Ensemble (New York) 1995 (Braxton House)
As previously discussed, then, I have agreed to follow the chronological order of the online discography* when it comes to the performances given in NYC on November 24, 1995: lacking any definitive information, I have treated the octet's rendition of Comp. 188 as the first set, and will now address the larger ensemble's reading of Comp. 187 on the basis of its being the second such performance. Both works are of course GTM, first species, and with this specific set we now have official recordings of the first eight GTM compositions (for anyone besides me attempting to keep a record of that)**.
I considered the octet performance to be an extension of the "working group", insofar as there was one of those at this stage. The earliest GTM pieces were recorded by a quartet: the leader plus Ted Reichman, Joe Fonda and Kevin Norton. The first recorded live performance featured the same musicians, plus Roland Dahinden and Jason Kao Hwang; the octet which performed at the Knitting Factory - under the auspices of the Tri-Centric (Thanksgiving 1995) Festival - adds two more reed players to the sextet, Andre Vida and Brandon Evans, both (eventually) important senior students and significant collaborators. This allows us to identify a key group of players, involved with the new music from its point of origin.
The "ensemble", as it was then billed - it would later have been more likely dubbed an eleventet, or perhaps a 10+1tet - diverges from this pattern. From the core group outlined above, only Fonda and Norton are retained: a special line-up is convened for a sort of "expanded chamber" feel, with the leader joined by five other woodwind players and three extra strings; and two of the woodwinds are in fact double-reed instruments, oboe and English horn***. Of the eight new musicians, only two had worked with B. before this (as far as I can establish), although all but one would go on to work with him again at least once more. In the interest of completeness, I'll run through the performers in more detail now.
One player with definite prior experience of B's music was Melinda Newman, an oboe specialist who was one of two featured soloists on the recording of Comp. 173 the previous year. (She doesn't, however, appear to have worked with him again after this date.) Sharp-eyed readers looking through the list of players in the 1995 ensemble will also spot "utility reedman" J. D. Parran; I am so used to seeing his name crop up on things that I was a little surprised to discover only two previous encounters with B's music on his CV, and these were separated by fourteen years. Having first worked with together in the 1978 (reconvened) creative orchestra, where Parran was one of five reedmen, the two were reunited much later for the sessions which resulted in 4 (Ensemble) Compositions 1992. In the interim, they had actually both been involved in a third session, but not for one of the maestro's own projects: in September 1984, Parran was part of the group which recorded John Lindberg's Trilogy of Works for Eleven Instrumentalists, conducted by B., who did not play on any of the pieces. Who knows exactly when and where they first met; coming up in St Louis, Parran had joined that city's famed Black Artists' Group, before departing for New York like everyone else#. With that sort of background, any time he appeared in one of B's later groups it was as a sort of special guest, usually surrounded by B's own students: a versatile multi-instrumentalist, he could be trusted to negotiate the demands of the music without much in the way of instruction, and here he is one of the few players besides the leader given licence to branch out as a soloist.
The second double-reed specialist, Libby Van Cleve, has notched up a fair few recording credits with B. over the years, but as far as I can see this was her debut. Described on her website in terms suggesting she's regarded as a luminary of new music, she would be a featured soloist - again on English horn## - in the following year's Trillium R performances; her credits as an oboist include NBH048 as recently as 2014, and she participated in a Tri-Centric Orchestra extravaganza the following year (albeit one which did not include any of B's music)###. Meanwhile, tenor saxman Aaron Stewart has taken a much more jazz-adjacent path, playing with Muhal Richard Abrams, Steve Coleman and the (confusingly-named^) Julius Hemphill Sextet, among others; Stewart's only other involvement with B's music appears to have been in those same Trillium R performances mentioned above; again, though, he was a featured instrumentalist there (on baritone sax this time). Finally - among the woodwind players - altoist Lily White is the outlier, the one musician who seems to have worked with B. just this once^^.
The three supplementary string players are violinists Gwen Laster and Jacqueline Carrasco, and cellist Nioka Workman^^^. All three took part in the Trillium R concerts, again - all under the aegis of the Tri-Centric Orchestra, none of them featured instrumentalists - and, like Aaron Stewart, the cellist played only that one other gig with the maestro. Both violinists had some further involvement - although only just, as we will see next time~. Laster (sometimes miscredited as "Lester") has had a rather lopsided career, making her money from backing up pop artists for the most part, but she never completely abandoned her more adventurous side, and eventually joined the Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen for a recent recording. Carrasco is evidently another new music specialist, and - unlike Haewon Min~~ - was a member of Cygnus Ensemble when they recorded their reading of Comp. 186 (... wonder where they got the idea for that?). Workman fille has had quite a varied career, but her brief involvement with B's music appears to mark its outermost point by quite some distance.
In summary: four reeds, two double-reeds, four strings and percussion: this was a special line-up assembled with the apparent intention of showcasing GTM's potential as contemporary (semi-)notated music, and the players were (for the most part) chosen for their ability to voice parts of a collective timbral whole, without being required to improvise much if at all. Even with headphones, I found it quite hard to locate all the various musicians within the stereo image; but that's not really the point, since the group sound is the main thing here, and the various instruments which make it up are primarily valuable as component elements of that.
It's worth our remembering - again - that what I am doing here, in tracking the course of the new musical system from its creation onwards, is something which can only be done in retrospect: the official recordings which documented that same system were not released in the same order in which they were recorded, so even the most ardent and diligent fan - someone buying every new album on the day of release, and attending every single live performance regardless of geographical location - would not have been able to do what I'm doing now.
***
On a second play-through with headphones, I placed the musicians thus in the stereo image: Parran is on the left (easily identifiable, as he begins the set on bass sax), then the two double-reeds, then White, Stewart, Braxton, and the strings - with Fonda (I think) farthest to the right, which would make sense - the two lowest voices "bookending" the group - although I kept changing my mind about Fonda's precise placement - not that it matters much~~~. Norton, of course, is behind everybody, which is only as we would expect given how much equipment he uses during the performance: trap set, vibraphone, glockenspiel, assorted percussion. During the first three minutes or so of the set, he varies things up considerably, changing instruments on a regular basis, setting a trend which is to continue pretty much until the finish; the rest of the ensemble spends most of its time focused on the written materials, while Norton effectively treats the entire piece as one extended (tasteful, restrained) solo@.
Comp. 187 proceeds at a brisk, sprightly pace, though naturally the ensemble never sounds hurried. As indicated above, the opening few minutes are played entirely from the chart, and at 4:10 Parran - now on soprano clarinet - is first to peel away and take a brief but expressive solo. Around 5:40, the strings (plus at least one horn) cut loose from the main pack and play something else, but by 6:00 they have slipped back into the theme, and just as one realises that, B. begins his own first solo of the set, on sopranino sax. Even this is brief, especially for him: by 6:40 he too has resumed trotting along with the theme. Already we have heard enough to know - if we're paying close attention - how this will work: there are a few actual soloists in the band, but for the most part individual voices will stand out for a second or two at a time, expressing themselves in a tiny flash of dynamic or timbral variation, while the main body of the ensemble sweeps on unstoppably. First species GTM is where it is easiest to observe the trance element of the system at work, and the effect here on the listener is, indeed, almost hypnotic.
At 8:18, a subgroup emerges, several horns and strings suddenly branching out into a different set of secondary or tertiary material; I can't be sure which, because although this new line, ending in a high trill, strongly resembles some of the 1977/78-vintage 69 series themes, I haven't been able to identify it, and it may or may not be an actual earlier composition. It could be supplementary written material for a prearranged section of the group to unveil (either at this specific time, or at the whim of the designated section leader - if those were already a thing by this stage..?@@). At 9:40 Fonda, who has been bowing away tirelessly at the written theme, finishes up with a low sweep across one string, and then lays out for a while, which does seem to herald a subtle change of tessitura as Norton starts to play all around the rhythmic flow and - without the theme itself ever stopping - the individual utterances do become a little wilder, a little freer - but as always, this is brief, lose focus and you miss it; the prevailing, endless, eighth-note tick-tock theme reasserts itself continually after every apparent departure from it.
These little departures and rejoinings continue to weave in and out as the music forges on. Every time it sounds as if something new might happen, it almost already has - by the time the listener has taken stock of the new development, it's already folded its way back into the theme. Every minute or so, we get something like this although it's very easy for the listener to miss it all if not paying close attention; at 11:20, at 13:20... at 14:15, though, some outrageous blarts from the leader signal his having switched to contrabass clarinet, and after some suitably blasphemous, glorious parps and growls, this ushers in a slightly different passage in which most of the ensemble play a couple of written phrases together - before Norton jumps onto the kit and immediately gets busy, at which point almost all the players lay out, the horns then nosing their way back in one by one... and after the briefest of pauses, just a fraction of an in-breath, at 16:08 we're back to the primary written material again.
This is the basic blueprint for the whole performance, in which focused listening reveals more and more bright moments of self-expression by all the cast - just not usually all at once; move out, move back. You couldn't really call what most of the players do in these moments improvisation as such, but they all get the chance to express themselves nevertheless, and over time, the way in which they voice their attacks becomes varied quite considerably, the effect being almost like that of watching through a kaleidoscope: for the most part the outer ring is turned smoothly, gradually, and the changes in the image are subtle, but every so often there is a sharper turn, and the picture changes more radically as a result@@@. As with previous live outings, there are moments when the tempo sharply increases (18:45; 28:55; 36:25), although exactly when and how it reverts to its previous "resting rate" in each case is far from obvious, so subtly is this achieved; at 38:30, a prolonged ritardando begins, with the tempo gradually slowing with every successive bar until 39:00, at which point it steadies itself at a slowish andante before slowing again from 39:25. Always, the ensemble moves as a single unit in this regard.
B. takes his first alto solo at 17:30, and another at around 36:00, though in the latter case this emerges (first as about fifteen seconds of trademark altissimo squeaks) from a short passage in which all the saxes get to cut loose briefly, and it ends up overlapping with the third accelerando noted above, so although the maestro is tearing his horn up, there is so much else going on at this point that it doesn't stand out in the way it usually would. Indeed, one of my abiding impressions of the set is how restrained the leader is, in not claiming the spotlight much (as he would tend to do in a small-group setting, inevitably); but then, as I have hopefully made clear already, this is not about solos, really - or not at this early stage, anyway. (Naturally, once you can pinpoint B. in the stereo image, you can hear him pretty much throughout; well, you can if you have listened to him even a tenth as much as I have.) Besides the leader, as mentioned above the other player who really gets to flex is Parran, flipping continually between bass sax and soprano clarinet, playing beautifully on both and granted considerable licence to do more or less whatever he wants, with the proviso that he still carry his weight with regard to the overall perpetual theme. Stewart does get to cut loose at times as well, foreshadowing his own featured-instrumentalist role in the following year's operatic extravaganza; but - again, this is mentioned above - the one who really has the most latitude over the course of the entire performance is Norton, who almost runs the whole show like a conductor%.
I see no real need to work through the remainder of the set passage-by-passage; I would hope that there are enough pointers above to help any curious listeners navigate their own way through it - but trust me, the more attention and focus you are able to bring to your listening, the more rewarded you will feel by what you are able to hear. There are other points where pre-written secondary or tertiary material crops up, played by a subgroup while the theme continues on in the background (I still couldn't put an opus number to any of these, and therefore can't say for sure what category of supplementary material they are); there are certain passages which seem to acquire special significance, such as around 31:30 - 32:00, when phrases within the written theme are repeatedly punctuated with "triple knocks", most if not all of the players leaning down hard on one attack played three times. There are almost countless moments of great individual beauty.
We might, though, consider the final major phase of the music to begin around 40:25, building out of the slowest passage (as noted above); the pace picks up again and just carries on increasing, almost frantic by the 41-minute mark - Norton here on vibes, Parran on clarinet, everyone else plugging away; by 42:50 Norton has disappeared from the soundscape altogether, returning then on claves, among the simplest of idiophones, while someone introduce a circus-style whistle into the mix. Everyone on the left-hand side of the stereo image is wailing away at this point, and greater and greater freedoms seem to be granted to everyone, in turn, the rhythmic drive at last vanishing completely... until the most fractional pause at 45:52 precedes the da capo al fine, Parran's forceful playing a sheer delight as we approach the finish line at pace. In the end, there is rather an anticlimax, the music breaking off in mid-air as it were, and with all audience noise and applause edited out, it's natural to feel that we have been left hanging; but this simply reinforces the idea the music is endless, and that we have just tuned in to a section of it, which happens to last forty-nine minutes and thirty-six seconds.
***
My conclusions after the first listening through headphones, a couple of weeks ago, were that this was a bit of a missed opportunity: there are enough voices here for B. to be able to keep up the written material at all times, while allowing individual (groups of) players to experiment more than they do in the event. But on a closer listen, I realise this is really not the case at all: as usual in such instances, the fault lay with the listening ear, not with the music! Able to sustain my concentration across the entire set, I caught myriad tiny details which I had overlooked previously, and in the process, came to a far deeper understanding of what the composer's conception was, at this stage. Taken together, these two performances of 24th November 1995 show just how much potential was contained within this model, so that in hindsight it is easy to see how it came to dominate the composer's attention in the succeeding decade or so. [It's also easy enough to see how Jacqui Carrasco, a few years later, might have put forward B's name when William Anderson was assembling pieces for the Cygnus Ensemble's Broken Consort album; now I want to go back and hear their short reading of 186 again! But that's for another time...]
* Regular visitors will know that I tend to use the archived version of Restructures for this purpose. Recently, I was unable to use it as the Wayback Machine had suffered some sort of cyberattack; a few days later, it all came back online, then I started getting error messages again. It appears at the time of writing that the Wayback Machine itself is back online, but that its version of the Restructures discography is not available for some reason. (Hopefully this will not be a permanent state of affairs.) In the meantime, the only one I know of is the version linked above, i.e. in the first sentence of this post - but it's a fairly old version of the discog and (with rare exceptions) does not allow linking directly to individual recordings.
** Unfortunately, this is as far as we go with that neat and tidy numerical ordering. Comp. 189 only turned up much later in the recorded canon - as the primary material for a 2018 duo concert with harpist Jacqueline Kerrod - although that also does not sound like GTM at all. (Obviously, B. continued composing works outside of the new strategic system he was developing, even if the latter would very much preoccupy him for a number of years to come; still, from this point onwards as regards the opus numbers, there are numerous gaps representing pieces which have either not been performed, or at least not officially recorded - and I have no way of knowing which of these are GTM works and which are not.)
*** I am following here the usage typical for jazz and creative music (where this instrument is only used sparingly to begin with; Sonny Simmons of course played it), and for US parlance generally. Where the same instrument appears in European orchestral music, it is referred to as the cor anglais (which, confusingly, is French for "English horn") - just to make matters even less consistent, the brass instrument known as the French horn is always referred to that way, i.e. in English - regardless of where in the world it is deployed.
# Much of my information here just comes from Parran's Wikipedia page, but other online biogs are of course available for this storied and well-respected player and academic. (Despite having a longstanding association with the AACM by virtue of collaborating with many of their members in various events, I don't think he himself was ever a member as such.... could be wrong, though.)
## Restructures mistakenly credited her with French horn on Trillium R, an error repeated here, but the NBH entry for the official release corrects that. [A handful of jazz-based musicians have been able to play both woodwind and brass instruments to a proficient standard - among players germane to this blog, Joe McPhee springs to mind - but the chances that a classically-trained double-reed specialist would also be able to play a brass instrument well enough to take solos on it are vanishingly remote. It was just a slip, confusing two instruments with similar names, and may even have originated with the Braxton House notes for the CD release.]
### If anyone doubted it, the career arc of someone like Libby Van Cleve is emblematic of the readiness of contemporary new music pioneers to embrace B's work, and that of his students and associates; not that anyone reading this is likely to doubt that, but we know the classical establishment has been terribly slow to catch on.
^ Confusing, because the band has continued to be billed thus long after the death of its leader. (Repertory bands for specific composers are not all that unusual, but a group called the "John Smith Quartet" would, you might think, generally be led by John Smith - in person, rather than in spirit.)
^^ "Lily White" sounds like a pseudonym for someone else - if anything it sounds more like an atypically-vanilla drag name than someone's actual name - but Ms White is a real musician and educator, albeit it's far from obvious how she landed this gig, unless she was recommended by one of the other participants, or..?
^^^ A string player called Workman? Got to be a relative, surely, I figured... yes, she's Reggie's daughter. (Mr Workman has done some pretty out-there stuff over the years - I suppose it would be more accurate to describe him as an outward-facing musician rather than an out player as such - but has never, to the best of my knowledge, worked with B. or played any of his music.)
~ I don't mean the very next post, but the next one in this series - actually, Tentet (New York) 1996 is the last recording I intend to cover in this way (... probably).
~~ The explanation for this remark can be found in the second footnote to this recent post.
~~~ Note that I still can't separate the oboe from the English horn, nor can I even detect the relative positions of the violins and the 'cello. [For why this isn't overly important, see the penultimate paragraph in the previous section.]
@ It is of course nonetheless possible that much of what Norton plays here is written out for him - he's not expected to keep to the same rhythm or tempo as everyone else, just to support it and augment it in various ways, but how much of this is left entirely up to him and how much prescribed, I wouldn't like to guess.
@@ I'm tempted to say it wasn't, not least because this isn't a line-up with obvious candidates for such a role, unless Newman was one (having already played once as a featured soloist). Something is also nagging at me to suggest that section leaders weren't brought in until a bit later in the system's development. Hmmm...
@@@ Knowing now, as I do, about B's synaesthesia - which I didn't, at the time I was writing all those Braxtothon station stops - I'm tempted to think that he may have visualised the whole performance very much in these terms (although he almost certainly had in mind complexities and layers and variables which I have not taken into account)...
% Lacking the chance to see the performance, and to witness the extent to which B. deployed his famous hand signals and the like, I ascribe a notional "conductor" role to Norton figuratively, in that he is largely in charge of switching up the mood and feel of the music as it progresses. Obviously I have no way of knowing how much of an official role he had, or didn't have; but as the tenured player here, along with Fonda - who is also somewhat responsible for these subtle changes in mood, although far less noticeably - Norton may reasonably be expected to have had a heavier workload than some of the "new hires".