This too was new

 

Anthony Braxton: Accelerator Ghost Trance Septet

Jazzaldia Festival

San Sebastian, Spain, 25th July 2008

Composition 348

Video here

After about three weeks of daily Braxton, I very nearly had a "dry" day yesterday. That wasn't so bad really: on some days recently I gorged myself on four or five different full-length recordings, so it averaged out pretty well. Anyway, in the end I was able to administer a small homoeopathic dose before I crashed out: I started watching this video, although I only got a few minutes in before I was too tired to continue. (We are in the process of moving house, and the place is utter chaos. Plus of course the microcosmic change local to this family is reflected in a macrocosmic change affecting the whole of Britain and parts beyond: I write this on the day of the Queen's funeral. We live on a busy main road here, but it's been very quiet today.)

I remember this recording, by which I mean that I remember its first appearing in the blogosphere, back in the day - remember the sheer excitement of having a good-quality live recording from a concert which had only just taken place. What I didn't know, however, is that there was a film made of the performance, never mind that said film has been available for viewing on Youtube for (evidently) some time. I only found that out yesterday: and having watched just a few minutes last night, I finished it off this morning (to set myself up for another day of boxing and sorting).

The band for this festival performance included three of the same musicians (four including the leader) who played the London Jazz Festival in 2004: THB, Mary Halvorson, Chris Dahlgren - meaning that four of the players in the video are musicians I've seen live onstage. [The 2004 LJF performance at the Royal Festival Hall was recorded by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 3, back when I used to listen to (some of) their jazz programming. That same recording was later licensed to Leo Records. I have also written about this recording*.] They were younger when I saw them, and none of them were yet firmly established in the creative music scene: most people would have thought of them, if at all, as "just Braxton's students"**. By 2008 all three of these players mentioned above were fairly well known (in relative terms) and very well thought of. Aaron Siegel is now handling drums and percussion, a role he would play for a number of years; Jessica Pavone plays violin and viola, Jay Rozen tuba - again, both musicians would be intimately involved with B's music for some time. 

As well as the live 2004 performance (and part of me will always be sat on the edge of my seat at the (old) RFH, literally trying not to blink, so I still remember parts of it vividly), I have seen video recordings of these musicians before: the Iridium box includes a DVD, after all; and other decent recordings are available online. But it's been a good number of years since I watched any of those, so we may as well pretend that this was new to me, 'cos it sort of was. Several things stirke the viewer early on. For one thing, how hard the players are worked physically! Dahlgren in particular plays his ass off here, gets a real workout just in the opening ten minutes. (This observation is included to counter the argument, still sometimes advanced, that this sort of music is dry and academic and purely cerebral.) Also, which will be of interest to anybody who was under the impression that the players in this sort of thing "make it up as they go along"***, the players spend a great deal of time rivetted to the written score. They also pay very close attention to the leader - and to each other. Sub-groupings arise both spontaneously and (apparently) by prior arrangement. It's really interesting to see these aspects of the music as it's being performed. Multiple cameras (and quite creative visual editing, at times) allow us to get a pretty good close-up look at numerous different aspects of the performance which would not necessarily be obvious from the seats of a concert hall. 

As the piece unfolds, all sorts of secondary materials get folded in (as always) - my understanding, from memory, is that by this stage all the musicians would be trusted enough to interpolate pretty much any earlier piece they felt like playing, at least at certain intervals: parts of the scores are through-composed, but many other parts leave plenty of room for improvisation and invention, and in practice we get a mixture of both, most of the time. Starting at 19.48, some of the group sketch out a rubato Comp. 23d; THB creates high winds, over the top. Around 24.30, one camera zooms in over Rozen's shoulder to examine page one of the the score for Comp. 168, with its list of Language Types and associated symbols (but I can't say at this point that I'm familiar enough with that piece to know if Rozen - or anyone else - is actually playing it at that precise moment). Starting just before the 31-minute mark, the strings (later joined by Siegel on mallet percussion) sound as if they are playing Comp. 23m, or something very like it, while the horns do something completely different. At about 36.20, Dahlgren begins bowing out the distinctive bassline from Comp. 6n, which appears to be a signal to the leader to get out the oil-refinery equipment: as always, it is a pure pleasure to hear B. mangling the contrabass clarinet, and it's a real a privilege to have him captured on camera using it for both subvocalised growling and ultra-high-pitched squeaks and squeals - both extended techniques are frequently employed by the maestro, but we would not often get the chance to watch him do in real time #. 

There is a beautifully-unguarded moment picked up by one camera just before the 45-minute mark, B. watching on with loving delight as THB freaks out with the mute; this moment is all the more precious for its brevity, since within seconds it's all business again: B. catches Siegel's eye and holds up nine fingers, the drummer commencing a brisk and busy cymbal pattern (presumably in 9/8, I couldn't be sure) which sets up yet another movement in the piece, while Bynum continues in his own world, mute clasped to bell, eyes closed, lost in the music. 

As (almost) always with later GTM, we get everything from delicate sighs to raging storms, and more or less everything in between. The mood around 56 minutes and counting is pretty much as intense and furious as anything by anybody; it's quite awesome and thrilling to behold. But though we are approaching the end of the sand in the hourglass, this is not the "climax" of the performance; gradually, over the next couple of minutes, the volume and intensity is ratcheted down... by 59.25 Rozen and Siegel (the latter with the softest of marimba accompaniment) are setting up the real endgame, in which Dahlgren joins in with a tiny Casio synth, THB with a toy horn so small that even the close-up camera can only pick up his hands, not the instrument itself; chops from the guitar, squeaks from the leader, increasingly staccato attacks all round really, interspersed with some long held tones from Pavone in particular, and many quick glances (and several hand signals) between the players as they know they are coming to the very end. The sand elapsed, the band finishes - and B. doesn't manage to get all the way through his habitual namechecks before the rapturous applause breaks out as he pauses for breath. The outpouring of sheer joy and amazement from the audience## is worth cherishing on its own...

... because this sort of experience genuinely can change almost everything, for a careful listener: one's understanding of music, of art in general, of the limitless possibilities which are opened up by human cooperation, rather than competition. It is not too late, surely... and in the meantime, this great video serves as a timely reminder of what I said last time out: yes, the ZIM pieces were new; but the new is precisely what this man and his cohorts deal in, time after time after time. If anyone who reads this hasn't seen the video, don't hesitate - just plunge on in.

***

I'd originally thought that this might be a very brief post just saying "I've just realised there's a video, check it out", but it became obvious it would grow in the telling as I sat and watched it myself. I had thought to add some unrelated further observations on the duo performance I mentioned at the end of my previous post; but those can wait for a bit. (If McClintic Sphere is reading - no, I haven't forgotten about Thumbscrew!! we will get there... promise!)

***

Kai Weber: glad to be of service ;-)  - and how, may I ask, did you get on? 

* The relevant bit is entry 4 in the linked post. (That was more precisely the first time I wrote about that 2004 performance; I am sure I returned to it later, but I can't remember when, off the top of my head. It's there, somewhere...)

** I was active on the Radio 3 jazz messageboard at the time, and I seem to recall some people were a bit sniffy about Braxton not using a "proper" band, but just dragging his students onstage with him. Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh were still students of Lennie Tristano's, when they cut some quite famous recordings with him: I don't remember anyone pissing and moaning about that...

*** There is a pervasive general misunderstanding about "free" music that it always means "everyone just makes it up", and very often it really, really doesn't mean that at all. As regards B's music specifically, it STILL seems to be the case that some lazy writers talk about the graphic titles as "scores", as if they actually think that the music arises from free association of the musicians after they look at the picture..! FFS. These people cannot ever have listened closely to the music at all.

 - In this performance, as was usual at this time, all the players had music stands which contained not only the written score for Comp. 348, but also lead-sheets (at least) for numerous entries in B's "book": by this point, it was explicitly the case that any piece could work with any other, and any individual performance would hence be unique not only in its ex tempore interpretation of the primary territory, but in its judicious selection of secondary materials.

# My only (slight) disappointment back in 2004 was that the sea monster - as I would later come to think of it - did not make an appearance. I have seen B. play it live, during that historic meeting with Cecil Taylor in 2007... before this blog was even "born".

## Again, this takes me right back to 2004. I had gone with a friend from university, someone I hadn't seen in a number of years, but who was a musician himself and had an active interest in jazz. He was not, at the time, hip to this sort of thing... as the applause rang out after the set finished, he was vocally astonished; "Wow. Wow! I mean... I have never seen anything like that. Wow" - I know he did get into B's music after that. (Funnily enough he is now a radio producer for the BBC... not exclusively in music broadcasting, though)

... but being new is (actually) nothing new

 

Having finished my (initial) odyssey through ZIM territory, it would seem a good time to point something out: for all that those twelve compositions sounded (often) fresh and new and groundbreaking to me, this is not, in itself, something especially unusual for B.

A couple of days, I accidentally came across one of my old blog posts (while hunting for a different one) in which I waxed lyrical(ish - or at least rambled on at some length) about (what were still at the time, for most of us) the beautiful "new" compositional strategies known as Falling River Music. There weren't many examples of this in general circulation back then - indeed there still aren't - and if it was talked about at all, it tended to get advanced as an example of B's latest systems, despite the fact that FRM was captured on record a full decade before that. The duo set with Chris Dahlgren didn't get released until 2006, but was recorded three years previously; the quartets with Matt Bauder (plus regular cohort Aaron Siegel - and a bassist called Zach Wallace, who may or may not have been a Wesleyan student) were released slightly earlier, in 2005, but were again recorded in 2003. So, we'll assume for the time being that FRM was actually new around 2003, which is to say almost twenty years ago now, but was still new to most listeners a full decade later. The point, though - the main point, besides the secondary point about how few people are 

really bearing witness to all this highly inventive stuff - is that newness was/is very much the order of the day. 

Ghost Trance Music was new in its day - and continued to reinvent itself over a period of several years. When it first emerged, nothing else sounded like that. 

The small-group-plus-electronics Diamond Curtain Wall system was new, too: nothing else sounded like that, either.

We've had Falling River Music and Pine Top Aerial Music and Echo Echo Mirror House Music - and the ZIM strategy system as previously mentioned, which is where I came in; and now most recently there is the new Lorraine system (also recently discussed, however briefly). I may quite possibly have missed something out. 

All of these innovations were debuted - at least publicly - after the maestro had turned fifty. Granted, creative musicians can often keep going to a ripe old age*, and long may that trend continue, but it's not exactly "normal" for a creator to keep coming up with fresh new ideas well into his seventies. (All this, and B. is still also mining standards, and playing solo concerts, and has been continually exploring new improv possibilities - hell, I haven't even touched on Trillium yet, have I? and people thought Wynton Marsalis had lots of music in him.)

So whilst it's absolutely true that the ZIM recordings sound new and fresh and innovative, these are all qualities which may as well be permanently hyperlinked to the Braxton name. (The first time I heard the new duet recording where the Lorraine system was premiered, it didn't sound very new to me at all, however impressive it was in other respects; but I heard it again last night and already it struck me quite differently. As always, the more attention one pays to this sort of music, the greater the potential rewards; stick it on in the background, and don't be surprised if you miss most of the details.)

This man really is an innovation engine, a one-man factory of ideas, and it's very inspiring. Let's just pause a minute to appreciate that.

***

I've listened to so many different recordings - spanning a full five decades - in the last couple of weeks that I'm not about to try and list them all. Many of them can be found handily on this same Youtube channel which I've discussed recently (be patient and curious: you might have to poke about a bit in order to find everything that's on there). One recording which was entirely new to me is this duo with percussionist A. Kobena Adzenyah (known at the time as Abraham Adzinyah, or at least credited thus on the album). The Leo Records CD has been out of print for years already and it's not particularly easy to get hold of, although copies can currently be found on Discogs... to me it was just one of those entries in the discography which I had never actually come across...  anyway, tonight I began listening to it (at least to the first disc). It is of course entirely different from B's duets with (trap) drummers - sounds nothing much like the meetings with Max Roach or the later sets with Andrew Cyrille; nor, for that matter, does it much resemble the album with Gino Robair, another percussionist (as opposed to a drummer). The African-style accompaniment provided by his playing partner brings out of B. a rather different approach**, although of course he is immediately recognisable; I am not about to try and describe it here, but I would certainly recommend checking it out. (The pieces have been up on that platform for well over five years, and have not yet managed even two hundred plays between them. Obscure or what?)

* At least, they can these days, since the scourge of heroin addiction has ceased to be fashionable in such circles. It is mercifully not uncommon for jazz and creative musicians to keep playing well past the age when other people have retired; whether all of them manage to stay truly creative is perhaps another matter. The AACM alumni may constitute a particularly excellent collective example, in this regard (among others)

** Actually there is one piece on the studio album B. cut with Roach which has a consciously African flavour, and on which the horn playing is not completely dissimilar from some of what can be heard at greater length on this extended meditation. But don't just take my word for it...

Did I mention new and beautiful?

 

I've very nearly finished my (first) journey through the ZIM recordings, as previously reported - actually I have just the last one to go. Not all of the performances captivated me in the same way as the first few did; but then. all that really proves is that this sort of stuff generally makes lousy background music, which is not exactly news. On the occasions which saw me able to give the music a decent proportion of my attention, I found it utterly fascinating. But for whatever reason, my time spent with Comp. 419 today was particularly enthralling.

I can do nothing about the fact that I could have been present for those last three performances, recorded live at Cafe Oto in London - a venue which opened only after I moved away from the capital in 2003, and which has hosted tons of great artists, almost none of whom I managed to see (the one exception to this was eventually written up some months after the event). [In truth, I was so cut off from what was happening in creative music at the time - this little residency took place in the last week of May 2018, just before the maestro's birthday - that I had no idea B. was even in the UK. I had had no direct communication with him since 2015, and he had probably (and very understandably) given up on me... ironically I posted my usual birthday card just a few days later, with no clue what a significant event I had just missed*.]

What I can do is not allow regrets and missed opportunities to spoil my enjoyment of the music, now that I am hearing it. I listened to Comp. 418 yesterday and enjoyed it a lot, but for whatever reason, Comp. 419 - comfortably the longest of the twelve performances - really blew my mind. Within seconds I was drawn right inside the music, the shape of which seemed completely clear at the time of listening, even though I would never have been able to articulate it; the total focus and commitment of the musicians to B's vision had a really profound effect on me. Some absolutely incredible sounds came from this performance. Seven minutes in, I already felt as if I had been listening for much longer, so "fast" is the music**. 

One thing which is a bit unusual for me in my listening to these pieces so far has been the fact that although I was aware of different performances featuring slightly different personnel (as recorded on different occasions), I hadn't bothered to check on that while I was listening to the music - until today. (Of course, given the discrepancy between the published tracklist and the running order presented on Youtube, it would have led to some frustration if I had bothered. Mind you, listening closely to the instrumentation would make definitive identification of the pieces that much easier...) The London concerts were performed by a septet, including a player I am not familiar with at all, Jean Cook on violin (eight of the remaining nine performances included Tomeka Reid on 'cello, but otherwise the strings in these groups are mainly provided by the twin harps). But looking over the details of the players - the full personnel lists appear on the back of the Blu-Ray, evidently - I was suddenly struck by something: this may be the first time I can remember a group of B's using exclusively a brass bass. Tubist Dan Peck is one of four players, including of course the leader, who plays on all twelve pieces: for a number of years, B's GTM ensembles routinely featured a tubist called Jay Rozen (not to be confused with Jay Rosen, the longstanding house drummer at CIMP), but those same groups always also included either Chris Dahlgren or (usually) Carl Testa on string bass***. 

In any case, Peck's role is less that of a bass player than - than just another voice, another player: his fleet and fluid runs on this number, at least, reminded me of Joe Daley (who made such memorable contributions to those mid-70s recordings by Sam Rivers, and in whose hands the tuba  - often thought of as a cumbersome "oompah" intrument - sounded like something entirely new, expressive and tremendously versatile). For whatever reason - and I'm not saying that this is not true of the other performances; this may have been more down to the fact that I was truly paying attention today - all the players really did something special here. Jean Cook, whoever she is, goes completely crazy around the 28-minute mark, and it just sounds incredible. Needless to say I was not makiing any detailed notes today - I am still warming up here, after all, getting myself broken in gently! - but I did find myself rapt for much of the extended playing time of this piece, unable to do anything except listen intently to it. I've said before, and am happy to repeat: this was something new. Amazing, in principle, that B. is still pushing himself to explore new territories well into his eighth decade; in practice, it's not amazing at all because no-one who is even passingly familiar with the man and his music(s) would expect anything else. 

If anyone happens to be reading this but hasn't yet heard any of the ZIM recordings, what are you waiting for? and why not start with this one?

***

One of the truly heartening, not-at-all-surprising aspects to the ZIM recordings for me has been hearing the evidence of B's own continuing practice as a player. Despite having achieved a level of mastery on his main axe that players can only dream about before the 1960s were out#, this man has been well known ever since for his dedication to daily practice, and if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, we lucky experiencers can gorge ourselves sick with every recording he makes. Still instantly-identifiable after all these decades by what I dubbed (very early in the days of this blog) his "master-tag" - a brisk descending/ascending run which peaks on a high note followed by a slightly lower one (sorry, my own lack of formal musical education is jarringly obvious at times like these), B. delights and inspires continually with his gongfu## every time he puts mouthpiece to lips. This extraordinary skill is, of course, evident throughout the ZIM recordings; but I have also been listening - via the same Youtube channel - to a solo recording cut a few days after the maestro turned 72. The fact that he hasn't retired into composing-and-conducting only, or into coasting through standards (as if), but still takes his craft as seriously as his art and is able to keep giving such performances, still presenting new music - opus numbers here in the 390 range - really is pretty astonishing. You can even still hear him working at it: at least one of these numbers, Comp. 393e, sounds as if it is really quite tough to play. Imagine setting oneself such tasks, in one's seventies..! and more to the point... imagine meeting such challenges :-O

* It's even more ironic that the photo I used today - chosen hours before the post itself was constructed - is from the very same day as the one I used for that self-same birthday card, in 2018. None of this was at all conscious or deliberate

** I am remembering here a comment made by Stuart Broomer - years ago, and in the context of an article about Marilyn Crispell (off the top of my head, I don't know where I came across this or how quickly I would now be able to find it... I am not about to look right now). Broomer noted that it is no surprise that Crispell had associations with the two "fastest" groups of the day: he meant Braxton's quartet and Parker/Guy/Lytton, and by "fastest" he was referring to "most complex musical events per minute", which does actually make some sense. (The fact that Crispell was intimately involved with B's music for a number of years, but guested with P/G/L only once (?) is neither here nor there: she kept fast company, as they say.)

*** A rare opportunity here to use the term "string bass" in its correct, i.e. original sense: most people, including many who "should know better" - and including B. himself on occasion, for that matter - use the term "string bass" to refer to the contrabass violin, as opposed to the electric bass; as if "string" were somehow an antonym for "electric", and as if the electric bass itself were anything other than a species of guitar (definitely a chordophone, last time I checked). Of course, in both (pre-modern) jazz and orchestral music, string bass is a term which came about to indicate that a double-bass is being used as opposed to a brass bass, i.e. a tuba or euphonium. (In very early jazz, marching bands could hardly have used anything other than a brass bass.)

# For Alto: recorded 1969, released 1971. Memory told me '60s, but I had to check: the absence of Restructures is proving a constant pain in the neck while I'm trying to get my shit back together... and although its pages are supposedly available via the Wayback Machine, I seem to be having some difficulty using that. Little help, anyone..?

## Thanks to Hong Kong Cantonese and a hugely-successful movie industry, almost all westerners think that Kung Fu is a martial art. But as I understand it, the term essentially refers to the concept of improvement through dedicated practice over time, and is absolutely not limited to the practice of martial arts, Chinese or otherwise. A gardener may be said to possess gongfu (kung fu) - or a carpenter, or a calligrapher. Or a musician, of course

On the subject of corrections...

 ... this was going to be tacked briefly onto the end of the previous post; but that one turned out to be such a pain in the arse to write (not to mention very probably impossible to read) that this tiny little bit of emendata had to acquire a life of its own:

I am now halfway through the ZIM recordings on that (official?) Youtube channel, listening to one composition per day. (Most of them have continued to sound fresh and enthralling and inspirational; the one I listened to last night, not so much, but I think that says more about the mood I was in and what I was forcing myself to do at the time.)

The nit-picking thing is, though: either the tracklists on Discogs are wrong, or the one on Youtube is. (I haven't looked yet on Firehouse 12's site, or on TCF or anywhere else official.)

Discogs has separate entries for the digital download (perversely, since Discogs is primarily a site for traders and digital content is not permitted for sale on it) and for the Blu-Ray, but the tracklist in each case is identical. The twelve compositions are in ascending numerical order, starting with Comp. 402, then continuing with Comps. 408, 409, 410; then Comps. 412-16 inclusive; and finally Comps. 418-20 (the last three being the ones which were recorded during the Cafe Oto residency in London, sigh). 

However, on Youtube there are some discrepancies. The first four pieces are the same, and the timings match the ones given here. After that, things seem to get a little mixed up.

The fifth piece is named as Comp. 416, lasting 47.20 - which is indeed the correct duration of that piece, in principle, though the running order has got disrupted at this point. (Comp. 416 is the ninth piece on the other tracklist.)

The sixth piece is named as Comp. 411. The sharp-eyed reader will note that this opus number is conspicuous by its absence from the listings on Discogs. The duration of this piece is 57.58, which is to say, the timing elsewhere attributed to Comp. 412 (which is the fifth piece on the other tracklist).

The seventh piece is listed as Comp. 412 and lasts 51.10, the timing elsewhere attributed to Comp. 413 (which is the sixth piece on the other tracklist). Confused yet..?

Track eight on Youtube is Comp. 414 (51.40) and track nine is Comp. 415 (49.17), which are listed elsewhere as being tracks 7 and 8 respectively, but with those same durations: so at this point it's again just the running order which is messed up.

The last three tracks on Youtube are back in synch with the other tracklist(s). 

Youtube does not list Comp. 413 at all, but does list Comp. 411 as noted above.

Gonna stick my neck out here and say that it's the Youtube listing which is wrong. This is probably not the biggest problem in the world right now.

Just thought it was worth flagging up, having noticed it. (And in the writing, it was long enough in the end that I'm glad I gave this trivial little piece of pedantry a post of its very own...)

Partial assembly

 

Spoiler alert: I'm not going to make any very confident declarations following my listening to the unauthorised release Live at the Rainbow Gallery '79 (and just for the record, when I say listening to the release, I mean playing the individual files on Youtube; I don't own the CD (but see below, at the end of this post)). However, I did hear all of it - albeit just over a week ago, and while doing other things - and I do have some more half-cooked conclusions to present... continuing on from where I left off. 

First, then: the set-list is (almost) precisely as given by Discogs user "senorton". Which is to say: the opening piece is an extended-but-incomplete reading of the Ray Noble standard "Cherokee"; and the remainder of the set consists, very simply, of Comps. 23d, 23e and 40f. I say "almost" precisely: perhaps senorton was writing from memory, but he is wrong when he says that "(the) composed music is connected, in typical fashion, by free improvisation". It isn't. Whatever the circumstances were regarding this performance - or series of performances (painter David Scher, otherwise known as Discogs user "fetidwheeze", says that his work was exhibited at the gallery "during Braxton's residency" - though he doesn't say how many days or nights that comprised) - it doesn't proceed in the usual mid-seventies manner. Friendly experiencer senorton is probably just trying to account for why the label wrongly lists the four pieces as "Free Jazz Improv. One", etc - and his explanation is perfectly plausible in principle, but it doesn't match up with the actual recording. Track one is just "Cherokee" - and as mentioned above, for whatever reason, this part of the broadcast was incomplete, fading out before the conclusion of the trombone solo. Track two is Comp. 23d, which begins "cold" rather than emerging from any sort of transition phase; actually this one was quite surprising for me when I first listened to it, as I had figured beforehand that surely there would be a medley of some sorts here: the band couldn't possibly just have played this one number for almost half an hour..? -but no, that is indeed precisely what happens, and after 28 minutes, the piece finishes and we get some polite audience applause. No transitioning, and for that matter no radio announcer (this was supposedly sourced from a radio broadcast, don't forget - indeed it looks as if the date '79 in the album title refers not to the date of performance, but to the eventual broadcast, rather perversely). Track three is Comp. 23e, which is preceded by a little bit of tuning up, but that is not traditionally regarded as improvising... again, the piece fades out in mid-solo (this time a piano solo), but on this occasion it may just have been a question of the (ahem) "recording engineer" having to flip or change a tape, as Track four picks up shortly after Track three leaves off, still in mid-piano solo, and we just carry right on until we get some more applause, at around 6.15. This isn't a link phase though, it's just crappy indexing; there are then a few "false starts" before Comp. 40f begins just before the 7.00 mark, and this is where Track four should really begin, properly speaking. Fifteen minutes of that takes us up to the end, and some more applause. 

- So I suppose the only way senorton could have thought that the primary territores are linked by free improvisation, other than simply misremembering, is if he played just the beginning of each track before writing his notes; Track four beginning as it does in medias res could fool the hasty listener into thinking that. But although these are all pretty lengthy workouts - allowing for some extra solo time, given the presence of a pianist - I didn't hear any suggestion of different pieces being interpreted or even quoted, and like I say, Comp. 23d has a clear beginning and end, despite lasting a full 28 mins. If Comp. 23e seems to drift away into places new in its second half, that in itself is not at all unusual - indeed it is pretty much the way this piece was written*- and again, it comes to an end to allow for some applause. Comp. 40f, again, concludes by sounding quite clearly like itself, although when played in concert this piece usually segued into something else. But this was apparently not a normal Braxton concert performance, whatever else it was, and however extended the readings may have been. A Braxton concert beginning with a standard? WTAF?! Hmmm. 

That's that for the programme. Any thoughts on the actual music? "Cherokee" is an interesting choice because it does, indeed, bring to mind Charlie Parker for many people - senorton probably went a bit too far with his assumptions about what its inclusion here might mean; but I was also wrong when I said previously that Parker was just one of many musicians to play it - or rather, I was incorrect in implying that it's really no more associated with Parker than with numerous other (bop-era) jazz musicians. It may have called to mind Clifford Brown for me, yes, but that says more about my self-educated approach to jazz appreciation than anything else. Once I looked into it, I found (actually rediscovered**) that Parker is in fact strongly associated with this tune for a reason: it was his obsessive woodshedding on this particular piece (in all twelve keys) that eventually allowed him to play "the music (he'd) been hearing", by abstracting the higher intervals of the chords and transforming them into a melody line. This may (or may not) have led to the "birth of be-bop"... but it does certainly mean that for some people, the association between Parker and "Cherokee" is so deeply-rooted that they even misremember him as having co-written it. (As I said before, he was too young for that even to have been a realistic possibility***.) Our friend senorton somewhat speciously cites this as evidence for his own identification of the trombonist on the Braxton bootleg as George Lewis: it is true that both of the duo sets B. laid down with Lewis in 1976 include Parker tunes, but those are almost tossed off as "extras", whereas this is both the opening number (still can't quite get my head round that) and a much fuller reading than either of those others. 

Now, to senorton's description of "a Charlie Parker solo played by the horns in unison". Braxton and the 'bone man - we won't definitively call him Lewis just yet - do certainly play a horn line together, starting at around 0.55 on Track one. But what is it? Parker's first, most famous, rendition of "Cherokee" on record is the one probably waxed in 1942 (or possibly '41) - various sources date it to '43, but I'm happy to rule that out, for the simple reason that that would place it smack bang in the middle of the notorious recording ban - with two rather obscure sidemen (who are quite possibly only remembered now in the context of this recording... I wouldn't know). This is apparently revered by some as being the perfect bebop solo (despite the fact that bebop didn't really exist yet at this point... but who's counting?) - and it doesn't sound to me as if B. and his compadre are playing that. [I thought I remembered there being a version of "Cherokee" included on Parker's recordings either for Dial or Savoy - but I may be just remembering the fact that "Ko-Ko" - Parker's contrafact based on Noble's changes - was recorded in one of those sessions. The Dial masters do include a private recording of "Cherokee" from 1947, apparently - that would be a pretty recondite reference and for all I know, it may not even have been in general circulation at the time Braxton was playing this gig.] It almost sounds to me more like an Eric Dolphy solo than one of Parker's - I actually went away and checked that they aren't quoting "Out There", but they're not - but whatever it is, it's clearly a rehearsed line, successfully pulled off, and definitely a crowd-pleaser: some claps can be heard over the music, around 1.44 when the brassman lays out and B. takes over for his alto solo.

When I said previously that I didn't make any attempt at first to identify the players because I couldn't hear the bass, that isn't really true. But it sort of is: some of the bass can be heard fairly clearly, even in a compressed rip, via an online video played on cruddy "speakers" on a device which can't even properly be called a laptop. The thing is, you can only hear some of it, and that turned out not to be enough for me to feel confident about saying that this is or isn't Dave Holland; or, for that matter, that this is or isn't Barry Altschul. The drums sound so thrash-n-bash on this rough and ready (audience?) recording that it could almost be anybody; half the time, all you really hear is lots of cymbals. As for the bass, it's not until around the 6.00 mark, when B's solo finishes and the piano solo begins, that you actually get to hear all of what the bassist is playing. The easy confidence and assuredness at this accelerated tempo could well indicate Holland; but then, it could be a number of other players too, and whoever Braxton hired for a gig was not exactly going to be a slouch. I wasn't about to drive myself mad with this... and as undesirable as it is in principle to write about music one has only heard while doing something else (even if that wasn't something which required much brain power), this ropey half-baked excuse for a bootleg simply didn't seem to merit a really close and focused listen, even if I had the time for that at present (which I don't, really). The "album" was obviously slung together very cheaply, using a recording of dubious provenance and questionable quality, with little or no attempt to verify any of the information (or even to present it consistently: after all, if the listed personnel are correct, it definitely wasn't recorded in 1979... which is kinda where we came in). We don't know if this was the whole concert (well, it wasn't - there are fadeouts as already stated above), or that the order in which the pieces are presented on the CD is the same order in which they were played on the date - only that Comp. 40f definitely followed Comp. 23e. As for the feeble cop-out of a "track listing", we can safely assume that no attempt whatsoever was going to be made to identify the material correctly - easy though that turned out to be - since the people who released this weren't about to approach anyone remotely close to B., as they would hardly have wished to advertise the fact that they were putting this out without his knowledge or permission.

I'd say it is Lewis on trombone; but then realistically, who else would it be? - and I couldn't begin to identify the piano player, I'm more or less hopeless at that sort of thing; but as previously noted, Abrams is a pretty safe bet for anything recorded around this time. [I did previously float the possibility that if this is 1976, it might just as well be Anthony Davis; but there is a big practical difference between getting someone to sit in for a performance in NYC when they are there anyway, along with just about everyone else, and dragging the same person all the way out to Minneapolis. Then again, whoever it was, they weren't some random local hire: this will be someone who has played B's music before, and has therefore had to travel to the gig along with the rest of the group.]

What I will say, though, is that 1976 is almost certainly the correct year. And that's simply because of the material: even before I had heard a note of this recording, I reckoned that if the tracklist had been correctly identified by senorton (which it had), he was wrong about the year being 1979. There is no way (he says, with foolhardy assertiveness) that Comps. 23d and 23e are together on a set-list once Holland and Altschul have left the band; so, no later than 1976. Earlier, even? No, because there is no mention anywhere (to my knowledge) of Lewis being in the band before 1976; and although Comp. 40f sort of sounds as if it might have been written with Kenny Wheeler in mind (as I have noted before, years ago), I am not aware of any recording of this piece featuring Wheeler, nor any set-list prior to 1976 which includes it; it does appear to have made its debut at the same time as Lewis joined the band. So: no earlier than 1976, because of the closing number; no later, because of the other Braxton originals. Actually, now that I come to think of it: given that Comp. 23e is among other things a feature for Holland's impressive arco technique, that inclusion alone is basically enough for us to be able to say this is him. The drummer may or may not be Altschul; other drummers were available, to coin a phrase... and the line-up of the quartet was not, after all, immutable. But yeah, I'll say 1976 for sure. I think we can trust the painter's memory on this one ;-)

[O...kay. All that faffing around, just for the same conclusions I'd reached before I even listened to the recording? - and a post which is probably unreadable?! But fuck it, that's just how I roll sometimes...]

For the numerous reasons outlined already, I would absolutely not buy this CD new - and the fact that some retailers appear to be charging a "normal album" price for it is disgraceful. But I may buy it second-hand one of these days: it can be picked up cheaply like that, and the bootleg operation that put it out won't profit from such a transaction. I didn't go into any of this because (ironically) it wasn't strictly relevant... but some of the playing here, especially from the leader, is terrific; hell, it's a Braxton performance, how bad is it really likely to be? It's definitely non-essential, but I can probably be persuaded that it's worth having.

* This is a lazy assumption, relying on memory - and ignoring the fact that I have the composition notes downstairs. This is not yet the time to get those out, though. If I can sustain this and really get going again, they will be consulted regularly...

** When I first got into jazz, more than twenty years ago, none of my friends at the time really listened to it, so I relied on my own research. I read a number of books on jazz history in the first year I was collecting the music and trying to learn how to listen to it; at least one of those is bound to have included the story of how Bird first made his big breakthrough after woodshedding the fuck out of "Cherokee". In fact the more I think that one over, the more it starts to come back to me. I had just forgotten all about it.

*** As I have mentioned before, "Cherokee" was published in 1938; Parker was 18 at the time. Depending on whose word you take for it, he was 21 or 22 (or 23 - except he wasn't 23, because as noted above, that trio recording was clearly not recorded in the middle of a recording ban) when he first recorded a noteworthy version of the tune. The fact that his playing it to death ultimately (was one of the things which) led to a sea-change in jazz does not, in fact, retroactively confer upon him the status of co-writer. [Actually, Noble originally composed the song as the first of five movements in his (cough) "Indian Suite" - it's just that this is the only one which has "stuck". (Contemporary awareness of/ sensitivity towards cultural appropriation suggests that the overall suite is not likely to get revived any time soon.)]

Steady diet

It's been a long time, but I've been on a daily diet of Braxton for over a week now, and I certainly do feel better for it :-D

Indeed, the only downside to this - as I discovered this evening - is that if other things get in the way and delay my dose, I can get pretty cranky and short. I reckon it's manageable though... and besides, the benefits definitely outweigh the drawbacks.

As mentioned in previous (recent) posts, I'm mixing it up, listening to very new material and older stuff, juxtaposed. There is nothing schematic about this. As I said last time out, I've only just discovered the ZIM stuff on Youtube and am gradually working my way through those, but that's not all. I picked up a couple of real bargains just recently - albeit albums I already had in "rip" form, just not as official releases - and over the last week I have acquired a couple more: the duo sets with Ted Reichman (which again I already had as a CD-R, even if I hadn't played it in a decade), and with Gino Robair. The latter is one which I have never had in my collection, in any form, until today: it's not especially easy to get hold of, and I count myself quite lucky to have snapped up a very good used CD copy for what is really a pretty reasonable price.

I recall saying before - and probably more than once, though right now I can't remember exactly when, so I'm not going to try and link back to it at this point - that Robair is an improviser whom I consider to be a natural playing partner for B. Everything about his approach to music just seemed to me (back in the day) to be ideally suited to the maestro - and now that I'm actually filling my ears with this stuff, I'm not about to change my mind. Playful, restless, continuously curious and searching and inventive, Robair must surely have felt himself to be in the presence of a kindred spirit the first time they met. I don't know exactly when that was - and the gaping void that the removal of Restructures has left in the internet is once more a source of frustration here - but I do realise that I probably misunderstood something, before. This superb album of questing duets dates from 1987. Jump or Die, the collaborative project between Splatter Trio (with Robair) and Debris, was recorded seven years later, but I think I may have assumed previously (?) that the duo album only came afterwards. Or did I? If so, clearly I didn't check properly, but in any case, maybe I am just misremembering it now. 

I hadn't paid attention to this when acquiring the two CDs, but there is a considerable overlap* with the materials: both feature interpretations of Comps. 86 and 136. I'm still some way away from being closely-enough attuned to essay a comparison between the respective treatments on the two sets, so for now I am just going to note it in passing... in any case, this fantastic album with Robair does not just include B's music: there are two shortish pieces credited to the percussionist and three (presumably freely-improvised) pieces credited to both men, as well as three Braxton-composed numbers**. One of the three joint-credits, titled "Frictious Singularity" (which, amazingly, did not appear on the original vinyl LP), elicits some really astonishing playing from both musicians. I am truly delighted to be able to enjoy this album at long last, and will definitely return to it in the near future.

***

When I said recently that I had picked up the Willisau (1991) Studio 2xCD for less than six pounds, I wasn't lying; but I didn't realise that it was a strictly-limited opportunity. This was on eBay, from a major UK seller which specialises in used media, but which also sells new items - and which apparently had a limited overstock of this release. I think it's still listed as available there, but it's gone up by a few pounds now... still, it is currently much cheaper (anywhere you shop, I think - at least online) than it was eighteen months ago. Anyone who doesn't have it already... needs it in their collection. Simple as that.

***

I am only three pieces into the ZIM project, which is to say one quarter of the way through; but as I said last time, I find these pieces quite remarkably beautiful, and very definitely fresh. It's not so much the sound-palette which is different to my ears - I have highly unconventional tastes in music and have listened to a lot of free improv, so "unusual" and varied sounds are pretty much normal for me - although admittedly the prevalence of harp on these pieces is a bit of a change from most (not all) of B's previous work; no, the actual musical strategies just feel distinctively different from pretty much anything I have heard from him (or anyone else) before. Once again, it is extraordinarily difficult to try and put this into words - so much so that I'm not even going to attempt it (yet). There are sections of some of the GTM performances which may momentarily sound and feel like this material - but of course GTM always first and foremost sounds like itself. There really is something powerfully innovative about this stuff... I know nothing about it at all, and perhaps for the time being it's better that way. In any case, I'm pressing on with it, even as I continue to mine the back catalogue...

* There's overlap going on in several areas of my daily life at the moment. As regards my musical listening, it's worth noting that the duo album with Reichman also includes Comp. 168, which is collaged into Kobe Van Cauwenberghe's septet reading of Comp. 255...

** That is, the Reichman set definitely includes Comp. 136. The situation as regards the album with Robair is less clear: the master-record for this release on Discogs - relating to the original vinyl on Rastascan - lists Track 3 as being Comp. 134 (+96), whereas the CD entry - and the packaging for the actual Music & Arts CD now in my possession - lists Track 6 as being Comp. 136 (+96). (Actually the CD reissue has a totally different running-order: the two extra cuts are not simply tacked on the end as they usually would be. Indeed the programme opens with a piece new to this reissue. Hmmm.)

The new and beautiful

 

Something that (almost) everybody knows about B's music is how much of it there is. He has never stopped working, developing, growing... and never stops releasing recordings either, though some years are more fecund with these than others. But the point is that someone with the urge to check out the maestro's music from a standing start, at this point, can find enough material to keep him/ her/ them busy for years without even straying into the 21st century; extend that to include, say, all three (four) species of GTM, and that would keep the interested and careful listener busy for a long time. In my own case, we're talking about renewing a consuming interest; even then, I have enough recordings - both official releases and otherwise - to keep me consumed for a very long time to come without, say, needing to catch up on the most recent developments.

However, that's not where I'm at. At a time when it finally feels appropriate to be listening to B. on a near-daily basis again, I'm taking a holistic approach and will be trying to hear as much new stuff as I can, even while I rediscover older and previously-explored territories...

I mentioned a few days ago that I'd just listened to the Other Minds Duet recording of Comp. 429 with James Fei (and some software): that's pretty much as new as it gets (in terms of the release, very new indeed, given that it was technically out until the day after I heard it; in terms of the music, you're still only talking about an event which took place last year). Then, last night, I discovered the existence of Belgian guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe and his Ghost Trance Septet, intitally via a super-succinct video teaser, and then in more detail when I played the first piece from the band's album, via bandcamp: this is a 23-minute reading of Comp. 255 (+ 34 + 40f + 168), and it really is fantastic, bursting with life - absolutely full to the brim (despite its relative brevity) with energy and inspired creativity and careful attention to the materials. The album came out a few months ago on double cd or double vinyl and believe me, I shall be ordering a copy of it from the label (el NEGOCITO [sic]) in the near future. Knowing that young musicians around the world are organising projects of this calibre is incredibly uplifting (at a time when so little going on in the world seems to be anywhere near fitting such a description). I can hardly wait to hear all four pieces; and in the meantime, I shall be trying to hear the leader's solo recording, 2020's Ghost Trance Solos (on a label called all that dust [sic again, arf arf]). This guy must, by the look of it, be a real visionary.

... and of course I mentioned last year that I had acquired the marvellous Quartet (New Haven) 2014 on Firehouse 12 (mentioned it, and floated the idea of writing about it - only apparently I just wasn't ready to do it at that point... which will have come as a surprise to precisely nobody)... not to mention that Thumbscrew CD, which I really, really will write about one day soon (a promise which anyone reading this may now take a little more seriously, following the activity of the last week)...

One thing I haven't dipped into at all, up till now, is the ZIM stuff. With this project, I have to admit to some outright avoidance: they do say that one must never have any regrets, and as regards many of the regrets which I could have regarding this blog and all the rest of it, I have been able to let much of those go. On the other hand, I may never entirely be able to let go of the fact that B. brought his ZIM sextet over to the UK for a mini-residency, and that I didn't even find out it about until well after the event (admittedly they played in London - inevitably - and I haven't lived there since 2003; still, had I known about it in advance, even with all the stuff that was going on in my life, I would definitely have made an effort to attend). [It's actually not even the only performance the maestro has given over here since I've last had any direct contact with him; but this, above all, is the event which I would have prioritised.]

So, although I have made periodic half-hearted searches for ZIM material online, and have kept half an eye out for official releases of the same, I had not heard any of this stuff at all - not a single note of it - before tonight. I don't know how long it has been available on Youtube..? But it's only the other day I came across what appears to be some sort of official Braxton channel there - it's where I heard the duet with Fei - and only tonight did I realise that the whole of 12 Comp (ZIM) 2017 is available on the same channel. So... I finally gave in and listened to Comp. 402.

This really is incredible stuff, and despite containing a very lengthy sax performance by the leader (which is pretty amazing in itself, but what else would one expect?), the overall feel of the music is quite unlike anything else I've ever heard. It's... very hard to know what to say about it, other than: it's new and it's fucking beautiful. I can't go back in time, to witness the London performances in real life; and B. may very well never take this project out on the road again. But I can now immerse myself in the music, at least: all twelve pieces are on the channel, and I will work my way gradually through them. (I didn't even know about the release itself until very recently, partly 'cos it only came out last year, partly because although I do search periodically for new Braxton albums online, I only tend to search for CDs and vinyl, whereas this monster was only released on Blu Ray. I don't own a player for this format, never have, and in all honesty I can't say I've ever felt the need for one... until now!! It's not a top priority, but I will need to buy the disc sooner rather than later I suppose - these things don't tend to be available forever - even if I don't immediately get hold of the hardware on which to play it..!)

As I said in passing the other night, not all the newer material necessarily sounds that new, regardless of its quality - and that is particularly going to be the case for someone like me, who already has hundreds and hundreds of listening hours clocked up. But this experience tonight really did sound new, and it really is profoundly inspiring to know that, at an age when most people have long since stopped breaking new ground even if they have not lapsed into outright retirement, Maestro Braxton is still forging ahead, ever restless, ever the student as well as the master. At a time when the very fate of the world really does seem to be in the balance, what an example he sets for us.

***

I did listen to the whole Rainbow Gallery thing in the end, not that anyone is wondering..! I can't pretend to have drawn many definitive conclusions, but I will post again with my thoughts about it, over the next few days (time permitting: one would scarcely know it from all this blather, but I am actually pretty busy at the moment)...