Gripes & niggles

 

My attention has been on the New Braxton House releases just recently - a list of these is conveniently provided by TCF (although it's not 100% up-to-date: NBH910 Quartet (Standards) 2020 is missing from it) - and I'm just going to have to get some stuff off my chest at this point. 

At the time that NBH was launched, I was still vaguely in touch with TCF, and I remember there was a little bit of (rather half-hearted) debate regarding formats: hard copy, or digital only? Members were surveyed and, predictably enough, the decision went in favour of digital. This was not at all surprising, and in many ways it simply reflects the state of the modern marketplace: many listeners are thoroughly used to buying their music via streaming services or similar platforms, so the idea of paying for content they will never really "own" doesn't bother them - consumption is consumption.

But if you expect people to pay for your digital content, do you not still have to make some effort to present it properly?

Something which is pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things, but which really annoys me: all of the regular NBH releases - which are only now available to buy via the TCF Bandcamp - dutifully list their date of release, but many of them don't specify a recording date. Release date?! who the hell cares about that? When has jazz-based/creative music ever been concerned with release dates? - and bear in mind, some of these albums (they are all regarded as official albums, and why wouldn't they be) don't even list proper recording credits. NBH003 Three Orchestras (GTM) 1998 will set back the paying customer a minimum of $13, but the credits don't even list the six soloists. NBH046-7 Sextet (FRM) 2007 doesn't even bother to give the composition details: the two actual pieces are literally labelled "Sextet (FRM) 2007 Vol. 1" and "... Vol. 2"*. Oh, and of course both these albums fail to give the recording date; there is just that pointless release date, like a slap in the potential buyer's face.

B. worked tirelessly to get all these various projects realised and recorded (by his engineer, Jon Rosenberg), and the many musicians who contributed to them gave their all. Do they not all deserve rather better than this?

For any wealthy fans out there who don't already have any of the stuff on this label, but were considering acquiring all of it, there is a special discount rate available: $849 (or more - always "or more" when it comes to Bandcamp, that has nothing to do with TCF as such) for the label's entire output. If anyone is even slightly tempted by that offer I would strongly encourage them to contact TCF first, and ask that they take the trouble to present their releases properly.

***

With that out of the way, a few considerations follow on one specific release: NBH008 Composition No. 19 (For 100 Tubas). Let's deal with the niggles first... 

Comp. 19 - as its retrofitted opus number indicates - is a very old work. So much so, that by the time Jay Rozen asked B. about it, the composer admitted that the score - never recorded - had been lost. He did say though that "he would be happy to reconstruct it if a performance could be arranged". How accurate a reconstruction this could possibly have been, after about thirty-five years (and given the voluminous quantities of musical strategies which had passed through the maestro's brain in the interim), is anyone's guess. Still, one thing is apparently not in doubt: arranged into four marching bands as per the original design, the assembled brass players numbered "only" sixty-five, not one hundred. This doesn't sound quite as catchy - or as impressive - though, so the title still misleadingly tells us: For 100 Tubas. 

As is pretty much normal for a NBH release, then, there is also some doubt over the performance date - despite the fact that in this instance, the Bandcamp page does actually give one of these (24th June 2006). Discogs, on the other hand - which is where I generally have to go for such details, in the absence of same on the official pages - gives it as June 3rd of the same year. Rozen himself, in his notes, disagrees with both dates, giving it as June 4th; this is of course B's birthday, but no mention is made of that in the notes, so draw your own conclusions. Still, Rozen says the performance took place as part of the 2006 Bang-on-a-Can Marathon Concert, which in principle should allow us to date it reliably: and the official page for that event agrees with Rozen. This being the case, the one-off performance really did take place on B's 61st birthday, whether or not the performers knew it; technically, there is no guarantee that the performance Rozen describes is the same one we hear in the recording, but in practice, the chances of such a logistically-unwieldy event being restaged are pretty much zero. 

Enough with the nitpicking. The actual recording is really quite extraordinary, and (I suppose not surprisingly) resembles nothing else I have ever heard. Rozen says blithely that "everyone loved Composition #19; performers and audience alike" - which would rather lead one to infer that the music is the sort of jolly and rambunctious affair that one tends to imagine brass bands playing most of the time. Nothing could be further from the truth: the piece, which is split into two parts, is incredibly ominous and menacing in tone, sounding almost as if it were intended to accompany some deeply-disturbing horror film. Indeed the first part, which lasts almost twenty-one minutes, comprises basically just prolonged rumblings and growlings from the massed ranks of horns (among them, some quite notable names: besides Rozen himself of course, then-current or past collaborators included Jonathan Dorn, Stewart Gillmore and Reut Regev, as well as Jose Davila, far better known for his long tenure with Henry Threadgill; but Mark Stewart had been around for a long time, and Joe Daley was part of Sam Rivers' legendary Tuba Trio groups in the seventies). What this was like to witness in the flesh, we can but imagine; listening to it now, the effect is so minatory that it's actually quite hard to sit through. As part one gives way to part two - which lasts a further half an hour - the tension is at last broken, but only for some actual explosions to take place, fiery blasts of brass which erupt out of the grumbling ranks and bring the drama to a head. Unbearably tense it may be, happy and upbeat it most certainly isn't, but it's also not dull or boring and I very much doubt if anyone has heard its like before. Given my gripes from earlier I am going to stop short of actually recommending that anyone pay for the download at this point... but readers are quite capable of making up their own minds about that. 

***

Leo Records - which has put out a great deal of B's recorded output over the years - may or may not be on the verge of closing, but they have just announced a "Closing Down Sale... (which) might be the last sale in the history of Leo Records". Make of that what you will. If anyone wants to check this out, the official page for the sale is online and contains all the details. Some of B's stuff is still on there (not a huge amount actually, at this point), and tons more besides of course.

Running a physical record label has to be a pretty thankless task in this day and age, and I know that Mr Feigin basically runs the whole thing himself (or at least he used to). I don't expect to see any further releases under B's name at this point - that's all in the past - but regardless, the label did more than most to promote our man's music, and a debt of gratitude will always be owed for that. If the label is indeed about to be wound up, I hope Mr F. enjoys his long-overdue retirement.

* By way of comparison, the Bandcamp page for the companion release Quartet (FRM) 2007 (NBH042, NBH043, NBH044, NBH045) lists all four pieces with their correct titles, or at least the primary territories. (Of course, even then they don't bother to give us the recording dates...)

Video round-up

 

Obviously it's only been a few weeks since McC posted about the Jazz Cafe sets by the "Forces quartet" - and what great stuff that is! - but I came across several more minor curiosities (relatively speaking - all still of interest) while researching my own previous post and thought I'd better try and get them out of the way.

The first one - not quite sure why Youtube is only showing this to me now, when the video was posted well over four years ago, and previous searches were far closer to this thematically than the ones I used recently - is a version of Comp. 23b by Brian Krock's Liddle. I first came across one of Brian's videos a few years ago, an analysis of B's musical systems for which he'd perused the Tri-Axium Writings* - and I know he's a friend of (popular Youtuber/jazz-fusion bassist) Adam Neely's, although evidently he hasn't managed to attract the same sort of following. Anyway, I remember him singling out this number - we might think of it as one of B's "greatest hits" although we would well-advised to avoid the temptation - before, and I didn't realise there was a video of one of Brian's bands playing it. Despite always having been a popular number, it is not frequently covered, presumably because the head is so challenging to play at the correct tempo** - but of course it's a real statement when anyone can pull it off the way the quartet does here. The band includes an excellent guitarist, Olli Hirvonen, who was completely unknown to me. Krock's own alto solo seems to start out quite tentatively, with him apparently trying to resolve a melodic figure that doesn't ostensibly have a direct connection to the piece; he gradually opens up a bit as it progresses. Just to hammer home the all-round technical chops they possess, the band plays an extra-long version of the ending and, again, totally nails it.

Let's see... there's a live video purporting to feature a reunited Dave Holland Quartet - i.e. the Conference line-up - from the summer of 1974: that might sound rather unlikely (when I first saw the video's title, I thought a mistake had been made with the year) but it does come with full venue and date information and I'll take their word for it***. The video, posted by the same channel which gave us the Châteauvallon 1973 broadcast, comes from a French TV broadcast and is of very good quality (although the vision mixer seems to have got a bit carried away). The band is on excellent form as it tears into - well, I would not have known it was "Q&A" if the caption hadn't said so, but it's been rather a long time since I listened to that album - and it can safely be assumed that live performances would always see this band playing a lot more "out" than they could get away with for a studio date. Rivers sticks to flute throughout; B. rotates through several horns, including a generous helping of contrabass clarinet. Starting around 18.40 in the clip, we finally get some sketched references to the written theme. Definitely worth a watch.

Also from the historical archives: B's tearing his way through "Impressions" at the Woodstock Jazz Festival in 1981, an event famously released under the name Creative Music Studio on Douglas. Here proceedings are cut bizarrely short - the editor's curtain pulled slowly down during Chick Corea's solo - but we do get to the see the whole of B's own solo, which is typically superb and really burns white-hot in the end. Corea, Miroslav Vitous and Jack DeJohnette make up the rest of the band on this. The clip itself was posted way back in 2006, but I don't remember ever seeing it before. A curiosity, it appears to have been part of some longer broadcast presumably compiled for the Italian market (from the very brief bit of audience interaction with B. at the beginning) but it does offer a fairly rare opportunity to see B. in full flight at an event where he wasn't leading his own band.

The remaining three videos here are all from the same occasion, on 10th June 2018, and are posted by Kaufman Music Centre - although the first clip also exists online as filmed by an audience member, presumably the drummer's mother. This first clip features a group of very young music students tackling part of the score for Comp. 192, and came courtesy of a programme called Face the Music. The ensemble is conducted by Kyoko Kitamura, listed as one of three coaches for this event along with Carl Testa and Aakash Mittal - present for the performance, stage left on saxophone (Mittal's credentials for teaching this material are unclear); Testa himself is not there, or at least not in shot, but his wife is very much involved: singer Anne Rhodes, seated stage right and key to the performance#, though for some reason not credited in the video. It's pretty short, and the manifold implications for expanded improvisation inherent in a larger group playing a piece written as a duet go basically unexplored, but it's still extremely encouraging to see young musicians grappling with this material - although, with the exception of the percussionist, they don't actually appear to be enjoying themselves very much. (Maybe they were just concentrating very hard.)

Clip two from this event is also under the auspices of Face the Music, but features a completely different group of students conducted by Mittal in Comp. 69b (+108b). The band seem to have been working from a simplified score which highlights isolated elements of the written theme, but at 4.24 the performance suddenly catches fire## and all the players, who are older and presumably that much more experienced than those in the first clip, really get stuck in, especially the flautist, trombonist and vibraphonist. This is actually quite a delight to watch, although having got to the end I was left wondering exactly when the pulse track was supposedly played. In retrospect, I suppose that the section from around three minutes until the point of ignition - in which a couple of lines of the theme are repeated in slightly bewildering fashion - is probably when some elements from 108b are being played, though there is nothing recognisable here as a pulse track. This feels a bit like nitpicking with such a spirited performance, but is really a comment on whoever arranged the score - presumably Mittal since he conducted it - rather than on the joyous playing.

Clip three features a Tri-Centric Quartet - that is, the four aforementioned grownups - running through a medley of Comps. 175 & 225. Rhodes, Kitamura, Testa and Mittal give what does come across at times as a rather subdued performance, but then Comp. 175 was originally a Creative Orchestra piece, and choosing this primary material to showcase the two singers was always going to leave rather large holes in the soundscape. It's still quite fun to watch though and makes for an interesting counterpart to the two student videos. 

That's that for now - I'm on a short family holiday at time of writing and have also been ill, so my intended posting schedule for the rest of the month has suffered a bit of a setback, but we'll get there...

* I myself never did get to grips properly with this work, which is very difficult to read. (The fault is still largely with me, since I did my degree in Philosophy and if I'd been a more diligent student, I might have been more used to tackling this sort of thing.) Of course, how much of it Mr Krock himself actually read in order to produce a 32-minute video is open to question...

** The Locals used to play this number, but they slowed it right down. (Their CD release will be written about sometime fairly soon...)

*** Oddly enough, my list of tapes doesn't include a single entry from 1974, and the only live recordings I was aware of by the band all date from 1972, i.e. the around same time as the Conference sessions. I don't remember ever previously being told about this band reuniting later. But the occasion was the Antibes Jazz Festival and I daresay it wouldn't be too difficult to check - I shall assume the stated details are correct.

# This piece, the first GTM to be written for a vocalist, was originally performed with Lauren Newton and has since become a bit of a staple for the Syntactical GTM book; a singer is absolutely crucial to it, and it makes sense that a professional would have been drafted in for the role, though this still doesn't explain why AR is not credited. 

## 69b, a favourite of Marilyn Crispell's, typically goes volcanic when performed live; obviously we wouldn't expect a group of students to be able to reproduce previous versions, but they give it a pretty good go... and they do look as if they had fun with it. Most heartening :-D

Curious Roland*

 

This thread may appear to have been somewhat misplaced, but then it's currently just one of several: a continuing attempt to get to grips with the album Ensemble Montaigne (Bau 4) 2013. Credited to B. (as composer), this actually did not involve him at all: it was organised and conducted by the trombonist/ composer/ educator Roland Dahinden, and played by ten Lucerne-based musicians under the auspices of - you guessed it - the Ensemble Montaigne*.

This much, I basically knew already before I even had a physical copy of the CD. Once I'd picked one up, I became rather preoccupied with the difficulties involved in identifying (and verifying) the pieces which were played during the performance, starting with the first one listed (Comp. 174, almost certainly a typo for Comp. 147); I even went so far as to buy a copy of Composition No 174 just so I could rule that piece out. (Acquiring another of B's albums was not exactly a great hardship.) The liner notes on the Ensemble Montaigne, for once, let me down in terms of detail; Leo Records may not have the best design sense in the world, but very often the notes are actually worth reading. This time they were disappointingly sparse and shed no light at all on how exactly the recording came about, or - most crucially from my point of view - how the materials themselves were selected and which parts of the (often lengthy) scores were used. 

What they did tell me, though, was that Dahinden was not merely a former collaborator of B's during the '90s: he "was assistant to (B.) at Wesleyan... 1992-1995"**. The timing of that seemed odd at first: Dahinden first becomes a significant regular name in the discography around 1995, so at the very end of that same period; but although his earlier appearances on official recordings are fairly scanty, they do exist, going back to the Black Saint release 4 (Ensemble) Compositions - 1992***, where he shared trombone duties with John Rapson#. Still, if he did in fact work as B's assistant during the early '90s, that would explain both his qualification for organising and conducting the 2013 project, and also his credentials for another enterprise: this very short video clip points us to the Radost Ensemble, which (again) doesn't really seem to be much of a "thing" except in this one very specific context; but still, that video suggests that event itself must have been pretty worthwhile. It's a shame there is no other video footage available, and the clip itself is not exactly setting Youtube alight with its view count, but it does look as if the actual workshop - where Dahinden taught a three-day programme in B's music systems and methods - was well attended and successful##. 

So, we know that as an educator RD has continued to be involved in spreading knowledge of B's compositional approaches, long enough after his own time at Wesleyan. Another significant link he has back to B's discography takes the form of the 2005 hatOLOGY release Concept of Freedom, which... merges a number of B's compositions (specifically the second-species GTM Comp. 257) with a number of Duke Ellington's works... in some way which I freely admit that I don't really understand, not having heard the whole album myself. Again, excerpts from it are available in the usual place(s)###, from which I gather that a core trio of Dahinden with violinist Dimitris Polisoidis and (Dahinden's wife) Hildegard Kleeb - herself known to at least some friendly experiencers, as the first pianist to tackle B's solo piano works - were joined by Robert Höldrich on electronics, to create some sort of highly ambitious hybrid interpretation, which... sounds pretty interesting, coming to it piecemeal and for the first time, though the full shape and scope of it is beyond me without at least having access to the full liner notes. Still, whatever it is and however it works, the project appears to have put B. up there on an equal compositional status with Ellington, and I'm all for that. 

Oh, and let's not forget Naima, the result of two recording sessions in 1995, credited to the Roland Dahinden Trios: two of Dahinden's pieces (totalling fifty minutes) with B. and Art(hur) Fuller, two with Fuller and Joe Fonda - one of which is a rather useful version of Comp. 136 (the other of course being Coltrane's classic ballad, used here as an exercise in trombone multiphonics). The reason why this version of 136 is especially useful is because it's a lengthy reading of the piece by a student without the maestro, hence we can reasonably safely assume that the score was read quite faithfully with a minimum of artistic licence being taken; this piece is used so often in collage contexts as secondary material that it's getting to the point where it's essential for me to recognise it when it shows up, but the (many) versions under B's direct control can vary quite a lot among themselves^. I did listen to this album at the beginning of June and noted how well played it is - which admittedly doesn't sound like much of a revelation - and I shall be referring to it again very soon when I try to get inside that same piece.

Well, that's about it; besides the above, I was able to confirm that RD had a fairly predictable background - several liberal arts colleges and conservatories, where his teachers included the renowned trombone virtuoso / composer Vinko Globokar; and that he has remained pretty active and busy in the rarefied art music world, even when he's not teaching "Braxtoniana". I do feel better informed about him than I was until recently, though... and that much closer to being able to make an informed assessment of the 2013 album which brought me here. To be continued...

* The post title is not in any way intended to be insulting to Herr Dahinden - I'm suggesting that he is full of musical curiosity, rather than personally odd (and I really wouldn't know, after all). It was the best I could come up with, but it does seem a bit abstruse: I was trying to work some sort of riff on Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (Roland furieux in French), for what it's worth...

* The notes make it sound as if this group existed already and still exists, though if you look the name up online it just inescapably directs you back towards the Leo album. Whatever they get up to in Lucerne, it apparently doesn't involve recording...

** per liner notes by Pirmin Bossart.

*** This album is somewhat misleadingly titled, in that the recording sessions took place in December 1992 and March 1993; nothing on the liners indicates whether some of the ensemble were only present for one session or the other.

# Rapson himself also appears in B's discography here, with a 1996 release on Music & Arts which looks as if it features B. as part of a group also including Bobby Bradford and Alex Cline, but doesn't: there were two sessions for this one as well, one of which was a duo improvisation between Rapson and B. at Wesleyan (of course), the other of which features a quintet (without B.) - still, I've always been kind of curious about this one and if anyone's got it, or has even heard it, I would be genuinely interested in hearing from them. (Besides these two recording credits, Rapson is really only known to me through his earlier work with Vinny Golia, specifically on a big band album which I posted on C#9, way back in the day...)

## ...insofar as we can judge the success of a three-day workshop event from an eighty-second video montage. The players look as if they were pretty well into it; hopefully that enthusiasm was maintained over the course of the three days, and translated to the eventual performance..?

### I've only looked in the place linked above, but I daresay the streaming service of one's choice may be of help. (I am still committed to buying hard media and have never changed my mind about paying for access to digital content - that is, I am extremely reluctant to do it. I am well aware that in this - among other things - I am in a waning minority.)

^ I've mentioned before the challenges involved in identifying some of these pieces, whilst it should be fairly obvious why identifying them at all is desirable: some of them crop up again and again as secondary materials. 136 is not covered in the Composition Notes, which run out of paper some time before we get that high in the numbering; so those of us who don't have access to the scores - not that I could read them anyway - are reliant on appearances in the official discography. I think I have now acquired every version of 136 bar one: the London Jazz Composers Orchestra album Zurich Concerts, and as much as I am quite keen to get my hands on that one, I can't see it being especially useful in helping me become familiar with this particular opus, judging by the state of that track listing. When the time comes, I plan to use five versions of the piece in my comparative analysis, with the possibility of drawing on two others; I anticipate Dahinden's own rendition being helpful in that regard, like I say. Let's hope I am right about that, if nothing else...

All hail the master blaster

 

I'd first thought about doing a post on the Eight By Three album - all the B's: Braxton with Borah Bergman and Peter Brötzmann - back in early May, when I was first trying to lay out a sort of schedule for myself; I had just written about John Shiurba's 5x5 1.2=A, and it struck me that (5 x 5) -1 = 8 x 3, something I found pleasing enough to get me thinking about doing some sort of informal "countdown series", along with all the other lines of enquiry I am currently pursuing. It took me a few weeks then to get round to listening to the album - yet another recording which I hadn't heard in years - and when I did, my initial thoughts were that it's not very easy to write about, and that my main angle in writing about it here would inescapably be that of the considerable difficulty for B. in tessellating his sound with Brötzmann's.

I made notes, flagged it for imminent return, and shelved it while I wrote some other posts...

... and then, of course, Brötzmann died. Some of the things which I might have said now seemed completely inappropriate (or at best ill-timed). I was glad at least that I hadn't got past the planning stage with this one. The guy was an absolute monster of free music, his name synonymous with the European Free Improvisation movement, and it was clearly important in the first instance simply to mark his passing with respect. I let McC handle that one: he, after all, had seen and heard PB in concert, something I never did (though there were a couple of near misses over the years). 

I never intended to shelve this permanently, however. It just might need to be approached carefully, from a slightly different angle.

I'd amassed quite a lot of Brötzmann's recordings - including most of the really significant ones - during the Golden Age of Music Blogging. It had been quite a while since I had listened to any of these. In the week after news spread of his passing, I did revisit some of them - and was reminded of things I had allowed myself to forget. PB was not just a human foghorn, a one-man weaponised woodwind; he possessed variety in his utterances, and considerable humour. I'm genuinely not sure how many of these "other traits" he retained in later life, mind you; but then again, I have heard relatively little of his later music and so I could never be the best judge. As far as I could remember, at the time of his death, he had collaborated with B. only once, on the aforementioned Eight By Three album, recorded in 1996 and released the following year*; but a mail from one of my regular correspondents reminded me of a duo performance between the horn players in Brötzmann's home city of Wuppertal, in 1985. I had to check my lists to see if I had this, but it turned out that I did**. Hence, before writing anything at all, I was able to listen to both of these recordings. 

Eight By Three probably "should" be quite an exhilarating listen, but in practice I did just find it very frustrating. Bergman, an enigmatic pianist who was renowned for his ability to play equally fast and complex lines with either hand - or both hands at once - could very easily have been a natural playing partner for B., who himself has routinely demonstrated for decades his extraordinary skill at playing extremely fast and with complete control over articulation. The first few tracks on the album - it's so tempting to consider the album to have been recorded in the same order as the finished track list (even though there is no reason whatsoever to assume that will have been the case) - appear to show B. feeling his way into a musical partnership with the pianist; on the very first track, "Falconets***", B. starts out on flute but switches to alto fairly quickly, then plays so fast in his efforts to keep up with Bergman that I'm irresistibly reminded of Eric Dolphy's "G.W." (which includes an alto solo played so rapidly that B. thought it was a violin when he first heard it) -  but as Brötzmann begins to sound more like his familiar self, he dominates the soundspace and B. seems lost to know how to contribute in the face of this.

This pattern is basically repeated over most of the rest of the album: in several cases, B. opens proceedings with Bergman, and the question seems to be: how will Brötzmann fit in with the two more "cultured", precise players now? But of course the answer, every time, is that PB just comes in as himself, blowing as hard as he can, and it's invariably B. who finds himself edged out as a result, either unable to compete with Brötzmann for airspace or (more likely) unwilling to attempt such a thing. We know that B. is as capable of anyone of employing all manner of timbral distortions, having long since factored these into his encyclopaedic improvising vocabulary; but he prefers to use such strategies sparingly, for greater effect, rather than just trying to strip the metal off his horn with every attack. Brötzmann, here at least, seems hell-bent on doing just that - and it must be said, this doesn't appear to bother Bergman in the slightest: he simply continues on his way regardless. (Make of this what you will: Bergman and Brötzmann played together on multiple occasions during the '90s, twice with the addition of tenorist Thomas Borgmann; B. never played with the pianist again.)

By the end of the album - again I'm succumbing to the temptation to assume that the pieces were recorded in the same order in which they are presented, because that seems to make sense - B. sounds as if he's figured out a way to mesh his sound with Brötzmann's, even if it temporarily means sounding less like himself and more like a "power player". This does come across as an attempt at bridge-building rather than a weird sort of ad hoc sonic camouflage - over the course of the final two tracks, it appears that some sympathy has been reached, although whether this actually leads to anything very constructive is another matter. The impression I got on this occasion is that "Webology" - the title given to the eight-and-a-half-minute seventh track - doesn't necessarily go anywhere especially interesting, and that only the closing "Three Rivers" (less than half the length, and preceded by a gravelly voice declaring "let's keep going, I'm enjoying this!"#) really showcases any sort of meaningful exchange of ideas. It's taken the course of the album for this to be 

achieved, and B. has had to compromise quite a lot in order to get there.

***

Yet the 1985 duo concert is a real delight, and I'm very glad to have been reminded about it. There's not even a hint of competitiveness here: with just the two of them onstage, and with Brötzmann playing host to his overseas guest, the event is all about friendly collaboration. Beginning with a four-note ascending phrase which (when played in a loop) sounds appropriately like an alarm or siren of some sort, the two men find all sorts of ways over the course of twenty-one minutes, and a five-minute encore, to meet in the middle and create plenty of live magic for a very appreciative audience. There is plenty of space left between ideas, and Brötzmann even varies his dynamics, which of course makes it very easy for B. to stay with him, happy as he is to play harsh and distorted sounds - so long as he isn't expected to play like that all the time. There's lots of variety, spontaneity, humour and genuine interaction, with the two players frequently timing their attacks perfectly to match each other. Basically it's a short performance full of all the things I don't find in the studio date from eleven years later; but with only the two of them present, this one was never going to be a blast-fest.

Brötzmann was always capable of variety and even subtlety, then. And in listening to some of his great recordings from the '70s and '80s, I've been (belatedly) reminded of both his creative and expressive range, and of just how good he sounded when he was really on it. I do think that he must have been a difficult playing partner, for a saxophonist at least; no trouble at all for a bassist or drummer, or a pianist for that matter, you'd just give him plenty of fuel and let him burn. And in larger groupings, such as those assembled for Machine Gun (with Willem Breuker and Evan Parker) or Alarm (with Breuker and Frank Wright) - or the Chicago Octet/Tentet later - the emphasis was always really on making as much noise as possible, and that was never going to be a problem. But of course this is the sort of context in which B. does come across as - dare I say it - a "cerebral" player by comparison: he is always looking to create something, not just to channel pure power and anguish...

... whereas the latter seemed to be Brötzmann's self-allotted remit. But perhaps he felt that somebody had to do it - and perhaps he was right. Like many of the free music visionaries, Brötzmann believed that music must have some social purpose, not just artistic content: or to put it another way, his view of art was itself inseparable from social awareness and engagement##. Growing up in postwar (West) Germany - something he never stopped thinking about - he lived through times of terrible division and suffering, as well as some times of optimism (however misplaced that optimism may now appear to have been), and with so many people focused at all times on looking the other way, distracting themselves with meaningless trifles, it falls to a small minority to express the suffering of the world. If after a while all Brötzmann seemed to do was scream, again and again, maybe that was because so few people had shown themselves willing to express their share of the earth's pain. He never shied away from it; and his true value may never be fully understood. His legacy, however, will endure as long as free music exists.

* Mixtery, the label which released this album, is so obscure that it's now beyond my detective skills to find out much about it at all. This would appear to have been the first release on the label, and it was very nearly also the last. It does look, though, as if the name really belongs to the studio where the date was recorded, in Trumbull, Connecticut...and even then, there are not many recording credits cross-referenced against it.

** B. played two concerts on that occasion, being 4th May 1985 at the Festival Grenzüberschreitungen in Wuppertal: there is a collage set by the quartet - this being the quartet with Lindberg, who was not fired until the following month - and then the short duo concert as described. (I have no idea which came first, not that it particularly matters.)

*** The eight tracks are all given colourful titles, as if they are compositions, but in fact they are all group improvisations and they are all credited to "collective".

# The presence of this brief comment at the beginning of the last track does lend some credence to the idea that the whole thing may have been set down on record exactly as it was performed, in that order. But unless B. happens to remember, and somebody manages to ask him in time, we will probably never know...

## The italics here indicate that the word used comes from French, not from English. (The concept in French of being engagé(e)(s) requires an awkward gloss in English.)

Indulge me

 

It's my birthday, and I'll...

1. ... ramble on about someone other than B. for a change if I want to:

I mentioned back in January an occasional group with the maddeningly search-resistant moniker Jones Jones. Larry Ochs, Mark Dresser, Vladimir Tarasov... three players with a common connection to B., as it happens*, but no prior history of playing with each other that I know of. These guys get together every so often at festivals, and given that (to use a martial-arts metaphor) each of them is, like, a sixth- or seventh-dan black belt in his own right, when they combine... the level of musicianship on display is just ridiculous. Anyway, they finally put out their first studio recording last year; it was actually recorded more than three years ago (and mastered in 2021 by that man Myles Boisen). I have had my eye on this ever since just before it got released, and finally bought it. It is... very highly recommended to any serious fan of improvised music! Well worth the wait.

At the same time I bought the oddly-named** Poof, the most recent album by Henry Threadgill('s) Zooid. I had missed this one, somehow; I didn't even realise until very recently that the group was still recording, as HT has long since adapted the group's blueprint for use in his larger ensembles, and if anything I rather figured that he had said everything with the quintet that he wanted to say. This one doesn't have the same quality of thrilling surprise that the few first Zooid albums evinced, but as always, there's plenty of meat on these bones and I will keep coming back. [I have also been given, as a birthday present, the new book Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music, by Threadgill with Brent Hayes Edwards, and I'm sure I'm going to enjoy reading this over what remains of the summer.]

2. ... choose now to confess / retract something if I want to:

Years ago, in a moment of - arrogance? pique? - I said somewhere*** in these pages that although any musician who had worked with B. for any length of time knew more about his music than I did, I considered my views to "outrank" everyone else's (by virtue of the number of listening hours I'd clocked up). This was complete nonsense, of course: even if it had been "right", it would have been quite unnecessary to say it; and it wasn't right anyway, so I really had no business claiming anything of the sort. As far as I can (vaguely) remember, I may have been trying to make some sort of misguided point about professional critics and/or internet experts (who would try to exploit B's reputation as difficult to understand, in order to score easy "credit points" by making glib comments which they didn't think anyone could challenge), but whatever the reason, I was completely wrong to say it. Graham Lock... Francesco Martinelli... Art Lange... Hugo de Craen... there will be plenty of others, some of whom I have probably never even heard of, but that doesn't mean I know more than they do. Sorry everybody. I mean - for years now, I would no longer have stood by this claim... but I never actually retracted it, did I? I wish to do so now. I take it back.

3. ... continue to plug my mate's band(s) if I want to:

When I last wrote about Atanase's continued musical projects - or rather those in which he is involved - a first public live performance was approaching. Since then, of course, that has taken place - and there have been some follow-up events too, albeit these were primarily for projects which don't involve him, at least not as a core member. I have seen some video clips from both occasions, all of which are worth checking out. He and his friends have their own label, Toysop Records, with its own Youtube channel (to accompany the soundcloud page as previously linked), as well as Facebook and Instagram for those who use such things (social media, me? ahem), and snippets of live video are available from both the GRB3 / Georgina Beastly performances on June 3rd, and from the more recent event on June 23rd - where Two Professors and Dynamo 81 played, both of which had guest appearances including by Avto (on shenai and tenor sax respectively). From small beginnings... A. confirms that even people he had never met before came up afterwards and expressed their appreciation for the music. "Children in (the) audience danced", he tells me,  "always a good sign". Can't say fairer than that :-D

4. ... ramble on self-indulgently about my continued efforts to collect B's albums if I want to:

Having fairly recently lamented my near-miss with a copy of Anthony Braxton's Charlie Parker Project, I did manage to pick one up remarkably cheaply within the last month. (This was the original edition, not the remaster - with liners comprising an interview in English, and separate short essays in French and German, 

an approach which may have seemed quite natural to a polyglot Swiss producer... but which was apparently abandoned in due course.) Of course, having written quite extensively about this album earlier this year, I didn't feel a need to play it again more than once, but it's still a great pleasure to hear at any time. [Incidentally, I did eventually manage to hear some of the digital files from the later monster box set, too, and now realise that "Hot House", which opens the original album, didn't in fact begin with B's solo at all. The source tape must have been damaged or something, but in any case they eventually were able to restore it, and the full version begins with Dameron's written theme, as one would expect. That well-known count-in and in medias res beginning constitute a fiction which reminds the listener: just because something was recorded live and has not been overdubbed, that doesn't mean you are necessarily hearing it the way it was played#.]

I also finally got hold of an album I'd perused in the discography more times than I could count, but had never previously even heard: October Meeting 87 2, which features a Gerry Hemingway-led "supergroup" in which B. was one of eleven players on a piece called "Second Line Ratoon". The line-up for this project was so distinguished as to be just silly, but even so, there is no difficulty in picking B's contributions out of it. (I will write about this excellent album some other time.)

Naturally I do check eBay pretty regularly, although not as often as I might; I'm sure I miss things, but within the last couple of days I checked there just in time to snag five more CDs which needed a good home. Technically I already "had" all of these, though not in proper hard copy form, and that remains where it's at, ultimately. Three of these were solo releases, as it happens; after all these years, I will at long last have a proper copy of For Alto (having narrowly missed a copy in London more than two decades ago, and having later embarked upon the Braxtothon without even stopping to think about the fact that I was missing a key recording). Of course I have had a rip for years now, and I did eventually write about the album; still, it feels rather significant that I have finally, finally plugged that gaping hole in the actual collection. Copies don't turn up very often, and I was pleased with the price I paid for it. (Actually I can hardly believe that nobody else bid on it.) - the other two are 19 [Solo] Compositions, 1988 and Wesleyan (12 Altosolos) 1992, both of which I only had as digital files.

I did say five, and of the two which are not solo recordings, one of them sort of is: the copy I secured carries the original ("erroneous"##) title Compositions 99, 101, 107 & 139 - although these days the album is better known by the (rather unwieldy) title Four Compositions (Solo, Duo & Trio) 1982/1988. (Just last month, this one was on my "most wanted" list; I've only heard it for the first time within the last couple of weeks, and now I've acquired an actual CD.) The true outlier is another first-edition CD better known these days in its reissued, remastered form: Performance (Quartet) 1979 with Anderson, Lindberg and Barker. Delighted to give a good home to all of these! [I also missed out on one:  Anthony Braxton Live, which is to say, the CD edition (on RCA/ Bluebird) of the album better known to most friendly experiencers as The Montreux / Berlin Concerts. I have to admit that until I was bidding on this item, I didn't realise that it's not actually the complete album: it includes the quartet tracks from both Montreux and Berlin, for sure, but these recordings comprise only sides 1-3 of the original double vinyl. Side 4 - the creative orchestra piece, the original version of Comp. 63 - is missing. I wonder whether all the other bidders - who pushed this up way past what I was prepared to pay for it - knew that?]

***

That's that, for now... hey, but while I'm at it, this is already the third-most-productive year in the blog's history, believe it or not. Barring some unforeseen disaster, third will soon become second; and although I don't anticipate overtaking 2008, who knows what might happen now that McC is back on board? I certainly have no intention of stopping, now that I'm back up and running...

* Nobody coming here will need an explanation of Dresser's connection to the maestro, obviously. Ochs - to the best of my knowledge - only played with B. as part of ROVA; Tarasov, in a trio for which the de facto leader was composer-pianist György Szabados (who himself had played with B. prior to this)

** Americans who don't know much British slang - and that term is fairly outdated slang these days anyway - may not find it such a jarringly-odd title. HT probably just meant it as a sort of onomatopoeic reference to the cloud on the cover (?). Then again, why am I assuming I have any idea what goes on that head? Threadgill's mode of thinking is not something I could ever look to reproduce.

*** I honestly can't remember where or when, and I'm reluctant to go looking for it, but I know that I said it. Even at the time I had my doubts about coming out with it; but someone had probably challenged me on something recently and I was feeling bullish. I regret that now; this was never supposed to be any sort of pissing contest. 

# Speaking as a Zappa fan, this concept is far from new to me (though it's easy to forget it). The You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore series proudly proclaimed at the outset "no overdubs" and encouraged listeners to believe that we were hearing the music exactly as it was performed. FZ changed his mind about that, though, relatively early in the project: true, there are no overdubs (except in one very specific instance, which is clearly flagged up), but later volumes in the series often included recordings which had been heavily edited. Always read the small print, in these cases...

## - per Jason Guthartz. Other than the fact that this title lists the pieces in opus number order rather than track list order, the "erroneous" aspect is that Comp. 99 doesn't exist, being a series, not a single work. (In any case Herr Uehlinger appears to have agreed that the album's title didn't quite work, as he duly changed it the following year.)

Treats (vintage)

I came across something recently, and wanted to share it.

Gerry Hemingway has posted new videos of the classic quartet in London, 1991. They seem to combine some very vintage-looking video with crisp sound, perhaps derived from (or from the same source as) the bootleg series releases, BL33-34.

As much as Cent and I have listened to this group, I don't think either of us had seen a full-length video of a performance.

I'm really enjoying these, and I wish you all the same.

Anthony Braxton Quartet - London Jazz Cafe - April 2 1991 Set 1

Anthony Braxton Quartet - London Jazz Cafe - April 2 1991 Set 2

 Addendum: Crispell, Dresser, and Hemingway are playing a free show tomorrow, July 7th, in Hartford CT.

https://www.realartways.org/event/

I wish I were close enough to drop in for that one!