...in which some more detail is furnished

 

Live at the Rainbow Gallery '79 (unofficial release)

Back here, again. - This being a puzzle I have not managed to solve, it keeps drawing me back... this time, rather than leaving it on in the background to see how many impressions filtered through to me (if any...), I gave it more or less my full attention: having announced the last time I wrote about this recording that I'd changed my mind about never owning it on CD, it was actually the first CD I bought after we moved house, but for various reasons I only got round to listening to it last night (mainly because by this point I was looking at it as "work").

The title is a nonsense, but of course this is the kind of thing that happens when stuff gets bootlegged. Despite being clearly short on actual details, the label lists the personnel as if they have no doubts about that, but of course they aren't able to cite any sources for that information; we do have a venue listed - that part of the title makes sense, if it can be trusted - but no firm date, and instead the date in the album title refers to the eventual radio broadcast (although even that is somewhat dubious, since there is no precise date given for that either: in the liner notes, all we're told is that it was aired "at the end of the decade"). As I said last time, obviously the guys who chucked this together were in no position to get their facts checked with official sources, since they evidently had no intention of clearing copyright before releasing this. If ever there was a good advertisement for pirating a recording (or buying it second-hand) rather than getting it from a retailer, it's this one: with some reservations, I actually think this is a fairly decent live boot - and it's surely the case that any friendly experiencers will find something to enjoy in it - but if you want to own a hard copy, I strongly recommend getting it as cheaply as possible. (I certainly did.)

Having listened to it now three times in its entirety, and at least once with (more or less) undivided attention, I am more sure than ever that this dates from 1976, and that the listed personnel are probably accurate: that is, I am quite sure it's George Lewis, and almost as sure that it's Dave Holland and Barry Altschul. Who the pianist is, I'm really in no position to say; there's no reason to think it isn't Muhal, but identifying pianists really is not my... forte (groan). Whoever it is certainly knows his or her way around a keyboard; and it's highly likely to have been someone with prior knowledge of B's music. But in the absence of any corroborating evidence regarding the date - or the circumstances which took these guys to a Minneapolis art gallery in the first place - I am not about to take HiHat's word for anything, really.

With the source recording supposedly being an airshot, it still seems strange that there are no announcements on this, but there we are. "Cherokee" begins with no preamble, and I've observed before that it's most jarring to hear B. open a live set with a standard; I've also previously observed that we have no reliable way of knowing whether the album presents the complete set-list, or even the precise running order, but having said that, I do reckon that "Cherokee" was the first piece played. All I am really basing that on is the audience reaction to B's solo: he goes first - which he always did, as far as I know, on the opening number of a concert - and the extra "wow" factor in some of the audible responses strongly suggests to me that this is the first time this crowd has heard him play. Hence, as much as it might make more sense to wonder whether this wasn't an encore, presented out of order on the CD, I really don't think it was. Possibly it was decided beforehand that a standard would be a good way of breaking the ice for a crowd which wouldn't necessarily be expected to come just for the music...? In which case, a number which gives a natural opportunity to show off the band's chops is an easy choice.

It still irritates me that I can't pin down the written line which B. and GL play in unison, after the opening "head" - maybe it is a Charlie Parker solo, but to me it doesn't especially sound like one, and it certainly didn't sound like the famous one. (Refer to previous post on this subject.) Maybe one day I will have an answer to this... but in the meantime it's not going to cost me any sleep. Once you get over the surprise, this is a pretty enjoyable performance, even with so-so sound quality, and in the end it's a bit annoying to have it clipped off in the middle of Lewis' trombone solo. (Another mystery: audience recordings from this era are forever plagued by the problem of having to change the tape, but in the middle of the opener?! no, something else happened here - and presumably this was the best the label could do.)

With some music missing, clearly we don't know whether what we get next is what was actually played next - but again, if we are going to accept that the band was playing to a gallery crowd which might or might not be expected to have prior familiarity with B's music, it makes sense to think that a crowd-pleasing standard might be followed by the closest thing B. ever wrote to "a jazz ballad". Comp. 23d so obviously deserves to be more widely known that its continued neglect doesn't say anything very positive about the human race, if you ask me, but I digress... here (now that I am paying attention to it) there are some slightly jarring qualities to it: Lewis takes first solo this time - nothing unusual about that; this wasn't the opener - and the piano sounds rather dissonant with the comping, refusing to let the music "settle". The drummer seems at this point to be treating the piece with no respect whatsoever, bashing away unnecessarily hard at the cymbals as if in defiance of the basic tessitura; bear in mind, at this point in my listening I am still trying to assume nothing about who is playing, waiting to see whether clues start to present themselves (although I have already come to the conclusion by now that the trombonist can only be Lewis), so with the drummer apparently ignoring the general "vibe" I find myself wondering if it might not be somebody other than Altschul, after all; this guy's certainly busy enough to be him, but would Altschul play this tune in this way? (Needless to say, you can really second-guess yourself with this stuff and almost drive yourself mad with it... but read on.) One thing which has always been required of the drummer in particular in these live contexts, I remember, is fuel for the soloists' fire: this sometimes led to problems with Kenny Wheeler in the band, as he didn't always seem to know what to do with it when it was provided, which later led to the rhythm section dialling the intensity levels right down when his turn came; no such issue with Lewis, obviously. So is the overactive drumming just that, fuel to burn? For that matter, is the whole thing just an "audio illusion", caused by the recording hardware being closer to the drum set than to the rest of the band? I can't rule that out...

In any case, these first two pieces have left me feeling (almost) completely sure that I'm listening to Dave Holland, now that I can hear the bass better than I could via Youtube; as for the piano player, well here s/he* comes now - and funnily enough, the drums lay right back, way back at this point. It occurs to me round about now that the pianist could actually be fairly easily identified, in principle - just not by me, or at least not without a lot more preparatory/comparative listening. The piano solo overwhelmingly favours long, exploratory runs with the right hand, with only minimal activity in the lower register**, and on the assumption that this is a regular preference with whoever this player is, the right ears could doubtless nail this question right there. In any case, the long solos taken by Lewis, the pianist and the leader on this one, combined with a shorter bass solo, confirm how it is possible to play such a long version of this number, which doesn't seem to be a natural territory for such extended improvisation.

Track two, for what it's worth, is the only one which is correctly presented (even if they didn't manage to identify it on the "track listing", or what passes for a track listing in this case): it is a complete rendition, and hence also properly indexed. Comp. 23e, which comes next, is subject to another dropout, so a decision was taken to end track 3 at that point and begin track 4 with the same piece still very much underway. This is a pretty good version of this piece, though, and in purely musical terms probably the highlight of the set, although that's not completely straightforward for a couple of reasons. One thing this number does have, for sure, is a red-hot rhythm section and it's a minute or so into this piece, indeed, that I decide once and for all that this must be Altschul behind the kit. The boiling, fizzing intensity of the drums as the tension mounts higher - remember, Comp. 23e is a piece of two parts, an initial section of minatory tension eventually giving way to a completely free environment filled with all manner of eldritch utterance - is very much like the studio version with which this composition (previously developed on the road) was perfected, in 1975; and although I had finally decided that the crucial role here is played by the bass, not the drums as I originally surmised, both players are very important to the atmosphere of scarcely-bearable intensity as the energy levels are gradually being ratcheted up. And both players, here, sound so completely comfortable and familiar with this that I can't possibly think of it being anyone other than Holland and Altschul, at this point, whatever doubts I may have entertained up to now. (I say comfortable - that's not the right word, exactly, and indeed has some pretty unfortunate connotations. What I mean really is that both players sound completely confident negotiating what - for a newcomer - could easily be quite intimidating territory.)

It's weird, nevertheless, to hear this played without Wheeler in the band***, which (leads to what) is ultimately one reason why I couldn't just say that this is the highlight of the set: Lewis is barely present here, and indeed sits the second half out completely (at least I didn't hear him), as if - bizarrely - he finds himself somehow superfluous to requirements. The brass is essential to the first section of the piece, the unison monophonic line being a required part of the overall effect, but once we have "crossed", transitioned into the free space across the energetic barrier, there doesn't seem to be any space for the trombone at all. The other face of this coin is the piano: this is much used in the second half, but not needed at all for the first part. Hence, the instrumentation doesn't completely work for this particular selection, arguably (although not all voices are needed at all times, clearly). It would still be quite easy not to notice that, as they make such a good job of this, the first section in particular being utterly mesmerising, that it's quite hard to imagine anyone who witnessed it muttering to their neighbour afterwards "yeah, but I'm not sure that was the right choice of material for this band". What is always pretty challenging with any live rendition of this piece is to maintain the intensity levels beyond a certain point, and that is very much the case here, where even the drums eventually become quite restrained once the transition is achieved; not that this puts the leader off, as he is just in another dimension by this point, spending minutes on end in an altissimo register of overblowing, squeaking in tongues (as it were). Another quite long piano excursion eventually follows this, but of course it's cut in two thanks to the dropout. Track four begins shortly after Track three fades out, and gradually builds back up to another peak of intensity, making one wonder in the end how this piece ever worked properly without a piano. But like I say, it's not relevant to the first section at all and, as powerful as this performance undoubtedly is, I can't help feeling overall that it's not entirely suited to the personnel on the date.

There is a brief pause - but no indexing - before Comp. 40f, the concert's concluding piece. A few minutes in, B. and GL launch themselves into this fabulous high-speed run together, something which I really don't remember from other renditions of this tune; once again, though, the piano has pretty much no part to play here. We do, much to everyone's joy no doubt, get some contrabass clarinet before this one is done, and B. unleashes some magically subtle "dragon dreams" with it, displaying all his virtuosity - although oddly enough, when he starts up with the "kisses" a little later, Lewis does not respond for once. This is a slightly eccentric choice for a set-closer as it generally segues into something else, in a live context; here, it just gradually peters out into silence, although that actually seems to work quite well as it simply shows how hypnotised the audience is, no background chatter evident at all as the music here winds down into empty space, final relieved applause indicating how much those present enjoyed  what was, really, a pretty impressive set.

So: it's definitely worth hearing, even with all these numerous caveats. It's definitely not worth buying at full album price, so don't even be tempted. Oh, and I still couldn't say at this point whether or not the piano was played by Muhal Richard Abrams. How come B. doesn't do his customary naming of the band, at the end of the show? Maybe this was not the whole performance after all... but for now, as far as I know, it is all we've got. I have no intention of writing any more about this recording..!

* I am rather perversely allowing a sexist stereotype to persist, there: a pianist might be female, but a drummer won't be. Then again: name one female drummer in free jazz/creative music at that time. Having said that, female pianists weren't greatly in evidence either.

** The only piano player that I have actually noticed displaying this customary preference for the right hand in his solos is Hank Jones. I'm gonna stick my neck out here and say that whoever else this might be, it's not him...

*** There very possibly are other recordings of Comp 23e featuring Lewis, I'm just too rusty to say for sure if I have heard any. It is definitely something I associate with Wheeler. More than anything, though, it is a feature number for Holland's rock-solid arco technique in particular and, to a slightly lesser extent, for  Altschul too. I can't realistically imagine that B. would have kept it in the book once those two players had departed. 

Some things I've checked out while I'm waiting (pt.2)

 So, having established (sort of) what Wet Ink Ensemble is, and having flagged up their live rendition of B's second species GTM piece Comp. 227, I shall now point out that other recordings from the same concert are readily available online... this, remember, is a concert where the special guests included the world-leading, small-but-perfectly-formed trumpet section of Peter Evans and Nate Wooley (and at least two Braxton alumni besides): an Anthony Braxton Portrait Concert no less. 

I haven't seen a full set-list for this event. The two remaining clips I've encountered so far feature tracks originally recorded on B's legendary Arista monsterpiece Creative Orchestra Music 1976. Comp. 56 is available on Youtube, although it's a bit of an odd watch; the first 25 seconds is an introduction by the whole group, after which individual players pretty much take in turns to work out, while the rest of the musicians sit there and try not to fidget too obviously. For the first couple of minutes, indeed, this number rather comes across as an extended feature for contrabassist Greg Chudzik; towards the end of his showcase some electronics are in evidence, and around the three-minute mark, we do finally get some other entries, sparsely, from assorted horns. By the time the clock shows 4.30, pretty much everybody has had the chance for at least a quick skronk or growl, but this is a very space-filled piece, an intriguing exercise in spatiality and timbral contrast - and a glance back at my post from 2008 reminds me that the original version is, too. (It's a long time since I listened to this fabulous album... I am going to enjoy rediscovering some of this music all over again...) The 1976 recording featured Richard Teitelbaum on analog synth, present for just that one track, so I presume (though I shall refrain from checking at this point) that electronics are specified in the original instrumentation rubric for the piece. Over the course of eleven and a half minutes, everyone gets the opportunity to contribute a bit, some more than others; around the nine-minute mark, the camera comes in close on Wooley to capture him doing some of that extraordinary "overbreathing" stuff which he does so well. But besides the close footage of him, Chudzik and Eric Wubbels (doing prepared-piano-type stuff directly on his strings, around the halfway point), the main interest in watching this rather than just listening to it would seem to be the sight of Dan Peck using what looks suspiciously like an upturned waste-paper bin as a outsize mute for his tuba. [Still... after almost five years of being online, the video has attracted just a fraction over 400 views, and several of these are by me... testament to how minority-interest this stuff truly is, as if we didn't know that, but even so, do your bit and check it out -!]

The third piece - if there are more, I haven't come across them yet - is a medley, beginning with another Creative Orchestra piece - the "twisted march" Comp. 58 - and incorporating Comps. 131 & 116. There is an excerpt of this medley available on video, but the entire recording can be found on Soundcloud; somewhat perversely, the video clip fades in with only the last minute or so of Comp. 58 remaining, though it does reveal that for that part of the performance, Wubbels conducted while vocalist Kate Soper took over piano duties. For whatever reason, I found the march oddly dry and uninvolving, which is a real disappointment as the original is a personal favourite of mine. It feels like something of a copout, somehow, for the "through the looking glass" transition to be rendered solely via electronics - in the original version it's all done purely through bent-out-of-shape soloing by the horns - but that isn't the whole of the problem: rather, it's as if these serious musicians are so busy being focused that they forget to cut loose and have fun. That's ironic, because it's something which B. himself has been accused of with tedious frequency over the decades, but in his case it's seldom (if ever) true... here, the group attacks the quartet pieces with noticeably more vigour; but I must say that the lasting impression of the performances as a whole is that there was a certain something missing. It is still, of course, worth the time of any friendly experiencer to investigate.

***

Just the other night, while I was rummaging around for links to the above, Youtube's algorithms belatedly offered me another New Music-style Braxton rendition, this time courtesy of a group called Ensemble Dal Niente. This performance was given in Chicago in 2019*, and the group - a nonet, plus conductor (though the music is specified "for large ensemble") - is entirely unknown to me. This time we are treated to a medley of two GTM pieces, namely Comps. 193 + 228 (the latter of which, coincidentally, comprises the primary territory for disc two of the very same Leo Records release which I linked in the previous post); I believe I am correct in saying that the one piece is first species and the other, second species GTM - but don't quote rush to quote me on that. The whole setting for this is a little weird, as the group is set up in the middle of a large room with the sparse audience scattered around, practically in amongst the actual musicians; as for the players, considering there are but nine of them and the sound comes across as well captured, the guitarist and pianist are basically inaudible throughout and the harp is mere unused furniture. The percussionist definitely gets to enjoy himself the most, though the horns and strings are also much in evidence; but the main thing that strikes the experienced experiencer about this is how very brief it is: two GTM compositions, in thirteen minutes?! All we get, of course, is the opening theme of one piece followed by the opening written theme of the next, with a tiny, ad hoc percussion solo in between; I say ad hoc, because in cueing it up, conductor Michael Lewanski scribbles something on a piece of paper with a marker, then flourishes it and gestures to percussionist Kyle Flens, before disposing of the paper; whatever he directed, it seems to have occurred to him just at that moment. I have to say, for all its startling brevity, this performance is actually pretty enjoyable, and it would be interesting to know if the group has played other Braxwerks, but it's definitely going to have to go down as a curiosity, a vignette, rather than any sort of finished interpretation.

***

Finally (for now!), I recently listened to a live recording from 1975 - September 14th in NYC - of the Art Ensemble of Chicago with B. and Frank Lowe. This is not an especially great-quality recording and of the four reedmen supposedly present, you don't really hear many of them at any given time: indeed - granted that I had this on in the background while carrying out undemanding household chores - I was not really aware of Lowe or Jarman at all. Mitchell can be heard from time to time, easily identifiable by his familiar habit of interspersing stiff, stilted attacks which sound completely unschooled with rapid passages that only a virtuoso could even attempt; I was starting to wonder whether B. himself was indeed even present on the date when, at 17.15 or thereabouts, there he was: he gets a couple of minutes more or less to himself on alto, with Don Moye spookily tinkling the vibes behind him, before other players take over around the 20-minute mark, just before there is a frustrating dropout, from which we return in a completely different place, unable to know how much we might have missed. But sure enough, there is B. again when the music comes back, although over the course of the whole 64-minute recording, I was mainly aware of Moye and Bowie, not so much the other players. Just after 45 minutes comes up on the clock, there is B. again, instantly identifiable... I don't remember ever hearing a recording before of him sitting in with AEC, so this is a collector's item for sure, even if it is incomplete and of slightly dubious quality. These musicians are never going to produce anything entirely devoid of interest and I daresay that if I listened again with full attention, I would have a rather more fulfilling hour-and-change, but on first pass, much of it drifted past my ears without really grabbing me. 

***

Now, when the hell are el NEGOCITO Records going to answer my damn emails?! I am still waiting, but so far I can't exactly give them a ringing endorsement... sorry folks.

* Despite being of rather more recent vintage than the Wet Ink video, this one has almost four times as many hits on Youtube. Go figure.

Some things I've checked out while I'm waiting (pt.1)

 I mentioned a few weeks ago - feels like longer, somehow! so much has happened, both locally to my household and within the UK (to say nothing of the world at large) - that I was practically dribbling with anticipation at the prospect of being able to order a copy of Kobe Van Cauwenberghe's Ghost Trance Septet double-CD... and once we had moved house, I did indeed order a copy. Unfortunately, at time of writing, I have still not actually received said item - I've not yet had any reply to my emails, either, and I'm really not sure if the album (release date June 2022, according to the website) is even out yet. (I'm also not overly impressed by the label's customer service so far, alas...)

... but in the meantime, I did look a little more into the Belgian guitarist's pedigree, and discovered that at some point in the fairly recent past he had played with Wet Ink Ensemble. I actually knew next to nothing about these guys, either, but a couple of years back, I did stumble across a recording online of their playing B's Comp. 227, a file which carried the cryptic (to me) description National Sawdust - at the time, I played the thing a few times, but of course I was well into my "mainly-dry" phase and didn't look any more deeply into - well, any of it. The name of the group meant nothing to me and although it was still pretty reassuring to know that (presumably) younger musicians were interpreting the maestro's work from time to time, I sort of left it at that.

Coming across the name again from a different angle made me look a bit harder - and besides, by this point I was fully "reawakened and thirsty" again. So, Wet Ink is a New Music group based in NYC, with a shifting personnel that seems to centre around pianist Eric Wubbels and violinist Josh Modney (although their website lists these two and six others as artists/co-directors, some of whom played on that recording). Evidently they were named “The Best Classical Music Ensemble of 2018” by The New York Times: now, whether or not the NY Times' opinion on such matters is worth airing, I can only guess, but it certainly sounds like a strong vote of confidence.

An internet search of Wet Ink + Braxton still brings up that same recording, among a few others. The file is permanently available via Soundcloud, whence I have now learned that the performance was part of an "Anthony Braxton Portrait Concert", given on January 20th, 2016 - National Sawdust would appear to be the NYC venue, although I'm still not sure about that (it could have been some sort of festival for all I know). The ensemble, on that occasion, comprised twelve players, although some of them were "guest collaborators": those, for sure, will at least have included the extraordinary trumpet section of Peter Evans and Nate Wooley (both already regarded by then as leading voices on their instrument). Other names familiar to me are trombonist Jacob Garchik (who has played in the septet and octet incarnations of Mary Halvorson's group), tubist Dan Peck and bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck: the latter pair have of course played with B's groups, Peck with the ZIM 'tets especially and Schoenbeck with the semi-legendary 12+1tet. Whether any of those three were part of the ensemble at the time, or drafted in as guests, I really don't know. (Cellist Mariel Roberts, who impressed me so much a month or so ago with her solo rendition of a George Lewis composition, is also much involved with the group these days, as is Sam Pluta, an electronics man slightly familiar to me through his association with Evan Parker; neither of them was present on this occasion, though the ensemble did include an electronics performer (electronicist?), Jeff Snyder.)

The group's rendition of Comp. 227 - previously recorded by a Braxton trio as one half of a double-CD on Leo Records - lasts just over twenty minutes, which (I'm beginning to conclude) is more or less par for the course with younger musicians' interpretations of the GTM territories; odd, really, since B's own explorations seldom last(ed) much under an hour, sometimes longer. Of course, I haven't had the benefit of looking at the scores (and I'm not saying I would understand how to read them if I did). We already know that they must include many spaces for improvisation, and that they can assimilate - once they are properly underway - the interpolation of (themes/elements from) any previous Braxton composition. Whether the "acolytes" don't tend to feel confident to explore these spaces much, or whether there is some other reason, I don't know, but it is intriguing to me to wonder whether large parts of the score are being omitted in these shorter renditions, or if there is some other explanation entirely..?

Anyway, the music is well worth a listen, or several listens - in my case, even over the course of twenty minutes I seem to hear it slightly differently each time. Comp. 227 is (I believe) second species GTM, with accelerandi factored into the theme, and the group really seems to enjoy attacking it. I have not succeeded yet in finding anything to single out from the performance, but I would definitely recommend checking it out.

(This post will spawn a "Pt.2" sometime soon...)

Party atmosphere

 

Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989 For Warne Marsh

A few more observations, then, on this very enjoyable (and, for B., rather personal) tribute album... at some point in the dim-and-distant I must have heard this album before, and I did already have a rip of it from the (cough) heyday of the blogosphere. But I really didn't remember anything much about it, so to all intents and purposes I might as well have been listening to it for the first time recently... when my CD copy arrived, I was not immediately in any position to listen to it at all, lacking anything on which to play it at the time. Even when the box containing my CD player turned up after the move, I couldn't do anything about it straight away. What with one thing and another, it took me until last Saturday night to get round to playing it. That, then, pretty much definitely was the first time I had heard the original, twelve-track, 75-minute 1990 release. It's rather better known now in its remastered and retitled version, clipped down to ten tracks. 

As usual at the moment, I shan't be cutting too deeply with this post. It would in any case be pretty pointless to try, since I have almost no familiarity with the original material: I don't know a huge amount about Tristano or his work, or his school; and if anything I know even less about Marsh, who (if I'm totally honest)

really only shows up on my radar at all by virtue of his status as one of B's touchstones. I have heard some of his recordings, but he's not a player who has ever particularly spoken to me*. 

So let's see what's left... well, first of all, let's just sort out this trivial matter of the album's title, which is surprisingly difficult to render in standard monochrome type (hence what I have done above). Most discographies (etc) insert a hyphen before the dedication For Warne Marsh; but you won't find a hyphen on the album cover, whichever version you get hold of... instead the title is split over two or more lines (depending on whether you're considering the original release or the remaster). On the original CD, the main title appears in red lettering, and the dedication is on the line below, in black. This I have tried to reproduce, in part, at the head of this post; without the use of colour there is not really any way to get it down without "cheating", inserting a punctuation mark which (strictly speaking) has no business being there.

The other thing to say about the title(s) is to do with the two different versions of the album. I already figured out last time that the whole "+1 / +3" thing concerns the number of inclusions which were not penned by Tristano; originally there were three of these, one ("Sax of a Kind") by Marsh himself, and two complete outliers, "songbook" standards whose connection to the other material is entirely beyond me, but which in any event were not written by Tristano nor by any of his students ("How Deep is the Ocean" is by Irving Berlin; "Time on my Hands" is credited on my CD - and elsewhere, including Discogs - to Vincent Youmans, although other sources co-credit two other writers... possibly these were lyricists?). The inclusion of these latter two numbers is not explained in the liner notes, but in any case, when the time came to reissue the album, Hat just excised them completely and hence discreetly adjusted the album's title. It does sort of make sense: besides their provenance, these two standards are played by a quartet with B. on flute; this does make for a bit of a "collector's curiosity" (I am not aware of B. regularly showcasing his fluttery flute-playing on standards; it's absolutely not his main axe, and in recent years he seems to have abandoned it altogether**), but it does also come across as a pretty strange choice for this project. Did Marsh ever play flute at all? Did any of Tristano's stable..?

- 'cos the instrumentation for the date is somewhat jarring anyway, although that ultimately just comes across as yet another example of B's charming eccentricity. As I mentioned before, heading up this project with alto & baritone sax is, on the face of it, bizarrely inappropriate. What would be interesting to know is: which came first? Did B. conceive the project with these eventual voicings already present, in his ears? (- in which case Raskin - with whom B. had worked the previous year - would have been an obvious choice) ... or had he perhaps bonded with the baritonist at the time of that earlier date, over a shared interest in Marsh's music, giving rise to musings which finally resulted in this recording? Again, this is not touched on in the liners (which are nevertheless pretty good, by the way, half by B. himself and half by Hat's go-to critic Art Lange). Either way, though, what may seem on paper - and initially to the ear - a very peculiar instrumentation turns out to be rather inspired. The music fizzes with excitement from the word go.

Several of the numbers are either brisk or flat-out fast, and of course I don't know what sort of tempo they had originally - although I do know that B. has always delighted in showing off his own (and his collaborators') virtuosity by hammering out difficult tunes at insane speeds (think of the pace at which he takes "Skippy" on the Monk covers album, another project from this same period***), so I would guess that "April" and "Victory Ball" in particular were not originally written to be played that fast. But even the less frantic pieces are imbued with a palpable, infectious sense of enjoyment. It's more or less impossible to listen to this recording without smiling. McBee and Cyrille - whose musical association is certainly not limited to this session, though I don't know to what extent it preceded it - are never remotely troubled even at the fastest tempos; pianist Dred Scott positively revels in them. That, by the way, is one question which is answered by the liner notes: this was Scott's first recording date, apparently, and according to Lange, he was a "25-year-old discovery of Braxton's"#. The listener would have no way of knowing that the pianist had never recorded before: his confidence and authority - no doubt bolstered by the unswerving faith and support of the leader - is remarkable throughout; and it's scarcely possible to miss it, since his presence becomes ever more noticeable as the programme progresses. "Baby", the penultimate selection, is played as a duet by B. and Scott, its very tricky melody line negotiated with faultless nonchalance by both men; on the craziest number of all, the album-closer "April", taken at ludicrous speed, Scott plays a marvellous extended solo which just seems to get more and more inspired, new ideas tumbling out of his fingers one after another in an exhilarating rush. (When he finally finishes his solo, Raskin picks up from him with a raucous series of explosive snorts and squeals which encapsulate the sheer energy of this performance.)

The maestro, naturally, plays an absolute blinder and must surely have enjoyed himself enormously. This two-day session pretty much provided the culmination of what was something of an odd period for B., who really didn't have a proper working band at the time, but who made up for it by embarking on the most extraordinary series of ad-hoc projects and collaborations, starting some time in 1986 and continuing right up to this very recording in December 1989. (To list them all here would be quite demanding; there is still a way to see what I'm talking about ##.) During this period, he got the chance to play his own music with unusual one-off groups, and he played other music(s) with new collaborators. Here, he got to pay tribute to one of his personal heroes, in a very specifically Braxtonesque fashion; we can only imagine what Marsh himself would have made of it - never mind Tristano, famously very hard to please - and it's quite possible that B. only really felt "safe" to unleash such a project once neither man was alive to hear (and judge) the results. Tristano had already been dead for over a decade, Marsh for a couple of years. How true this last supposition is or isn't, only B. could tell us; but however it came about and however long its gestation, the project's final flowering remains fresh and vital and hugely enjoyable.

* B. would probably say I just haven't listened properly. In the liner notes, he recounts an experience of his own, listening to a new Marsh album which initially did nothing for him: "... but with Warne... well, you had to come to it 'somewhat differently'... It was my listening that had been off."

** It's entirely possible that this just isn't true, and that I'm either misremembering it or simply haven't heard recent recordings where B. does play the flute. I do know that he has always been quite self-deprecating about his flute playing.

*** As it happens, this was the very first Braxton album I bought, quite some time before I took a special interest in him - though I was already aware of him as a significant name for me: that is, I reckoned almost at first encounter that this was someone I needed to explore later, but was not in any position to engage with just yet. I was, however, already collecting Monk covers as I came across them.

# - so presumably Scott was a student at Mills (?). [I did look him up; he went on to have a most singular career, much of it not really in jazz at all, and recently published an autobiography with the outrageous title Fifty Thousand Bong Hits.]

## Whisper it quietly, but (a version of) the Restructures discography is still available online. I mean it: don't go telling too many people about this in case Jason finds out and gets them to take it down. It's not the final version - there's plenty of late releases missing from it. But to say it's better than nothing is a serious understatement. 

Fifteen years...

 

Well now: it's fourteen years to the day since this little development, which tells me too that it is roughly fifteen years since McClintic Sphere started this here blog, which I joined shortly thereafter. Yes, the actual first post was laid down on October 9th, not the 7th, but... let's not be too fussy about these things. (As it happens, now is when I have time to write about it.)

Fifteen years... an awful lot has happened since then. Purely in terms of this endeavour, though: quite a lot has happened with that, too. It's just that none of it was very recent ;-)

But regardless of what happened in the past - including but not limited to the things which could have happened and didn't, or which could have been avoided and weren't - this feels above all like a time to look to the future rather than to dwell on the past. It's an odd situation for me, to be sure: outside this house, the world appears to be going completely crazy (in ways few people could have envisaged, back in 2007); yet within this household, there is a positive feeling and indeed there are little signs of growth and progress everywhere I look. One of these, clearly, is the fact that after years of half-arsed promises to resume writing this blog one day, I finally did it; as I have said before, it's pretty unimportant whether anyone besides me even sees the results in the first instance, since it is so obviously beneficial to me to write again. Of course, if anyone else does read it... great! In the meantime: onwards...

I am installed in the new house now (after an extremely protracted and messy move), and I did eventually locate my CD player the other day - although I have still not managed to find enough time to myself to use it yet - so at some point I will undertake:

- one final (for now) recapitulation of the Rainbow Gallery '79 bootleg

- a more detailed listen to the "Tristano/Marsh" quintet love-in from 1989

- a long-threatened write-up of "the" Thumbscrew album (yes! really!!)

... and I have ordered, but am still rather eagerly awaiting, the Kobe Van Cauwenberghe Ghost Trance Septet album, which looks utterly mouth/ear?-watering. 

I also have several live videos cued up which I'm waiting to watch, as time permits. Some of these, at least, will no doubt prove interesting enough to inspire a few written observations. The idea, really, is that with practice I can go more deeply into the material and spend less time scratching around the surface layers (as I have been doing recently).

Happy birthday, blog. (McC, if you're reading: here's to you - cheers!)

One final round-up...

 

... for this month (which has already seen me publish more posts than in any month since January 2013; that is to say, it's very nearly a full decade since I was this active. - If, indeed, we can call it "active" when I have not really been exactly doing any deep dives just yet... that's ok, I am still warming up here). 

Today's daily Braxton turned out to be this performance, which (among other things) carries with it a little warning - one which is scarcely needed by most people, I'm sure - regarding jumping to conclusions about stuff uploaded to Youtube (... as well as a second warning about relying on Discogs for lists of releases). I didn't recognise the cover, and the upload itself has precisely zero information (date, venue, personnel, composition number etc... all missing), but for no very good reason at all I allowed the channel's name - which relates to Bulgaria - to fool me into thinking that this was a concert given in that country (despite the fact that the writing on the top left of the cover looked suspiciously like Portuguese, and for that matter that Bulgarian is not written in the Roman alphabet, but in modified Cyrillic). It was obvious at once that this is a Diamond Curtain Wall piece, and also obvious just a couple of minutes into the recording that the quartet, in this case, comprised two reeds, one brass, and the unmistakeable Mary Halvorson; it's an absolute dead cert then that the brass player is of course THB (never absent from these performances, as far as I know - and pretty much as readily-identifiable as MH, anyway), and I figured the second reed player - not a bassoonist* - was James Fei. I was ready to assume, basically, that this was a concert from the European trip which also yielded this recording (which I wrote about, back in the day**) - at this point I hadn't actually looked the recording up, and had forgotten that the string player on that Polish date was (violist) Erica Dicker, not MH.

Anyway, eventually I did get round to investigating, and it took me all of one search and one click to locate the actual source of the recording. This, of course, explains why the writing looked like Portuguese: the concert is one of two presented in São Paulo, at SESC Pompéia (which looks really interesting in itself, actually), on 7th and 8th August 2016. The present recording comprises the first concert: hence, the primary territory here is Comp. 366d (four others, three of which are also from the 366 series, are listed as secondaries). The second reed player, as it turns out, was not Fei at all, but rather Ingrid Laubrock.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that I should know better by now than to assume anything about a recording on (a public platform such as) Youtube, this does highlight the difficulty of using Discogs as a reference point, especially for a recording artist as prolific as B. It hadn't occurred to me that this was an official release, simply because I didn't recognise it; I didn't recognise it, because although the vast majority of B's albums can be found under his master entry, Discogs is above all a site created by and for super-nerdy detail-freaks (takes one to know one... ahem); and the Anthony Braxton Quartet, as such, has its own distinct entry. I did know this and had forgotten all about it***.

The music, you ask? It's fabulous, rich in detail and beautifully recorded - all four players seize the chance to shine. It's oh-so-tempting, indeed, to say that it's a "particularly good example" of DCW, or even "one of the best" yadda-yadda... but this would be pure lazy critic speak since, really, I never heard a DCW recording I didn't like; maybe just maybe one or two of them aren't quite as inspired as many others, and this one really does sound as if the players were lit up for sure (as well they might have been, performing in such an extraordinary environment). But it's actually quite a long time since I heard any DCW pieces and as excellent as this one is, I am in no position to say where it ranks in relation to the others of its ilk. It is, however, really good - I enjoyed it immensely and the actual album has (of course) immediately gone onto my wanted list.

***

The very first "daily dose" in the new house, after the recent move, was this (confusingly-titled) album, which I do have as a rip but don't own in proper form, and have not heard for years and years. As some readers may recall, I am not exactly "Mr Standards" at the best of times (although it depends what you mean by standards#), and with rare exceptions, I haven't generally been a hugely enthusiastic listener to B's projects along such lines, being vastly more interested in his own music (even while I respect his continued exploration of the jazz songbook(s) as a practice). This one, however, won me over pretty quickly. It doesn't hurt that several of the pieces are taken very fast, and sound pretty intense as a result; the instrumentation - with B. on alto and sopranino exclusively, and John Raskin on baritone - is curious and quite effective (the album is of course dedicated to Warne Marsh rather than to Tristano, and Marsh played (nothing but) tenor; but he famously had a very "light" tone on his axe, and on recordings he made with Lee Konitz it's not necessarily obvious that one is hearing an alto and a tenor as opposed to two altos). The personnel is/are also interesting: Raskin himself being an eyebrow-raising choice as noted, piano duties are undertaken by Dred Scott, a player with whom I am not familiar at all (but who is not, it seems, your "average jazz musician"; I have no idea how he ended up being recruited for this gig); the rhythm section is completed by Cecil McBee and Andrew Cyrille, two jazz legends who have played with each other many many times, for example on one of Horace Tapscott's better-known recordings (by coincidence - or not? - that one also dates from 1989, though it was not released until much later).

Besides the leader, who has an absolute field day with this project (and really tears into "Victory Ball" in particular, so much so that they simply had to include two takes of that number), Scott is the standout player for me: I found his piano work on this really unusual and interesting - so that I frequently stopped whatever I was doing to listen to his solos, though of course I can't now remember any specific details from any of them. Overall, though, I really did enjoy this album a lot - and have since bought a copy. 

As I alluded to above, I found the title confusing: 8+1 = 10? It seemed likely, after all, that the "+1" aspect of the title referred to the second take of "Victory Ball". I was pretty busy at the time and I didn't stop to investigate... so it was only today, in a quieter moment (actually recovering from an intense burst of post-move activity), that I took the time to look at the matter properly. At that point, of course, I was reminded that the recording I had listened to is a reissue/remaster of an earlier edition dating from 1990 - where the titular equation had been 8+3 = 12. The answer, in case it's not obvious, is that the second take of "Victory Ball" is not counted at all, and that the "+" aspect of the title(s) relates to pieces which were not composed by Tristano: in the original case, there were three of these, one by Marsh himself and two "songbook standards"##; for the reissue, the two ringers were dropped, leaving us with the eight tunes written by Tristano, and the one penned by his diligent student. (Upon discovering that there was a copy of the original 1990 CD available from a UK-based seller, for literally half the price of the other copies available over here, I promptly bought it. I can live with the fact that it's not the remastered edition.)

***

Something else I have bought this week is, as I mused might well happen, the notorious Rainbow Gallery boot. This was actually listed as a new copy, but given that it cost me well under a fiver, including postage, I am confident that the bootleggers aren't going to be getting rich through any agency of mine. (As I rambled to myself last time, who cares that this is a shoddily-chucked-together, unauthorised piece of shit? No, I wouldn't buy it from the label, and I would never dream of paying more than a few quid for it; but it's still a pretty interesting recording to have.) When it arrives, I will see whether a proper listen to the CD reveals anything previously not discerned by this friendly experiencer... assuming, that is, that I can find something to play it on by then###.

***

Finally, a very quick word about something else I have been digging since we moved house: a solo concert which I hadn't heard before, and I do own quite a few of the solo alto albums on CD (as well as having rips of several others). I was peripherally aware of this one, for which the materials principally favour the 170 series, and once again I am terribly tempted to make like a music journo and say it's one of the best, blah blah. Realistically - and I have definitely said this before, and more than once - B. is never ever going to let his level slip when it comes to his core discipline, the theory and practice of alto saxophone playing; and in concerts where he is presenting this core discipline in its pure form, interpreting music which in many cases he has only recently written for the instrument, there is zero chance of anything short of total commitment and focus, so listening satisfaction is pretty much guaranteed. With all that said, though, I really was extremely impressed by this album - and I personally did enjoy it more than, say, this more recent one. (But... that probably just means that I was more distracted when playing that other album. Ignore me...)

***

McC S: thanks for your comment. I did see it - I am not sure if you already know why I have not been in a position to respond to it. I will get back to you via email, give me a few days please :-D

* In case that sounds ridiculously random: bassoonist Katherine Young featured in some of the DCW groups around this time.

** For the benefit of any reader who follows that link and is tempted to hunt down the article about Comp. 23c: don't waste any time looking for it... it never made it out of draft form. Sorry! (who knows, maybe one day I might actually finish it?!)

*** This does not, however, explain why (for example) the first disc of the 1993 Santa Cruz concert reissue is listed under the quartet, whereas the second disc is to be found on B's main page(s). Evidently, it depends on which part of the album covers' text you read as the group name, and which part the title...

# I used to make a point of collecting (albums of) Monk covers, for example. I would also consider buying an album just because it included a version of any Eric Dolphy tune. These would probably be considered standards, at this point (anything by Monk obviously falls into that category)

## I presume these two outliers are there for a reason, e.g. Tristano, or maybe Marsh, enjoyed playing them..? But I don't actually know what they were doing there in the first place (and Hat clearly thought they were superfluous to requirements)

### Just before we moved, my little CD player - which I have been using lately - was one of the things I earmarked for moving on its own, rather than letting it be put in a box with a bunch of other stuff from the same room. Alas, I remembered most of the others but by the time I remembered that one, it was too late and it was already packed. Not by me. Hence I currently find myself in a house full of boxes, with no idea which one of them contains my poor CD player. It's there somewhere.

In memoriam Pharoah Sanders

 

13th October 1940 - 24th September 2022

A true legend, one of the towering figures of free music

RIP

*****

I am sitting here listening to Black Unity (1972)... anyone else?

By chance, just last week I was writing about an old university friend of mine who attended the 2004 Royal Festival Hall quintet concert with me - there's a little bit about this in the last footnote on the linked post. The last time I was in touch with this friend, back in January this year, he tipped me off about a short radio programme he had produced for the BBC, part of a series he had been working on: the edition in question was a profile of Pharoah Sanders...