Unburied treasure

 

What was I saying about sixteen years ago..? So - it turns out that another October, 2008 event was the release of Mosaic's Braxton box set, collecting all nine* of his albums for Arista on eight remastered CDs... I hadn't remembered that particular month as being when this happened, but I do still remember finding out beforehand that it was going to happen, because I was annoyed about it. The blog was still in its first year at that stage, and was rather more widely read than it is now (... nobody's fault but mine, of course), and having written in considerable detail, and with no shortage of enthusiasm, about four of the albums which were due for inclusion - Montreux / Berlin would follow later -  I felt a bit miffed that nobody was offering me a free copy for my pains. (Sounds ridiculous, I know! But it wasn't just the sulking of a spoiled man-child; I still think I had a fair point, in principle**.)

Anyway, that didn't happen - of course - and in the meantime, I paid less than diligent attention to the set's eventual release since I had no attention of buying it, even if I had had the money for it (which I probably didn't at the time***). Time passes, life happens, and although I continue to catch glimpses of the set's continued life-after-issue in the inflated resale market, I never pay a lot of attention to these either, given that copies only tend to show up for sale in the US - and at prices I'm not prepared to countenance.

And, then, just about a week ago, a UK listing for the set appeared on a well-known internet marketplace, albeit still for £300 (plus postage!! they wouldn't even throw in the shipping without charging for it...) - I still can't justifying spending that sort of money, and even if I could, I wouldn't; but the fact that a copy showed up on this side of the pond was still noteworthy. If there had been another snippet of fleeting news to pair with it, I would probably have posted about it... 

...in the meantime, I had already decided that it was about time for another repertoire post, and after a bit of thought, settled on the Norton & Min album (a rather obscure choice, which is nonetheless currently accessible online). This was partly just because it was easily accessible: I had already dug out my CD-R copy a few months back, while rooting around in search of something else. Still, once I realised that three of the five covers on there were taken from the same album, and that this was an album I hadn't heard in years#, I needed to locate my CD-R copy of Duets 1976 as well; that, because of a bad problem with my lower back which flared up suddenly in the first week of October, was far more challenging than it would normally have been## - but I did manage (on a good day!) to find what I was looking for, only to realise afterwards that I also needed access to my reference copy of Five Pieces 1975, in order to compare the two readings of Comp. 23h...

... but as luck would have it, at almost exactly the same time, I stumbled across a source for a digital version of the Mosaic box. This had nothing to do with my preparation for the post - indeed it probably started out as a distraction from it - and it wasn't until afterwards that it really hit me what I'd got hold of: both of the albums I needed for reference were now suddenly available to me in digital form, after years and years of not having them, and precisely at the point when I'd decided I needed them. This, then, is one of a series of coincidences to crop up over a couple of days last week, all involving the previous post. Another such was already detailed in a footnote to that last post: when I looked properly at my CD-R copy of Duets 1976, I realised it was filed away### with Quartet (Birmingham) 1985 - the only other of B's albums to include a version of Comp. 60. 

But that wasn't all... at the same time as I acquired this new digital treasure chest, I was also gifted another of the few remaining items on my most wanted list: Toronto (Duets) 2007 with Kyle Brenders... this being a double album - like the one in duo with Ben Opie - featuring two long-form all-reed interpretations of GTM pieces... the second of which, in this case, is Comp. 356. My CD-R copy of the Norton & Min album is filed away, very randomly, with another recording I must have acquired at the same time: the 2008 septet performance at the Chiasso festival, featuring... Comp. 356. Oh, and when I listened to this latter disc again (for the first time in ages) in a spare hour, I detected amongst the tertiary material Comp. 6n, which itself was up for consideration as part of the Norton & Min album... all these coincidences were making my head spin a bit by now, coming as they did hard upon one another, although (as I mentioned in another footnote to the previous post) 6n is such a common addition to B's long-form GTM readings that it would almost be more of an event if I hadn't heard it ;-)

This all took place last Tuesday and Wednesday (the post wasn't completed until Thursday 17th, but nearly all of the preparation for it had already been done before then); unable to work as such because of my back, I had unexpected time on my hands and was determined to do something constructive with at least some of it. However, on the Wednesday evening I did have to break off in mid-session to take my daughter to an after-school class; I was deep(ish) in the Composition Notes at this stage, and had just finished reading about Comp. 62. Driving along in near-dark, in pouring rain, still in some pain and not paying any more attention than necessary to my surroundings, I found myself briefly having to stop and give way to a driver on the opposite side of the road: just ahead of me, parked on the street and frozen in my headlights, was a car with the licence plate AB62 xxx^. 

They don't usually come so thick and fast, but synchronicities of this type do frequently attend my work on this blog, and it's one of the reasons why I have no intention of stopping now that I've started again - regardless of how many people do or don't read it at any given time.

Anyway - there, in all the finicky little detail which nobody ever asked for, but which I can always be relied on to furnish, is the story of how and when I finally got hold of the Mosaic/ Arista files after all these years.

***

There's little to be gained by discussing in depth any of the actual music, on this occasion: everyone knows what was included (and if they don't, they can very easily look it up). Some well-loved albums were presented here in their entirety, and in most cases their contents had never previously been available on CD; and indeed technically, almost all of this stuff is still not available in that format, with this box set having long since been deleted^^. But since I'm at it, it's worth just having a look at what was included, and how that was presented to those lucky fans who obtained the box when it was released.

Nine albums on eight CDs, as noted above; these are actually four double-CDs, all with generic packaging, in each case bearing the same cover shot (from one of the recording sessions) as the actual box itself, which was LP-sized and also included a full-sized, twenty-page booklet. This insert, it must be said, is far superior to the usual liner notes: set out with numerous photographs from the sessions, it contains a really detailed, in-depth essay on the music by Mike Heffley, B's ex-student and collaborator (who had previously written a book on the maestro's music^^^); a full track listing for the eight discs, together with the correct opus numbers for each of the tracks, and the graphic titles where appropriate (or composer credits, otherwise), plus a letter in each case designating one of the recording sessions, themselves fully detailed separately; a list of the original LP releases with their catalogue numbers, again cross-referenced into the sessionography (presented here as a discography, which seems slightly misleading); and a note of reminiscence by Michael Cuscuna, the Mosiac mastermind who produced all the original sessions as well as the reissue itself. (This is to be found on the last page of the booklet, accompanied by a photograph of Leroy Jenkins playing violin at B's wedding while B. and Cuscuna, plus other guests, look on; it is a charming postscript to the notes, with MC fondly remembering the maestro's "indomitable work ethic and childlike enthusiasm" as well as his "great sense of humor", and concluding that the "best part" of the project for him was renewing their friendship.) ~

The aspects which don't appeal so much to me personally about the box set would seem to be general to the Mosaic label, rather than specific to this release. I understand the reasoning behind the generic packaging of the individual CDs, but I can't say I like it: the black-and-white aesthetic and basic layout reminds me too much of Black Lion, which all too often came across as "cheap and cheerful~~" - for me, this rather undermines the good work put in by the excellent LP-sized booklet (... in terms of persuading the purchaser that they have acquired something well worth having). The discs themselves are sequenced in a slightly eccentric way, following neither the order of recording date nor of release as such, but rather cramming all the material in so that it fits onto eight CDs, keeping albums together where possible, breaking them up where necessary. The individual discs, as a result, have to be viewed as entirely functional on an individual basis, valuable chiefly as parts of a whole; for example, For Trio is spread across discs three and four, the first version of Comp. 76 closing out disc three (which otherwise contains most - but not all - of Alto Saxophone Improvisations 1979) while the second version appears on disc four, along with For Two Pianos. (Realistically, there was no way of avoiding this kind of thing, and I'm sure some care and attention went into the running order which was eventually chosen; but I can't honestly say I like it much.) Finally, the one specific gripe which I might have regarding this specific reissue would be misplaced, since this was never intended to be "that" kind of project: knowing that in some cases material had to be edited out in preparing the original albums, I can't now help being painfully aware of what's missing. The Montreux set was butchered in order to squeeze it into one and a half sides of vinyl; I can never forget that, in listening to Comp. 40n in particular. But if these live sets were to be restored to their full glory, how much more expensive and complicated would this have been to produce? It was never going to happen.

The remastered sound, it must be said, is absolutely gorgeous for the most part. Even Creative Orchestra Music 1976 - the one album which was previously issued in its entirety on CD, and which I described last year as sounding rather dated, is clear and bright and vibrant here, with the stereo image remarkably well separated (considering how crammed-in the musicians were, for the actual recording sessions - if the photo in the booklet is anything to go by). I have very much enjoyed listening (again) to this material, some of which was intimately familiar already, some of which I hadn't heard in years (it's quite possible that I only heard For Trio once, at least fifteen years ago; and I can't swear that I ever listened to the whole of Comp. 95 before now). Admittedly, even here there is a caveat, since For Four Orchestras was originally recorded - for obvious reasons -  in quadraphonic stereo, not reproduced in this format; some serious mental gymnastics is required on the part of the listener to hear this as the work of four orchestras. But you can't have everything; B. knew damn well that he was pushing his luck by even attempting this project, and Cuscuna and Steve Backer risked the wrath of the record company by seeing it through and releasing it - however briefly - so let's all just be grateful that it even exists.

Overall, I fully understand why this was so eagerly-anticipated by those who preordered it, and I would have to say that Michael Cuscuna in particular did a sterling job with it. Was it worth doing? Definitely. Do I wish I had obtained a proper copy, back in 2008? Probably, yes. Would I now pay three hundred quid for it? Almost certainly not - but hey, who knows what the future may bring ;-)

In memory of Michael Cuscuna (1948 - 2024)

Thanks (as always) to McClintic Sphere

* In his detailed essay, Mike Heffley refers rather to thirteen LPs - which might seem an odd way of looking at it, but is technically correct (Alto Saxophone Improvisations 1979 and The Montreux / Berlin Concerts were both double-LPs, and For Four Orchestras was a 3xLP set). It's still odd, because nobody could have purchased the thirteen records separately, so counting the actual discs seems rather irrelevant - unless Heffley is making the point that the reissue contains all the music presented on the original albums, rather than restoring alternate takes, etc (as is very often the case with this sort of undertaking).

** I genuinely felt that I had done as much as anybody to analyse this music and promote a continued interest in it, and in this regard I still think the point was valid. But although it was not unknown for the blog to be contacted by musicians in the early years - most notably by B. himself, of course - I never had any evidence that my work had come to Michael Cuscuna's attention; and even if it had, would that have been sufficient for Mosaic to send me a copy, gratis? Not in this world, anyway. (One still suspects that even with a project like this, some promotional copies were sent to magazines and radio stations... or, I dunno, maybe not?)

*** I have to say "probably" because I can't remember how much this box set cost at the time. (I do vaguely remember some chat online about preorders - it may even have sold out before it was released.)

# In a footnote to the previous post, I somewhat disingenuously suggested I had no explanation for why I hadn't heard the Duets with Abrams for so long. This is only really true insofar as I hadn't intended to leave it as long as I did, in the end; but I do in fact know why I tend to avoid returning to an album, in the short term, once I've "dealt with it". In case it's not obvious, I tend to make more observations on (various aspects) of a given album or recording than most people would - and, subject to no deadlines or editorial oversight, I am free to leave in as many of them as I wish. Having got down everything I want to say about a particular recording, the last thing I want to do is listen to it again a few days later and immediately start noticing yet more details which I had overlooked..! Returning to an album months or years later - well, that's another matter, and there it's often just a case of getting round to it. With a discography as vast as B's - and so many unofficial recordings besides - it's pretty difficult to get back round to most things, frankly. [One day maybe I'll learn the ancient yogic secret of bilocation, and can just lock myself away and permanently listen to this stuff while continuing to live a separate life elsewhere! Until that time...]

## The second picture in this post from last year helps to explain the problem, but it's actually got worse since then: quite a lot has been added to that right-hand storage unit, and all of the CD-Rs have been shunted down to the sixth and seventh shelves (bottom shelf not even visible). Further clutterage in the room in question doesn't make things any easier; I can move stuff out of the way when I need full access, of course - but not when my back is crocked. I did manage to grab a handful of envelopes off the doorway-end of the sixth shelf, and luckily the one containing Duets 1976 was in that handful. I wasn't about to risk going back for a second - but then, as it turned out, I didn't have to anyway...

### All through the Golden Age of Music Blogging I proceeded thus: as music became available to me in digital form, I burned it to CD-R and then filed away the results, usually two or three discs to an envelope, writing all the details out painstakingly as I did so. (This habit reduced the number of different envelopes, but made it inevitably harder to keep track of what was where, so I also had to create a spreadsheet with a searchable list of all the "extras" in each little package. Sigh...) You would scarcely believe how long I kept up this habit, before I finally gave up and started just archiving the digital files themselves; in most cases - and this was as true of B's material as of anyone else's - once I had burned a CD-R "master" I deleted the mp3 files. It's a pattern I got into and was very reluctant to change. Collectors (of anything) are a weird bunch ;-)

^ xxx in this case stands in for the actual letters, which spelled out the shortened form of my given name. (It's unlikely that anyone reading this will have access to the UK police's car index database - but still, this is someone's actual number plate and it doesn't feel right to give it in its entirety here.)

^^ Mosaic never owned copyright on the vast majority of the stuff they put out; instead they would typically lease it for a finite (short) period, allowing them time to press up limited editions of their sets and sell them, on the understanding that once the licence expired, that was that: the item would be deleted from their catalogue.

^^^ Heffley also recorded his own album of BraxRep, Meditations on Early Braxton, which I will cover on the blog at some point. (Since a key theme of this post is coincidence, it's worth pointing out that said album contains a reading of Comp. 60 - probably: it is actually listed as 60b, which officially doesn't exist, so who knows what it really is. (When I get there, I will endeavour to figure that out...))

~ The digital version which I got hold of - who knows where it originated - also came with two PDF files, one of which appears to be a longer, draft version of Heffley's essay for the booklet, and the other of which is entitled "AB Arista Outtakes" and is - I really don't know quite what it is, but again it appears to be a draft version of that same essay, shorter, and with ellipses covered by the text "[con’t (sic) in Mosaic notes]". Despite being (quite a lot) shorter than the version entitled "Heffley On Braxton Arista Liner", it is actually a larger file - go figure. I honestly have no idea what these are doing there, or whence they were sourced... 

~~ This rather quaint British expression, a bit outdated now, is not to be confused with "cheap and nasty"...

Repertoire: Norton and Min

 

Kevin Norton & Haewon Min play the music of Anthony Braxton

(Barking Hoop 2001)

This is not a very well-known entry in the discography (insofar as any entries in this sort of discography could be described as "well-known" to begin with). Kevin Norton, who had taken over from Gerry Hemingway as the maestro's principal drummer of choice a few years previously, was still theoretically in that role when he undertook this project - although for the most part, around this time, any engagements which he had with B. were playing standards, rather than new material as such (he had formerly been heavily involved with the earliest experiments in GTM). B. himself, in the meantime, cast his musical net far and wide as the new century and millennium came along, playing with many different partners and collaborators and in many different contexts, and for a while, at least, he didn't really appear to have a working group at all, at least as far as the recorded discography now reflects such activity; expanded groupings continued to explore GTM (recordings of which would eventually surface on NBH), and these did still feature Norton, plus a shifting cast of multiple reedmen; whenever a stable grouping did reconvene, it was to play lots and lots of standards. Mostly these were captured on Leo Records or CIMP, with one (pretty obscure) outlier on Norton's own Barking Hoop label; the core quartet, sometimes augmented by other guests, comprised Norton himself plus bassist Andy Eulau and guitarist Kevin O'Neil*. 

Meanwhile, Norton was married at the time to concert pianist** Haewon Min, and decided to essay a duo examination with her of some of his bandleader's music, resulting in a concert on March 22, 2001 at Roulette in NYC, attended by the maestro himself. Norton released the results on his label, later the same year; two decades afterwards, he made the material available via Bandcamp, and provided a little bit of background as well: "(t)he idea behind the project was 1) to dig deeper into Braxton's compositions and 2) involve Haewon... because she is a (sic) accomplished concert piano (i.e. "the classics" Beethoven, Chopin, etc) but would bring a fresh approach to the improvisation". 

The material

A cursory glance at the track listing for this album suggests that Norton didn't put a great deal of thought into his selections: three of the five tracks were sourced from one single earlier album, Duets 1976 (with Muhal Richard Abrams). This made life easier for me, in preparing this post - but does seem a little eccentric, given how much work there was to choose from, at this stage. Despite the fact that the '76 album comprised duets with piano, which would seem to have made it an ideal place to start looking for suitable material, it's not even the case that all three of these selections were obvious ones: Comp. 40p was originally a feature for B's contrabass sax, something which cannot possibly be replicated by a percussionist, however skilled. Comps. 60 & 62, from the same three-piece series, are far more evidently suited to the present purpose, being ambitious and forward-looking piano-focused works in which the role of B's horn can fairly readily be taken on by mallet percussion.

In addition to these three pieces, the set was rounded out by two numbers from the first two creative ensemble books, and although once again neither looks like an obvious choice, a little more thought suggests reasons why Norton might have been attracted to them. Comp. 23h - one of the less renowned inclusions on the classic Five Pieces 1975 - was originally arranged for the quartet and begins with a monophonic melody for the two horns; but although it's quite short, it does later morph into something of a feature for Barry Altschul. The even earlier Comp. 6n, on the other hand, was dedicated to Jerome Cooper and, who knows, perhaps that was enough reason for Norton to want to play it. In looking at the setlist as a whole, it might be presumed that Norton wanted to select material with plenty of scope for detailed interpretation by piano, without burdening his wife with the expectation of having to compete with Marilyn Crispell, and thus avoiding pieces which were strongly associated with her; but in actual fact this doesn't hold up either, since both 60 and 62 had been played by Crispell, the latter as a duet, no less***. Ultimately, all we can conclude is that Norton must have had his own reasons for choosing the pieces that he did - and it will be interesting to check out the results. 

In terms of my own preparation for this, given that only 6n is already pretty familiar to me, it was deemed prudent to do some comparative research beforehand. I went back and listened to Duets 1976, which I covered in Braxtothon phase three (and have probably never listened to since, or not in its entirety#), and also refamiliarised myself with 23h: in this case, the album itself is one which I remember pretty well overall, but as noted above, this is not one of the better-known tracks, nor was it recorded anywhere else as far as I know##. (Details for the other appearances in the canon of 60 and 62 can be found in footnote three*** below; 40p, of course, shows up in an ingeniously-collaged form on Jump or Die - but is otherwise generally notable by its absence.) 6n, on the other hand, may only have been recorded a handful of times as a primary territory but it is so widely played as tertiary material - during the collage era and especially in GTM performance - that it practically counts as a staple. Once you're able to recognise this theme, you will hear it over and over again###.  

I did refer to the Composition Notes (Book C), but only for a brief overview of 40p, 60 and 62... 

Comp. 40p had never been performed live at the time of publication of the Composition Notes. It "can be performed by any instrumentation"; it just so happens that in recording it in the studio, the composer chose to use it to explore "low pulse dynamics": hence the contrabass sax. There is no reason why anyone else performing the piece should employ similar instrumentation; however, the piece is explicitly stated to be all about the blues, as such (and the blues "will go on forever"), which does make this a bit of a head-scratching selection for a mallet-percussionist and a concert pianist, but... let's see. The piece is said to be "a rhythmic music that provides an exciting platform for creativity", and that's certainly the case with the 1976 rendition.

Comps. 60 & 62 are, as stated above, two from a series of three related works^, and share a number of similar features, both being "chain structure(s)" - a term actually taken from the notes to 62 - rather than "head" structures, fluctuating between sections of notated material and open sections for improvisation; of 60

it is specified that improvisation "should comprise fifty percent of the music", which again provides a pretty stiff challenge for someone trained in a conservatory. 60 is said to be "one part chamber music / one part sound environment structure", and it is written in such a way as to allow very different interpretations. (Strictly speaking then, the 2001 cover should sound quite different from the 1976 version.) 62, meanwhile, is written with one multi-instrumentalist in mind, plus one piano, and in B's ideal world each of its seventeen core sections - "nine component material blocks... eight improvisational inter-spaces" - would see a switch of voices by the first player. We already basically know that this is not gonna happen here... but for all these provisos, both of these pieces would seem to be pretty decent selections for the 2001 album. (Whether the same is true of 40p is another matter.)

The music

In a break from my usual modus operandi, I'm going to try and deal with the performance aspects of the album without going through the tracks blow-by-blow (even though that is of course the way I made my notes while doing the preparation for this post - and given that there will still be individual observations to make regarding each track). To some extent, this is because my feelings about the music while I was listening to it, and immediately afterwards, don't precisely match my overall conclusions on it.

If we didn't already know that the music was performed live, I doubt we would be able to infer that from the eventual recording, from which any and all trace of audience noise has been scrupulously removed in the editing process. The piano also has a rather "classroomy", slightly brittle timbre to my ears - but, the more creative music I hear, the more I have to get used to pianos which don't necessarily sound as if they're in tiptop condition; and although this is most notoriously the case in club venues - or used to be - it could pretty much happen anywhere, as far as I can tell. But we're not yet done discussing the sound of the recording, because the elephant in the room here is the tonal palette, which is desperately limited overall. Four of the five numbers feature Norton on marimba; only the shortest piece uses anything else, in fact. Now: this is only a problem if one is not listening closely to begin with, because the attention to detail in the music is often exquisite... but of course we know that most listeners, with the best will in the world, need a little help to stay focused. For anyone who didn't, the whole thing could easily have slipped by in a blur, and it may just be the case that removing all the applause was relatively easy, because there wasn't too much of it to begin with. That sounds horribly harsh and cynical, and it's really not meant to be... I just have a nasty suspicion that it may not be far from the truth. This is real purists' stuff, and I don't know how many of those were around in 2001. (I would love to be completely wrong about this.)

The two "bookends" for the set, Comps. 60 and 62, are handled in pretty similar fashion: both (of course) played by Norton on marimba - on which instrument he really is a superlative player, by the way - they alternate between the written-out, prescribed-phrase material (very easily identified, since both players negotiate almost all these passages in unison) and the improvised/open sections, with slightly variable results, but generally acquitting themselves pretty well. That is to say: Norton always sounds like an expert navigator, and Min only doesn't if one is applying the strictest scrutiny... in other words, if you know that her training is likely to make it hard for her to improvise completely naturally in such scenarios, then you do inevitably notice at times that the actual content of her playing is not always that imaginative. Otherwise, she plays with (of course) great fluency and (near-)total confidence. Taken on their own terms, within the inherent limitations of the instrumentation, these pieces have plenty of variety and a good deal of tonal colour. The essential problem with both numbers, in the light of what I observed in the previous section of the post, is that they seem to follow the templates laid down by B. and Abrams rather too closely, when really that ought not to be the case. That, and the fact that since Norton doesn't switch instruments at all during the reading of 62 - he does use some sort of oscillator at one point^^ - he has effectively ignored one of the composer's most crucial instructions. Still, with all that said, both of these pieces make sense in terms of their inclusion, even if you could make a case for only including one of them when their overall treatment is this similar.

Comp. 40p - the second track here - actually sounds delightful, putting to rest at once any concerns about the missing low end in the instrumentation, and for the most part it does bear out B's assertion that "the sheer weight of the vamp discipline will advance its own cause". The problem with this number remains what I thought it would be, which is that the pianist, trained on Beethoven and Chopin (...), lacks a feel for the blues; again, the more you know about this when listening to it, the more likely you are to hear what's not quite right about it, which is a shame because if you just listen to it without trying to closely to analyse it, it's really extremely enjoyable. Norton, for his part, fills his improvisation with invention and creativity; Min does her best to rise to the challenge, sounding bright and lyrical at times, if a little stilted at first, but her attempt to inject "blues" into her work seems limited to the known pianist's trick of striking two adjacent keys at once, to simulate the "blue note" which otherwise cannot be achieved on a tempered keyboard. She tries this a few times then abandons it; she never runs out of her steam in her own solo, but I don't hear the blues in there. In the final analysis, it's delightful to hear this piece played in a live setting, and I'm sure it must have pleased the maestro to hear it included, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that, having gone to the 1976 album in the first place for likely source material, they came across this number unexpectedly, both liked it, and worked it in without necessarily stopping to wonder whether they could truly do it justice. [I still feel like a total downer for even saying this, but you know me by now... I am compelled to report as I find.]

The two selections I was least sure about to begin with end up satisfying me the most: in their different ways, 23h and 6n turn out to be perfect choices for the date. In the former case, this has much to do with the fact that it's the only number on which Norton actually varies things up, starting out on vibes and then switching to mixed small percussion for the second part of the piece (again following the pattern established by the "canonical" earlier recording). In the first half of the reading, he sticks to vibes exclusively, matching the piano in rendering the monophonic written line - so, taking on the "horn" role here, rather than playing as a drummer. The two musicians execute this section perfectly, effortlessly negotiating even the trickier fast sections of the written material. When Min gently breaks out into something freer, this is when Norton moves over to his arsenal of small percussion, first on triangle, then quickly adding in a variety of different surfaces - and yes, clearly this part of the piece is what attracted Norton to it in the first place. Min merges in very well here, the two players combining to create a shimmering soundworld full of unusual colours and restrained dynamics. 

6n sees a reversion to the marimba - in terms of tonal and timbral variety, we've already had all we're getting with 23h, the central number in the set and also the shortest - but the piece is handled in a wholly unexpected way: for the first four minutes and twenty seconds, Norton plays it entirely solo, covering the written territory so expertly and fully with his handful of mallets that the attentive ear finds nothing missing at all. This, perhaps, is why he wanted to play this one: he knew what he could do with it. Only when the familiar opening theme returns, more than halfway through the reading, does the piano join in; and after a vanishingly brief overlap, Min then takes over and Norton lays out. Her improvisation seems mainly limited to harnessing the work's rhythmic drive and running through some harmonic variations on the thematic material, but this does take us into some beautifully discordant territory for a while. Norton joins again for the briefest of restatements before the close. It's an unusual way to approach the piece, but it definitely works. 

Both 23h  and 6n share the "crooked keys" which B. specialised in during the seventies in particular, and which I identified so frequently in the Braxtothon days: haunting, askance motifs which slide into the ear before locking in place, then tugging the attentive listener into the composer's soundscape. After seeing what this pair achieves with these, it's very easy to see why they wanted to play them. And, ultimately, it's quite clear why the project was undertaken in the first place: these two, with serious technical skill and under Norton's expert guidance, have a lot of fun exploring the materials - and any friendly experiencer with a lasting interest in the music will find much to appreciate about this set. It remains a bit of a mystery why Norton didn't expand his tonal palette far more than he does: the closing number in particular really cries out for it. But for those who are willing to put in their time and attention, this album does provide rewards.

Norton, incidentally, has teased on his Bandcamp that "I may upload other recordings of this project on Barking Hoop Archival in the not too distant future". That was almost four years ago, and he hasn't done it yet; nor is it completely clear whether he means more BraxRep as such, or just more duo recordings. But I would certainly be interested in hearing more like this, even while the natural audience for such a project must surely be very small. Its commercial appeal, obviously, is almost negligible; but I'm pretty sure Norton (well into his sixties) has long since figured that out. This is the reality we are living in: but in a way that just makes it more special for the few of us able to appreciate it.

* O'Neil had, himself, first played with B. in far more adventurous contexts; bassist Eulau's is a name which I personally only associate with the huge outpouring of standards which were recorded around this time. (He was not, in other words, another Joe Fonda, capable of playing all different types of music; or if he was, B. apparently didn't trust him to take it on. His other credits seem for the most part to be far more conservative fare - although I see that he was briefly in another trio with Norton, again in 2001.)

** I know nothing about this musician, beyond what is discussed in this post. Besides this album, she appears in B's discography only once, as far as I am aware - and I believe that is actually a mistake: according to Restructures, she was a member of the Cygnus Ensemble at the time they recorded their (short and ruler-straight) reading of Comp. 186 for the 2000 album Broken Consort; except that, as far as I can see, Haewon Min played no part in this recording at all, and may or may not ever have been a member of the group. The Discogs entry for the album lists the pianist as Joan Forsyth, who plays only on one piece (the one composed by group leader William Anderson). This is backed up by the group's own website. I have also heard the recording in question - not the whole album, just the version of 186 - and don't remember any piano on it: it's listed as being arranged for violin, cello, flute, oboe, and two guitars - which is this group's core instrumentation. (Apologies for linking only to an incomplete and unindexed version of the discography in this footnote: at the time of writing, the Wayback Machine web archive is still down, hence not only can I not presently link directly to the listing for this album, I also can't check whether or not Min's being erroneously credited on it was repeated in later versions of the discography. It may have been corrected at some point.)

*** Comp. 62 was one of the four pieces included on Duets - Vancouver, 1989. As for Comp. 60 - this is one of the coincidences attending my decision to write about this project when I did, because when I first settled on it, I had only a CD-R of the Duets 1976 album for reference, and although I had long since forgotten this, the same pair of CD-Rs contained my original copy of Quartet (Birmingham) 1985... which is the only other recording in the canon to include a (collaged) version of Comp. 60. (I later acquired the CD reissue of the Birmingham album, so it's been quite a while since I dug out those CD-Rs.)

# I did include the reading of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" on the second of my three playlists, way back in the day. For whatever reason - or no real reason at all, beyond time and life being what they are - I am pretty sure I never went back to Duets 1976 until now... when I did, there was another coincidence which finally obviated the need to dig out my CD-R copy at all; but as this will be the subject of the next post, I shan't elaborate here..!

## With the Restructures archive unavailable for the time being (see second footnote above), I have relied on smartpatrol's list instead for this kind of thing. Thanks once again to that individual - whoever they are.

### As if to drive home the point, I heard it just this afternoon in the 2008 Chiasso septet reading of Comp. 356 (not an official recording, but some more tenured readers and listeners will doubtless have this one in their collections). Like I say, 6n is such a common choice as tertiary material that this scarcely even counts as a coincidence... it would almost be stranger if I hadn't heard it ;-)

^ Comp. 61, unrecorded at the time of publication of the Composition Notes, had been performed in duo settings - and possibly by the working group/ creative ensemble, although B. is unable to swear to that. Ha, but of course now it is better known as having been recorded by Thumbscrew, unless of course it wasn't. (I've said all I intend to say on that subject, at least until any further information comes to light.)

^^ I don't have nearly enough technical knowledge to understand exactly what Norton is doing at this point in the piece, although it's pretty effective. But someone as versatile as he is could surely have varied his voicings considerably in this reading, and he just doesn't do that.

The young contrarian

 

Sixteen years...

I don't normally bring personal or domestic matters into my posts so much these days, and I'm not about to change that here, but my daughter's sixteenth birthday earlier this week did bring irresistibly to mind my having announced her birth, here in these pages. At least I can say truthfully that it does all feel like a long time ago...

... and speaking of history, a slice of it was delivered rather randomly into my YT feed over the last few days, two years after the video itself was apparently first posted: a rare interview from 1971, offering the friendly experiencer the chance to hear the maestro talking as well as playing (and answering questions in a way one would surely not have expected). I was probably aware of this recording already, as it turns out, though I had forgotten all about its existence; it is, as I discovered, listed clearly enough online, but I had allowed myself to become unfamiliar with corners of B's multifaceted career during my years of drifting inactivity, and when I first came across the video, I struggled at first even to figure out which 1971 solo concert was being referenced here.

The concert in question is not one which appears in the discography, nor is it to be confused with the French solo boot* (BL001, no longer readily available) - I say this because that's precisely the mistake which I made at first**. The next thing which has to be explicated is the contradiction in the video description itself, which is given at (so to speak) headline level as "Anthony Braxton interviewed in 1971 before his concert at the Palace of the Legion of Honor" - note here the word before - but then described underneath as having taken place afterwards: "Anthony Braxton, as interviewed by Roland Young, Glen Howell, and Sandy Silver, with music from Anthony Braxton's concert the night before at the Palace of the Legion of Honor on October 10, 1971." Clearly, the person who uploaded this to YT doesn't really know what happened when; but then, there's no real reason why we would expect them to know, since presumably they just have this recording from who-knows-where, and simply uploaded it onto this platform. 

It seems pretty well established that the concert performance took place on 4th October 1971, and since it was obviously quite well publicised in the area, there's every reason to think that's a reliable date. As for the interview which we have here... that's a lot less clear. It took me a bit of time to track down the recording of (B's segment from) the concert, which I don't have in the form of digital files, but for whatever reason I have the tracks themselves on two different CD-Rs; having located one of these, I noted to my surprise that the musical portion of the event is followed by sixteen minutes of "KPFA radio blather", as I wrote at the time the CD-R was burned, and I assumed at first that it must be (part of) the same interview, or perhaps just the talking parts with the solo sax interludes removed. It isn't: it really was just air-filling, as the concert itself was being broadcast live on the radio, and the announcers needed to fill a few minutes after B's solo set finished, while the crew for the Mike Nock Underground set up their gear***. Mildly intriguing though this is from a historical point of view, it really is just the station's staff talking amongst themselves while waiting for something else to happen, although they do mention how well B's set was received by the audience; it's not something I am likely to need to hear again any time soon, but it does shed a little light on one other detail pertinent to the interview itself, or rather to the recording of it which I'm looking at today. 

As mentioned above, you see, the video purports to have B. being interviewed by three different people, which is not reflected in what we actually hear. Most of the talking is by B. himself, interspersed with occasional "yeahs" and what have you, rather than much in the way of questions; and there does seem to be only one interlocutor. But in the between-set blather I found on my old CD-R, there are indeed three different people heard at times, and they do seem to be called Roland, Glen and Sandy - and by the way, Sandy is female, and we definitely do not hear her voice during the interview. So I think this all got a bit garbled, over time: the names provided in the YT description relate to the live presentation of the actual concert, and one of the two men (I think Roland) talked to B. in the studio around this time, said interview then being edited for broadcast the following Sunday, 10th October 1971. Or to put it another way: fifty-three years ago, today. (Let's just take stock of that for a minute.)

It's pretty clearly not a live interview anyway, because it consists of snippets of conversation, interspersed with music heard in the concert, and has fairly obviously been prepared for subsequent broadcast. The music, by the way, comprises numerous excerpts from (what we would now call) Comp. 26b, dedicated to (Kalaparusha) Maurice McIntyre, and although it sounds rather like the studio version, this is impossible, since the recording session which gave rise to the album Saxophone Improvisations Series F. did not take place until 25th February 1972. Annoyingly, my version of the 1971 concert to hand is incomplete, with the beginning of the first piece missing, and of course 26b - or, as it was probably known at the time, "JMK-80 CFN-7"# - was the opening number##; but what I do have confirms that the maestro's playing was absolutely precise on all four numbers played, so I'm confident that those gorgeous pointillisms which we hear at the opening of the YT audio - the beginning of the "interview", if we can even call it that - were pulled off live in concert just as perfectly as they sound here. (In any case, like I say, any recording of 26b being broadcast in 1971 could only have been sourced from a live performance - unless the piece was revisited in the studio especially for the broadcast, and if that were the case, I think we would know about it.) It would have been true, naturally - still is, really - that some unsympathetic ears would have heard many of the sounds being produced and concluded that they were random screeches and squawks, but to this listener (and, unschooled though I am, I have clocked up thousands of hours listening closely to free jazz saxophone at this point), it seems undeniably the case that every sound we hear is exactly what the player intended. His level of control by this stage### - over pitch, timbre, dynamics, you name it - was just uncanny; and, it must be said (as usually turns out to have been the case, when we listen to such performances), the audience really did appreciate it. It was only ever the snotty critics who refused to get with the programme. To hell with 'em.

Anyway, as regards the actual interview... this is a real curiosity too, but not really for the reasons that one might think. Doubtless all too conscious of being in San Francisco of all places - the global epicentre of all that was most hip - B. presumably knows that he is expected to rock up and profess his love for everything and everybody, and how his music is here to heal the world. He therefore does pretty much the exact opposite, declaring that he couldn't care less about music, or people, or even the world itself for that matter ("Destroy the planet!... what's a planet between friends?") - and all the while, the interviewer does his best to act as if none of this is remotely surprising, that he is totally cool with all of it, you dig... it is really quite odd to listen to, although given that his contrariness is pretty evidently a contrived stance, for reasons which he must have felt made sense at the time, I don't know if B. would necessarily find it embarrassing to be reminded of it now. 

Besides, it's not all purely contrary for the sake of being contrary; some of this strategy even seems, in retrospect, to have contained the germ of the professor's later insistence that he had no answers, only good questions: for example, he won't declare what it is that he believes in partly for defensive reasons - revealing his purpose would give people a way to destroy him - but also because in order to do so he would have to understand it himself, and he isn't claiming that he does. Around nine minutes in, he makes the point that he doesn't want to tell people how to do anything because if people are honest with themselves, they all know what's going on anyway - "which is why I spend so much time trying to learn how to talk but not say anything..." (on the face of it, an extraordinary statement, making him sound almost like a politician - but I was reminded at once of my own observation, earlier this year). It's telling that when asked about how his work relates to the social struggle - one of the few direct questions we hear put to him - he refuses to answer, then talks around the subject in very vague terms and finally admits that he is not answering (though he already said up front that he wouldn't). Later on, he describes the impulse to try and save people as a "diversion"; to hear poverty described as "beautiful" sounds odd, until you contrast it with the idea of refusing to play the music out of an idea to get rich - "the intention is coming from someplace else". (Was this a dig at Chick Corea, I wonder? It wouldn't be long before Circle unravelled completely, and by now it must have been clear to the other three members of that group that Corea was fully sold on Scientology, to an extent that they themselves were not; then as now, it was not possible to advance through the grades without heavy financial investment.)

It does all feel, ultimately, like a deliberate ploy, to avoid presenting himself as someone who has come along with easy answers or popular slogans. If some of the actual delivery, in his inimitably garrulous way, comes across as a bit extreme... well, who am I to judge at this point? I would just recommend that interested readers check it out for themselves. Where else would you hear the maestro say "I'm not interested in music at all... nor am I interested in spiritualism"? He certainly would not say anything like that later, but I feel as if I can make sense of why he wanted to adopt such a posture at that time, in that place, if only to make it quite clear that he wasn't like everyone else. (Now that is definitely something I can understand^.)

Finally, it's also fascinating to hear hints of B's speaking voice before it became completely "academicised" (which wouldn't take long). There is still a slight regional twang to his accent, here, and I don't think I have ever heard it before. Very interesting - albeit, probably only interesting to people like me. But if you're not at all like me... what are you doing even reading at this point? ;-)

* This recording, in turn, is not to be confused with the album Recital Paris 71, first released by Futura Records in 1971, and which features a long solo alto version of the Ellington standard "Come Sunday" on one side, and a multi-tracked piano piece (Comp. 16) on the other. - Reissued numerous times, this album is itself the subject of much confusion as regards track lengths, identities, and recording dates, but this is absolutely not the time to go into any of that (quite apart from anything else, the Wayback Machine's archive version of the  Restructures discog is down at time of writing, which is not making my life any easier). The French solo boot is quite confusing enough to begin with, including two tracks which were originally released on the compilation News From the 70s, where they were misidentified; even the description "France, 1971" apparently represented Hugo De Craen's best guess, given that the source tape was found in a box of B's labelled "Ghent" (and on the understanding that the only record they could find of a solo concert in Ghent was from 1973, and was not this one).

** Any mention of the words "Legion of Honor" - even rendered in English, and even with the US spelling - automatically makes me think of France. As I observed to McC the other day in an email, I don't really tend to associate palaces - traditionally the dwelling-places of monarchs -  with the United States, either. I needed to dig around in my lists and records for a while, before I located the details of the '71 San Francisco affair...

*** B's set filled a gap between two sets by ex-colleagues and now rival (?) bandleaders: keyboardist Mike Nock had previously played in the Bay Area fusion group The Fourth Way with violinist Michael White, whose own new group had opened proceedings. (This is all explained in the "blather", otherwise I would never have known.... I can't say I was aware of a band called The Fourth Way at all, although presumably they were named after the book by P.D. Ouspensky, itself expounding upon philosophical ideas set out by G.I. Gurdjieff.)

# Apart from the fact that we no longer need to refer to the pieces in this way, I have always disliked the habit of "naming" them thus: simply listing the alphanumeric characters in the correct order still does not give their titles, unless one takes into account the spatial relation between them, a crucial element of the graphic design.

## It's just possible that my other CD-R which contains this recording includes the whole of the music... for tedious reasons not worth going into here and now, I am presently unable to check. Postscript: v. comments

### I don't seem to have got round to writing this down yet, but the last time I listened to For Alto I was taken aback to realise how imperfect it is, in many respects. (Sacrilege!! Yeah, but... since when have I ever held anything sacred? It wasn't for nothing that I fell in love with punk rock.) The point is that the instrumental reach exceeded the grasp, at that very early stage, purely in terms of technique - not by much, but it's noticeable when you have listened to the maestro's playing as much as I have. By 1971, if not before, there are basically no imperfections left.

^ This is after all the meaning of the nom de plume Centrifuge: from Latin, "that which flees the centre". [It never particularly mattered to me whether readers understood that, though, which is why I have not explained it before.]