearing and experiencing music very fully. [Maybe one day I will lay out all I might have to say on this subject; but given that some in the musical community would take it more or less as a declaration of war, I am in no hurry to do so: for the time being, I'm done with it.]

* The only collector I knew personally who (steadfastly) held this view is no longer among us, and can no longer defend his viewpoint - and therefore won't be named here. Other people of a generation older than mine have definitely expressed the same view - but I have no idea how many of them are still around or how prevalent the idea might be amongst younger friendly experiencers...

** This is rather close to being literally true - but then the whole project was born in smoke to begin with. What ya gonna do ;-)

*** B. had probably conceived of works for a hundred orchestras before the sixties were out; getting a lot of his more exotic projects realised was always a very different proposition, obviously.

# Since I had been only concerned with listening to recordings in strict chronological order, the question of how great a time might have elapsed from the recording date to the eventual release of an album featuring material from that date seldom if ever entered my head back then.

## That is to say, lazy in regard to that one remark - the article as a whole took me hours. 

### You'd be very lucky to pick this up dead cheaply, but I didn't get at all ripped off for my copy. (At the time of release, CD was the most expensive format available in most territories, and I have no idea what the RRP would have been for a "budget" range... I myself didn't start buying CDs until later on.)

^ I bought this on Discogs, where the seller had flagged up in his listing that the version being sold has a different cover from the one shown on the site. All this really means in practice is that the photos they use on the site don't show the outer "jacket", which possibly only made its appearance on one of the two CD editions..? 

^^ It really sounds surprisingly old-fashioned, at least until you get used to it; that could be true of any edition in any format, I'm not sure. But in order to get a properly engaging listening experience, I had to jack the volume way up for this. "Lifeless" is maybe a bit strong, but I want to make the point that no effort was taken to use the new format to its full advantage. It would also be interesting to hear the version included in the 2008 Mosaic box for comparison.

^^^ I've added this to my list of possible "microscope" recordings for later on down the line...