Growth over Time = Movement

 

Sextet (Istanbul) 1996  (Braxton House)

Most of the really early GTM recordings were still unavailable to me until very recently, and when I managed to get hold of them, I promptly set about hearing the very first experiments at last - and writing about them. The intention was always to follow that up in due course...

Ghost Trance Music may very well end up being widely regarded as a highly significant development in western art music. Straddling the final years of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, it really represents the full expression of an idea which had been itching away at the composer since the early seventies: how to use a melody line with even spacing between the notes as a springboard for something much more open and free: how to generate something fresh, spontaneous and completely unpredictable from within a strictly-regulated framework. It's long since occurred to me that the second phase of Comp. 40f prefigures the development of GTM, but although that piece goes all the way back to 1976, it's not the first time that such an idea was presented. I'd even written in some detail about a substantially earlier prototype; I just hadn't correctly understood what Comp. 23m was a prototype for. But it's surely no accident that in the years preceding the genesis of GTM per se, the Forces Quartet returned to 23m again and again. There was something vital there that the composer's mind couldn't leave alone. So we can certainly trace the germination of the core idea all the way back to 1973, if not any further.

As I mentioned before, the vagaries involved with B's first attempt to launch his own record label meant that the very first GTM compositions to be recorded were not the first to be released: it's only in retrospect that we can experience these recordings in the "correct" order. The second (official*) recording of this important new development was the first to see release, however many people it actually reached at the time: Sextet (Istanbul) 1996. In an early hint of the sort of confusion I recently moaned about with regard to B's second label, the album's title mistakenly gives the year of release rather than the year of recording**: this performance took place on 14th October 1995, at the Turkish AkBank J.F. One more time for the world: this is creative music, not pop, and nobody (apart from a label's promotional staff or accountants) gives a damn about the release date of anything. What we need to know, always, is precisely where in the continuum of the maestro's creative career to locate an individual event. Recording date..!

Anyway... with this type of music being so very new, and given that (presumably) only the composer's immediate circle knew that Comp. 181-184 had already been captured for posterity, what would be really interesting to know is whether or not the festival audience knew anything about the music in advance. Of course, either way, it won't have taken them very long to find out that something different was taking place from whatever they might have expected, based on previous experience; but I'd still like to know if any background information was provided at the time of the concert***. If not, there must have been some pretty confused faces on display after the first few minutes...

... because this is of course GTM, 1st species, and that is above all characterised by unison repetition of the written theme in order to induce (something approximating) a trance state in the listener: as the system evolved, this latter imperative fell away entirely#, even as the name Ghost Trance Music remained, but in the early stages it was an essential aspect of the music - and part of what generated this effect was the simple fact of repetition. If the audience members were not aware beforehand, they must have been getting a bit twitchy as ten minutes of passed with very little in the way of a typical Braxton performance, and practically nothing germane to jazz (free or otherwise); with the studio quartet expanded to incorporate a brass player - trombonist Roland Dahinden, gaining some of the crucial experience he would put to good use later - and a second string player - violinist Jason (Kao) Hwang - the group is well set up for exploration, but there is not much of it in those first few minutes in Istanbul. Some early hints of discordance, of course - nothing very new about that - and a few scraps of what could indicate departure from the theme, although they turn out not to be: for example, within about two minutes there are ascending legato phrases from several players, which the (GTM-experienced) listening ear could pick up on as signs of impending breakout, and around the 4.30 mark Kevin Norton slips out of the basic rhythm completely; but the first real flight away from the thematic material doesn't occur until 10.21 when the leader (on what sounds like bass clarinet) embarks on a solo...

... which still lasts only a few seconds, before folding back into the written theme. Again: if the audience didn't already know that they were in for something completely new and different... they certainly do by now. Of course, there would have been a considerable difference between how the new strategies were received by those who were really listening closely (for whom all these fractional variations would be magnified), and others whose attention was wandering (to whom all this might just have sounded like weird background music) - to say nothing of those who might have (say) strayed in almost by mistake, expecting something good an' jazzy. 1st species: the pulse just keeps going. The performance never becomes fully open and free; instead, what happens is that players gradually take it in turns to deviate slightly (or radically) from the written material in ones and twos, spreading their wings for short-range test-flights while the rest of the ensemble keeps the pulse alive; always, always these flights return to their starting point and resume the theme immediately upon landing. Here, what the (close/conscious) listener marvels at is above all the subtlety of the changes and variations, as different players take up the hypnotic pulse while others leave it, continuously blurring the distinction between foreground and background.

By the time B. and Dahinden take off together##, it could be that minutes or hours have passed; and although gradually more voices join them in the outer regions - until it feels as if there is a whole multitude of them, joining in with what eventually becomes fully wild - Ted Reichman is still holding the fort, so to speak, keeping the pulse alive... it is never lost and sure enough, the others all return to it in due course. 

The phase in which the structure comes closest to complete disintegration is almost the opposite of the wild joys described in the previous paragraph: 26 minutes in, the soundscape has grown much more subdued, and by 27.20 it is almost completely open; but this is a sort of pastoral dreamscape, with B. on flute, Norton on vibes, the most skeletal of backing - and, briefly, almost no discernible pulse, although Reichman is still gently plugging away in the background. At 29.53, B. oozes his way in with the (dearly-beloved) seamonster, and this - at long last, well into the second half of the piece### - heralds the opening of a truly free space, far beyond the pulse; for perhaps a second, at 31.13, there is a total pause and the tiniest fragment of actual silence. - And the next phase of the voyage, beginning at 33.02, takes us somewhere entirely new, B. and Joe Fonda sketching out what sounds like secondary/tertiary^ material - reminiscent of Comp. 136^^ - the leader on a clarinet of some variety; this in turn quickly drifts into a remarkable solo, where B. first seems to be crying through his horn (from around 34.20) in an astonishing manner, then begins (35.40) to issue subvocalised growls with it, really tearing loose and treating us to all manner of extraordinary sounds... and some cathartic applause follows this at 37.06, the audience presumably responding to the visual cue of the maestro switching horns. Dahinden, Fonda and Norton promptly begin moving us back towards something more formal again, and sure enough, the written theme resumes soon after that...

... except that it doesn't: whether or not the audience knows it, we have now switched primary territories, from Comp. 185 to 186, and the fact that this must be as close as possible to a seamless experience for the CD listener - just as it was for the concert audience - explains the otherwise inexplicable way in which the two pieces are split across the album's two discs^^^. Again, I am reminded here of Comp. 136 with its staccato repetition-clusters of individual notes; this second theme has quite a different feel to it, as well as being a few beats quicker. 

It is not necessary from here to do a full commentary on the (longer) second piece; the details above hopefully give some sort of idea of how this fresh new music must have sounded, to an attentive listener, as it unfolded for the first time. The second piece follows a similar pattern - unison theme-repetition succeeded by eventual breakout phases and extraordinary musical occurrences - and the whole experience is really quite addictive after a while. But there are so many variations and moments of magic that I would never want to attempt a full tissue dissection; suffice it to say that everyone gets chances to shine (albeit briefly in some cases), and the more one listens to it, the better it gets. There are nevertheless a couple of special happenings in this second piece which we don't get in the first, and I will describe these.

Starting around 8.50 in track three (i.e. the only track on disc two), and presumably in response to B's cue, the pulse begins to slow down dramatically, almost seeming to reach a total halt at one point; but no, the spacing of the notes remains regular, even as the tempo has slowed to a crawl and the spaces between those notes have lengthened considerably. In turn, around 9.45 the pace starts to pick up again, reaching its full initial tempo by around 10.25 and the ensemble navigates its way skilfully towards a new phase: the flawless way in which this rallentando/accelerando passage is negotiated seems terribly clever, although presumably when the visual cues were available, it made more sense and was less mysterious in its workings. 

The other (quite amazing) standout section occurs around three-quarters of the way through the second disc: approaching 29 minutes, Dahinden and Reichman have been leading a general slow-down, but not of the written theme this time; it's quite possible that this next phase is a type of language music, as around 29.55, following a gradual mudslide into the lower registers of the various instruments (and the corresponding slowing of the tempo to glacial pace), Hwang - playing what sounds like a treated violin - begins to lead the group into a series of queasy slides and squeaks which really have to be heard to be believed. Naturally, this too is left behind as the group inches its way upwards and out of the morass, reprising a section of the theme, and we still have time for another fabulous solo by the leader - among sundry other delights - before the piece winds down to a close. - Perhaps unusually, although the world did not yet have any idea what "usual" meant in this case, the performance ends not in "mid-air" (to foster the impression of a perpetual theme without beginning or end), but with the group subsiding gradually to a stop. 

What the audience was really being shown here, of course - easy for us to understand this in hindsight - is that although this may have seemed a music of surprising strictness, compared with what had come before, it was (is) really one of limitless possibilities for individual expression. As we now know, working through this overarching concept in all its manifold implications would preoccupy the composer for the next decade and more. How exciting must this have sounded, at the time?

* I put this caveat here simply because there may exist unofficial recordings from this period - I just don't know of any

** That is, I presume it was a sort of mistake and not outright perversity. The issue becomes more of a problem with the releases on New Braxton House, or more specifically with the information available for them on Bandcamp

*** It occurs to me that Volkan T. is the man to ask, but I have completely lost touch with him... will I now be able to re-establish it, I wonder..?

# I am far from the first person to notice this and comment on it: I recently read an observation on this exact point, i.e. the way in which the 3rd species, accelerator class pieces had evolved so far (and become so dissonant) that the "trance" effect had all but vanished. (I just wish I could remember now exactly where I read that..! I have heard so much GTM recently, and speed-read so many sets of liner notes, that I can't remember who said this or when. I will update the comment if/when I eventually find out...)

## Knowing what's coming, one can trace the buildup of this part back as far as 16.45 on track one; at 21.20 B. has departed solo, joined then by Dahinden, and by 23 minutes they are all "off on one" apart from Reichman (and Fonda, intermittently). By 24 minutes this phase is over and we're back in unison

### That is, the second half of track one / Comp. 185 - not the second half of the whole performance

^ I have a tendency to use these terms more or less interchangeably, for the simple reason that I never could remember the (proper) difference. I think I am right in saying that secondary material is the use of specified language types, while the interpolation of B's back-catalogue pieces qualifies as tertiary material. Bill Shoemaker says something very similar to this in his notes on Comp. 222 from the album Four Compositions (Washington, D​.​C​.​) 1998 (NB these notes can be found here). I am inclined to think that he probably got this information from a reliable source.

^^ I'm getting slightly ahead of myself here, because I have not yet done the comparative analysis of (the different versions of) Comp. 136 that I've been promising. I do now tend to recognise it when it crops up, mainly due to the repetitions of notes that are present in the first part of its written theme. Dahinden seems to have been a big fan of it; perhaps that began around here

^^^ Disc one of course contains Comp. 185, and the first part (up to 19.09) of Comp. 186. Without listening to the album one would never comprehend the reasoning behind this, as 186 in toto lasts just under sixty minutes and would therefore easily fit on one CD without being broken in two. But the performance saw one piece blend seamlessly into the next, and this must be replicated for the CD listener, as far as possible. Of course, it is not possible to replicate the concertgoer's experience completely: having begun 186 on disc one, it's then necessary to break off (at a relatively quiet moment) and resume it on disc two, and in order to avoid anything at all being missed, a few seconds are in fact repeated. It's a botch fix, but the best solution which the limitations of the format offered...

(Re)orientation

 

It feels like a good time to put one of these catch-ups together, not least to allow me to take stock of my own various (slow-moving) lines of enquiry, since these keep multiplying and mutating... also, we were away for a few days with decidedly unreliable internet, so my original plan to do some writing during that time went completely out the window. Never mind... I'm here now.

That earlier post in May really represented the first time (at least since I resumed blogging last year) that I had systematically laid out a plan of where I was going, or at least intending to go; before that, I just kept such things in my head and trusted that I wouldn't forget them. At the start of May, that approach no longer seemed very practical - not least because as I get older, I am increasingly failing to convert short-term memory to long-term memory, and... I do tend to forget things more than I used to. (It took me some time to admit this to myself.) So it just seemed sensible to make myself a list, and having done so, to publicise it here.

That list, though, was subject to change the following month when I posted another list, this time with my "most wanted" on it - and (with the help of a couple of longtime "friendly co-experiencers") very quickly acquired most of the recordings on it (and more besides). All that new material brought with it new subject matter for future posts; for example, I knew almost at once that I would want to write about the very first GTM recordings. That then became a new line of enquiry, not just a one-off post: a second instalment will follow very soon... although I'm not sure how far I'll be able to track that particular line before it gets too complicated to follow.

I still have repertoire to write about it - whole albums of the stuff - but I was never in any danger of forgetting about that. Some recent acquisitions though have also got me thinking about recordings - especially early ones - where B. was featured, not as a leader or writer or even a special guest, but as an actual sideman; I'm not completely sure how much material I can find there, but I'm pretty sure there's something in it. 

Getting back to GTM, McC. and I have been talking about the possibility of putting together a sort of "family tree", not of musicians as such, but for B's different musical strategies and systems in the post-collage era; this is not as easy as it might sound: it's not just a matter of writing out a list (already done that, sort of - but that's not the kind of thing we're envisaging here). So I would say that more R&D will be required, but given that it's something I've been wanting to get clear in my head for a little while, I'd also say it's a realistic and achievable target... one of these days ;-)

Having also acquired some more physical recordings recently, several of which are solo saxophone efforts, I have had further thoughts on those - and specifically on For Alto, an album I had not revisited for years; so that's another thing on the expanding to-do list, albeit I may well end up repeating myself a bit when it comes to observations about that particular album*.

The original idea behind June's big band post was to develop another line of enquiry around the overarching concept of the creative orchestra in general - that is, where it particularly entails a large ensemble stuffed full of soloists**. - And, you know, wherein the precise differences lie between that sort of big band and one where the musicians are mostly just lucky to be there and have no role beyond being told what to do and trying their best to do it; clearly there will be differences, but the extent to which these end up being hugely significant... well, that's another matter***. I seem to keep acquiring these large ensemble recordings, one way or another, and they are mostly of the "star-studded cast" variety, but as massively enjoyable as these are to listen to, that doesn't necessarily translate into my being able to write about them. Undecided, at this point...

Of course, the line of enquiry which has been most flagged up in preparatory posts - and most assiduously procrastinated - is that which leads eventually to Ensemble Montaigne (Bau 4) 2013. Little did I think, when I first bought this album on CD and conceived the idea of trying to break it down into its constituent parts, that so many different pieces of background research would be required - and, naturally, I'm taking forever to get that research done. Still, it's gradually taking shape - and the next step along that line will be to examine (in some detail) Comp. 136... which I seem to keep running into lately, whichever way I turn. That, besides leading me closer to the 2013 recording, will also set me up nicely for some more comparative analyses of individual pieces; technically I have already done one of these this year, even if it was presented more as the final (for me... for now) word on the Thumbscrew album than as the first of anything. [I genuinely still don't know the answer to the obvious(ish) question: with my having no formal musical training to accompany my close listening and obsessive interest in the subject matter, is there anything of lasting value to be gained from my attempting such analysis in the first place..?]

Of course there will also be spontaneous posts... and further direct-to-camera moments such as this one... and other things as yet undreamt of,  depending on what I see, read and hear between now and - whenever. But for the time being, the above is more or less what remains in the pipeline at this stage... until that time..!

* I do tend not to re-read my own stuff, especially the older posts; occasionally I have to, but otherwise I try to avoid it. When I do, I am often quite surprised by how much detail I managed to cram in the first time around - and may have since forgotten - so that if I revisit a certain album or concert, etc etc, I may well end up repeating some things I've already said as well as adding newer conclusions. Given that I last wrote about For Alto more than fifteen years ago, whatever I write next about it may well end up being guilty of such unconscious repetition. Tough ;-)

** Obviously, B. did not invent this vehicle: other bandleaders had very much already pioneered it, probably starting with Duke Ellington - indeed I seem to remember that this is precisely one of the innovations with which the latter was credited.

*** One can assume that the differences are primarily a matter for the leader, who can count on greater skill (and possibly familiarity with the music) from experienced soloists; but who may nevertheless encounter fewer egos to keep happy with a band full of (ahem) "spear-carriers". Swings and roundabouts... however, with a bandleader of B's very considerable talents, this may end up being a fairly negligible difference since he can generally rely on fully enthusiastic cooperation from any band under his direction. Hence, also, the differences for the listener may not always be that significant either. (Or are they?! It could take me quite a long time to get a decent answer to that one.)

When is a wall not a wall?

 

- when it's a Diamond Curtain Wall, obviously.

Let's see... walls divide. They close off structures, forming hard boundaries; they prevent free movement. 

None of that applies here, of course. Here the "wall" is more of a backdrop, against which any number of extraordinary unplanned events might take place. 

I have been listening to - among many other things - the monster NBH set 12 Duets (DCWM) 2012*. What this set shows us, above all, is that the traditional format for one of these meetings - a trio, or possibly a quartet** - is really not necessary. Two players, plus the interactive SuperCollider software, are the only essential ingredients when it comes down to it. For whatever reason, it took several years for that to be understood; and this is not to say that there is anything wrong with having trios or quartets use this musical strategy (far from it) - simply that, if it had been assumed for the first few years that three was the minimum number of players required to exploit the model successfully, that turned out not to be the case at all***. 

[Actually, there is probably no reason why a soloist-plus-SuperCollider setup wouldn't work... I just don't know of anyone having tried it yet. Still, that does become something essentially different at that point because it would no longer be based around human interaction.]

What you do need, in principle, is voices which have a good timbral range - hence two of the duet partners in this expanded set are fairly obvious choices: a vocalist (Kyoko Kitamura) and a violinist (Erica Dicker). The third choice is rather less obvious, though hardly unexpected: bassoonist Katherine Young had played in DCWM groups before, so had prior familiarity with the system's possibilities; it's just not the most... expressive instrument in any orchestra#, being rather a voice which is deployed typically for the one timbre it can naturally produce, the distinctive purring/buzzing tone (which other woodwinds don't normally have in their range, although as we know, saxophonists with enough technical skill can manage it). A brave choice, for this project? Let's find out.

It's worth just pointing out something very obvious here, as well: that's right, all three duet partners were female. B. has made a real manifesto point of wanting to encourage more female practitioners in creative music (as in other walks of life), and in the case of this project, all he was doing was giving extensive opportunity to three musicians whose skills and abilities he already knew well - they just happened to be women. So it both is and isn't a social statement: insofar as the decision fits a previously-stated intention, it can be interpreted as a sociopolitical act, but really I think it's more just a case of trying to normalise something which B. feels should never have been anything other than normal in the first place. A series of duets with three female players needn't be any more remarkable than the same with male players, after all. (And DCWM meetings with all-male personnel do exist.)

Something else of note about the recordings in this monster set - something new to me, at least - is that in certain cases the software is used to create a "non-standard" backing. In its earlier days - and pretty much ever since, for that matter - SuperCollider had a fairly typical sound to it, mainly seeming to consist in simultaneous electronic pitches which may resonate together... or may clash, sometimes with head-splitting results. The software is interactive - whatever that really means in this context## - and does change subtly during the course of a performance; and live sets of this stuff typically last around an hour, the same as most GTM concerts did by this stage (by which I mean the second half of the 2000s). But here, in the case of several of the twelve long explorations, what we get instead is a decidedly non-varying soundscape, based around a specific "envelope" or sound, creating its own distinctive ambience which is notably different from what we would usually get. Tracks three and five, for example, feature low, rumbling vibrations which never really change very much but unfold like distant storms. (If this sounds dull, it isn't; rather, it's extremely effective.) Track six uses a mixture - from the outset - of typical frequencies and blarts or squelches. Track seven uses a "bubbling" sound, which at times comes across as like hearing an explosion in slow motion. The two most experimental approaches, perhaps unsurprisingly, are saved for the third duo, where the two woodwinds are backed on track ten by sped-up echoes of themselves, apparently - the overall effect being akin to spending the best part of an hour on the edge of a swarm of bees, or inside an insect hive - and on track twelve by sped-up human speech, incomprehensible but identifiable as such. This enhanced backing does work particularly well with the bassoon, but in truth, although the latter instrument might be thought of as a useful addition in a quartet, but unsuitable for a smaller grouping, I didn't find any of the twelve performances tedious or lacking in variety. Like I say, two players is all that you really need...

Now, what I really haven't figured out at all is the way(s) in which the scores/territories are negotiated. In the "old days" - where we got the details of the composition at all - it would be just one opus number, always subdivided by a letter: Comp. 323a for example, or 323c. I never had more than a hazy idea of what that actually meant: was 323 a series, like 40 or 69 or one of the solo books? Or was it essentially a single territory, through which a number of different paths could be taken? (That was always a possibility, even if the "different paths" aspect was always also true of GTM, for which the opus numbers never have letters affixed to them.) Later on, this got enhanced - and complicated - by the addition of second, third, fourth... territories: I first became aware of this only last year, as far as I remember, when I heard the Brazilian release 

Ao Vivo Jazz Na Fábrica, in which the two main sets each incorporate five territories. In each case, one of these five is a non-DCWM piece; but the others... well, this is where it really threatens to become very messy because if the release information ("track listing"###) is correct, set one took in four different subdivisions of Comp. 366 (plus the GTM structure 214^)... and what does that actually indicate? Four different (semi-)prescribed paths through the same giant territory, or shorter readings of four different compositions? Even knowing that 366 ran as far as 366g in terms of its variants, I was already reluctant to entertain the idea of these representing separate, full-blown compositions...

... and by the time I got a proper look at the NBH box set we are dealing with here - where some of the subdivisions run all the way up to 364j, 365k and even 366m - well, surely even a composer as driven and prolific as the maestro can't have been writing parallel sets of up to thirteen different full-length compositions (knowing that not all of them would even get played, necessarily). Or would he?! I simply don't know. All I can do is guess - 

- nor does even the above set out the entirety of the problem. You see, we also have at least some of the opus numbers interpreted by Falling River Music quartets - and these look horribly familiar. Admittedly (as I have lamented previously) we don't have proper titles for the two official FRM sextets; but just the four sets for which we do have titles present an enigma. If we are to believe the information on the official Bandcamp page(s) - and I shan't take it as gospel by any means, but it's all we have to go on for the time being - then Vol. 3 of the FRM quartets is Comp. 365a, which is also the primary territory for track/disc 9 of the Duets box. Even if we did not have this dead-on match, just the knowledge (...) that Comp. 365 (for example) may be used for two entirely different and distinct strategies - and the FRM pieces do sound completely different - is enough to confuse matters a great deal further. Regardless of how much of the score is in graphic notation, we know that any of these longer works contains a fair proportion of written lines, and the times at which players combine their attacks to play the same line confirms this; so it's not merely a matter of an amorphous, pictorial score which can be read one way if the strategy for the occasion is DCWM and another way entirely if it's FRM. No, much as it frustrates me to have to admit it - at this point, fifteen years after I heard DCWM - all I have is questions and more questions when it comes to this stuff. 

These are not even the only questions; also, while I'm at it, the secondary/tertiary materials for quite a few of the DCWM sets are GTM pieces, but I can't say I was ever really aware of that while listening to them (even if my attention was rarely undivided on these occasions). Which aspects of those scores are being deployed? Even yet still further questions... but... nevertheless... it's not quite true to say that all I have is questions. There is always the music, after all. Immersed in that, I don't find myself worrying over details so much. And that's just as well, since I have no intention at this point of delving into any of these twelve readings with a view to unpacking the details..! No, but I have really enjoyed hearing them and I'm sure I shall do again. C'est cela qui compte, enfin...

* I don't have the physical box set, but it's not yet sold out... more realistically, it's available for download via the Bandcamp page; in the meantime, if you can't find them on the usual platforms, the tracks can be streamed from Bandcamp (though perhaps not indefinitely)

** I'm not aware of any DCWM group larger than a quartet. Anybody?

*** After these performances were recorded, the duo experiment was repeated at least once... not quite a case of the genie being out of the bottle, but at least it had been established beyond doubt that it would work...

 

# Hence I suppose the scarcity of jazz.creative musicians on this instrument, despite the pioneering example of Karen "Mrs Lyons" Borca.

## If I seem to be casting doubt on the idea of "interactive" software there , all I mean by that is that the sound doesn't generally seem to vary much. Rather, we get this inherently quite complex backdrop against which the instrumentalists navigate the score(s) and improvise, but it is seldom (if ever?) the case that the backing alters significantly in the light of what the humans are playing.

### This term seems spectacularly useless in such a context. (Not the first time I've encountered this difficulty...)

^ Comp. 214 was the last of the Yoshi's "ninetet" compositions. It's been used - or parts of it have - in other contexts since then. Of course, any piece can be made to fit anywhere - this much, at least, we know...

More videos (some furious)

 Impossible to keep pace with my colleague on here; but I'll keep making a little noise around the edges.

I have been keeping an eye on new videos posted under the maestro's name, hoping to see some of the Theater Experiments material from the Brooklyn shows.  Both the theater and the opera company document some of their performances pretty thoroughly, so it's not impossible... it just hasn't happened. Yet.

But that doesn't mean the search has been in vain; it's how I first spotted the Jazz Cafe 1991 sets, and lots of other new and interesting stuff.

Mostly, I this post just collects some recent videos, some of them with link to recent posts from Cent.

So, to start, a few more new (to me) folks interpreting AB compositions.

I'll start with George Kokkinaris, a bassist based in Athens, who says he rediscovered AB's music during the pandemic.  He recently posted a video of a trio performing Comp. 94 and has two other videos on his channel featuring performances of AB compositions.

Comp. 94:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgSBdO5GH6o

He mentions that his interest was piqued by a solo bass album by James Ilgenfritz, another name which was unfamiliar to me; a little search reveals that he has recorded an album of solo bass interpretations of Braxton's compositions

https://www.discogs.com/release/3823080-James-Ilgenfritz-Compositions-Braxton-2011

And has performed and recorded with Gerry Hemingway and Angelika Niescier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGuork7Ask0

Back to youtube discoveries; a number of things posted in the last 2 weeks relating to Roland Dahinden; a couple of performances from 2021 and some brand new stuff.

From 2021, Dahinden conducted a performance of Language Musics with the Prague Music Performance Orchestra, in Prague.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX6DbXnuLpo

From another performance the same day, also just posted within the last month; AB performing a trio with
Adam Matlock, accordion; and Susana Santos Silva, trumpet. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhBBkW4IbeU

Side note -- if this were a proper Cent post, it would be a footnote -- the post on youtube identifies that as a Diamond Curtain Wall Trio, but it may be post hoc designated as "Lorraine" music. Lorraine is a designation (first?) used in the notes to Other Minds (duo) 2021; a live recording that took place one week after the Prague concerts. (I watched it at the time, and I don't recall a contemporary use of the "Lorraine" designation.)  More recent uses have pointed to a forthcoming multi-disc set

10 Comp (Lorraine) 2022 which features recordings of Braxton’s Lorraine music recorded in 2021 and 2022 featuring Susana Santos Silva (trumpet), Adam Matlock (accordion), James Fei (saxophones), Zach Rowden (bass), and Carl Testa (bass).

https://avantmusicnews.com/2023/05/25/anthony-braxton-news-2/

First thoughts --  exciting to see new players and new musics; Matlock and Santos Silva are enjoyable in this trio setting.  The box set title doesn't specify that the six musicians play together; it may be that the set contains different sized ensembles. If it does have a sextet component, a sextet with 2 bassists would be fun.  B does love dueling low-register instruments, after all.

Last of the Dahinden-Prague recent youtube posts, August 1st was the premiere of Braxton's newest opera, Trillium X.  It was reviewed the next day by Seth Colter Walls in the New York Times, and earlier this week some bits and pieces started showing up on youtube.  For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUUWn0Y_dRM

The performance features the Prague Music Performance Orchestra; as far as instrumentation, I will note the presence of the contrabass flute which was in the language music performance; 2 pianos (one played by Hildegaard Kleeb), 2 harps, 2 accordions, and what I believe is an Arpeggione.(!?!)

Almost there -- only 2 more things in this roundup (though no further youtube links).  Dahinden, Kleeb, and Braxton seem set to release (or may already have done) a 4-disc set of recordings dating from 2013:

https://www.discogs.com/release/27855357-Anthony-Braxton-Roland-Dahinden-Hildegard-Kleeb-Four-Compositions-Wesleyan-2013

Released on the Prague Music Platform label.

And finally, earlier this week Braxton debuted a new music system called Thunder Music at a concert in Darmstadt, in a nonet+7singers (designate that however you like).  Nothing further to report at this time; but quite an intriguing lineup and I'm eager to see what gets reported/recorded from that front.

https://tricentricfoundation.org/events

KCBC

McC.

 

 

Rapid rep

 

Affinity Plays Nine Modern Jazz Classics

(Music & Arts 1994)

Angelika Niescier Quite Simply

(Enja 2011)

There are other whole albums of repertoire to cover, still - and I'll get to them - but in the meantime, why not deal with two very different treatments of numbers from B's creative ensemble books? I say two treatments, but really it's three: they are just found on two different albums, seventeen years apart. One of these, I knew about for years before I eventually got hold of a copy (late last year); the other was completely unknown to me until very recently, and I really only found out about it by accident.

The Affinity album - which has a rather longer title on its front cover - was the first by this quartet, and originally saw release on (what I presume was) Joe Rosenberg's own short-lived label, Creative Context, before being more widely reissued on Music & Arts later the same year. Aside from having one of the most unappealing covers in the entire history of music, the original issue - which bore no album title - misattributed a couple of the tunes played, to the bandleaders who recorded them rather than to the actual composers: thus, Lee Morgan's "Afrique" was credited to Art Blakey (a hugely-influential drummer and leader who probably never wrote anything in his whole storied career), and Curtis Fuller's "Three Blind Mice" to Cedar Walton. The reissue sorts out such troublesome details, as well as providing the album with a title (or two titles, as noted above). Quite what the Ellis Marsalis tune is doing on here, who knows; but it's also not clear at which point it was decided, and by whom, that the album comprised "modern jazz classics". 

I daresay most of the material on here fits the description perfectly well, and of course I'm only too happy to see not one but two of B's pieces on there, taking their place in the wider modern jazz canon. Of the two, you could easily argue that the less adventurous choice is also the less successful: Comp. 40b, much recorded (and continually referenced as secondary/tertiary material by GTM ensembles in particular), is a fairly safe selection... but rather lacks a certain something. The band - with its distinctive twin-sax line-up - tackles the spooky theme well enough, but when this gives way to a bass solo, alarm bells might ring: this is a very odd strategy to employ, and it is all too easy to infer that the two sax players were too nervous to commit themselves. - and that is at least somewhat borne out by the two solos which follow: both  Rosenberg (on soprano) and Rob Sudduth (on tenor) sound a little hesitant, unsure of how to handle themselves on this kind of piece. This is a bit of a shame, because both players have pleasingly expressive tones on their respective axes, and the band generally sounds great on the theme, driven by drummer Bobby Lurie. It also has an unexpectedly brusque, but highly effective ending. But it's pretty easy to conclude that the soloists are rather more comfortable on some of the album's more basic material.

However, album closer Comp. 58 - which on the face of it is a bizarre choice of cover for a quartet: a piece written for creative orchestra, and only previously played by such ensembles - really does enter into the spirit of the music surprisingly well, providing some very adventurous moments from all parties. Inevitably, the main theme sounds a little subdued, being so short of voices, but the bass and drums both get stuck into the march aspect of the music, and when the tessitura reaches its "bent" phase, Sudduth really does go out -while Rosenberg beeps along for good measure. Bassist Richard Saunders is next to cut loose, using the bow to great effect and setting up Rosenberg, so that before the piece is done, all four players have had their chance to mix things up and sound almost equally free. It still seems pretty extraordinary that such a version should even exist - a reading for quartet lasting rather less than five minutes - but this number transcends the limitations of its instrumentation and ends up feeling like a real success, closing off proceedings with a triumphant flourish. It's well worth tracking this down if you're not familiar with it; the band, which has a very sporadic recording history, basically only got together occasionally for these "tribute" projects celebrating different aspects of contemporary jazz-based repertoire, gradually branching out to include their own originals, but their willingness to promote B's music to "standard" status (at a time when most musicians and labels still wouldn't) is heartening, and their enthusiasm comes across infectiously.

***

Polish-born, German-based composer/improviser Angelika Niescier seems to be far better known in Europe than she is in English-speaking territories. I didn't come across her myself until 2019, when I heard a pair of her small-group dates for (Swiss label) Intakt: The Berlin Concert, with Christopher Tordini and Tyshawn Sorey, and New York Trio (with Tordini, Gerald Cleaver - and Jonathan Finlayson, even though this is mysteriously still billed as a "trio"). I was quickly persuaded of the leader's all-round technical facility and of her confidence to move in such fast company; but I must admit that I did then rather forget about her until more recently. (Like I say, she's not especially well known outside mainland Europe - for whatever reason. In Germany, she is very highly regarded and gets plenty of exposure: way back in 2008, she was the first Improviser in Residence at the Moers Festival, and ever since then she has been both well recorded and sought out for festival appearances. Youtube furnishes plenty of examples, including this excellent trio performance from 2022's Cologne Jazzweek with Tomeka Reid, one of Niescier's successors as a resident improviser at Moers.)

Quite by accident, then, I recently came across the altoist's 2011 album Quite Simply, with bassist Thomas Morgan and (for the first time I think) drum wizard Tyshawn Sorey. A search for Braxton amongst the items a particular Discogs seller was listing for sale had unexpectedly revealed this, which I then discovered contains a version of Comp. 69(o). [This reminds me of just how reliant we friendly experiencers were on the Restructures discography, which somehow managed to keep track not just of B's own releases, but of every cover version recorded by anybody. How many recordings from 2011 onwards might we have missed?] I ended up buying a copy of the album, largely in order to have this track. (I was happy to acquire something by this leader anyway - and I'm always content to hear more recordings by Sorey, who for a while back there was pretty much the most in-demand player on the entire creative music scene.)

Once again, the meditative 69(o) seems a rather unusual choice for a cover, especially in a trio setting where the leader's alto is the only single-line instrument. The piece was originally recorded in 1983, for B's first small-group date with Gerry Hemingway; and it became something of a live staple for the "Forces quartet" later, being played both at Willisau in 1991 and at Santa Cruz in 1993. For the studio version, B's contemplative alto lines were shadowed by George Lewis, and although this aspect of the arrangement is missing from the later live readings, the presence of the piano still adds a further dimension to the soundscape which is entirely missing in Niescier's spare trio rendition. Still, you could argue that it shows daring just to take on such an atmospheric, unostentatious piece in the first place; having established her technical credentials already, the sax player here shows a willingness to examine subtler, deeper textures and territories. Doubtless she also knew that in Sorey, she had a natural playing partner for this kind of material; and his cymbals in particular provide a very similar hypnotic backdrop to that laid down by Hemingway almost three decades earlier. In the second half of their reading, with the written elements of the score already dealt with and all attacks under a microscope, as it were, we get a really close look at the trio's skills with profound material and they basically pass with flying colours. It will never be regarded as one of the more noteworthy covers of B's repertoire, I don't suppose; but it is a fascinating choice, from a leader who deserves to be much better known in the anglosphere.

And that, for now, is that. Did I really get through a whole post without a single footnote? Looks like it, yes ;-)

Gripes & niggles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

Video round-up

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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