Repertoire: Norton and Min

 

Kevin Norton & Haewon Min play the music of Anthony Braxton

(Barking Hoop 2001)

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

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

The material

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The young contrarian

 

Sixteen years...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 110 series: more questions unanswered

 

A couple of months back I posted about the Black Saint box, which I had just acquired at a bargain price; shortly thereafter, in a post mainly given over to speculation about B's cancelled travel plans, I cleared up a tiny bit of confusion regarding the identity of "Comp. 110", as listed in some sources for the Sound Aspects CD Prag 1984 (Quartet Performance) - although it's not listed that way on the album itself. One of the inclusions in the Black Saint box, Six Compositions (Quartet) 1984, features three of the pieces from the 110 series and it proved straightforward in the end to confirm that the Prague concert did indeed include Comp. 110a, as both the numerical description and the graphic title on the original album had suggested all along*. 

Looking at this even briefly, though, got me thinking that I really needed to make a bit of time with the Composition Notes, to look at the 110 series as a whole. Like I say, three of the individual pieces ended up on that brilliant album; the fourth (110b) cannot be found on any album. And even among the three which did get recorded for posterity, it's not as if they are ostensibly linked by any common feature in the writing - or not according to the notes which appear on the back of the album, anyway: largely driven by the composer's desire to showcase his new pulse track structures, Six Compositions (Quartet) 1984 finds subtly different ways to explore that concept in four of its six tracks, but the remaining two are airily summarised as "impressionistic ballade** structures" by B. in the album's notes***, and bear in mind that these two are themselves part of the 110 series. So, whatever else might characterise that as an entity, it's not simply a counterpart to the 108 series. Or probably not, anyway... I figured I'd better try and nail this down if at all possible.

I didn't get very far...

The Black Saint album's notes say only of 110a that it "seeks to emphasize curve sound dynamics... as a basis for extended improvisation", whilst acknowledging that the latter is limited in this version to a "mosaic of changing impressions (and feelings)", which is rather poetic but not necessarily illuminating; besides this, we are told that that the curve sound dynamics# themselves are "positioned in this context for the bass and percussion"... but we know that the latter two instruments are primarily concerned with the secondary territory 108b, so where does that leave us? Even if we assume that the description here refers to the roles played by the bass and drums before the pulse track kicks in, we'd probably have to admit that the notes raise more questions than they answer; and anyway, in practice, I think 108b starts pretty early on and is then in play for almost the whole length of the piece##. 

As for 110c and 110d, the very simple description quoted above - "impressionistic ballade structures" - is all that B. says about them, except to add that "both of (them) were written for my wife, Nickie" - something we could have inferred from the graphic titles:

- although even this is not quite straightforward, as we will see presently. (As a matter of fact, not even B's assertion in the album's notes that "(a)ll six works are examined in Composition Notes Book E" is straightforwardly true, as it turns out... we're coming to that.)

Because of the way the studio album is itself presented to the attentive listener - showcasing four subtly different approaches to the pulse track, with two "ballade structures" included on top - it's inevitably the case that 110c and 110d come across as "palate cleansers" between more substantial dishes, positioned in the middle of sides one and two of the original vinyl LP. 110c in particular, which lasts four and half minutes, is actually quite dense and complex in this band's hands, but what are you gonna do? - the composer himself has encouraged us to think of these two pieces as inherently lesser works, or at least lighter works. 

So: this is where I was at, before I went to the book for help. Two light ballades, one pulse track structure - or to be more specific, one piece designed to be played against a pulse track - and a conspicuous gap, called 110b, which does not show up anywhere in the recorded canon. Is that even all of them, in this short series? 

That last question, at any rate, does have an answer:

- albeit even here, the date of composition proves somewhat problematic. Actually, numerous aspects of the notes for these four pieces proved to be problematic, when I checked them out; generally characterised by gaps in the text, obviously-missing insertions, typos and in some cases actual errors###, the five-volume Composition Notes are still pretty essential for someone like me, but they can be pretty frustrating if you're looking for answers to questions. Here, we have no overall summary of the 110 series as such^, just the title shown above, and the following: three pages of notes on 110a; four pages of notes, plus two pages of notation, for the mystery piece 110b; approximately five pages of notes on 110c; and no notes at all for 110d, just the graphic title and a couple of pages of very brief notation^^. 

With his synaesthesia in full effect, B. describes 110a as creating the sensation of "blowing winds and trees (on an island experiencing a rain storm)" - then just a few lines later refers to a "whisper" in the space of the music, which itself is rather confusing, since he has not really made clear that he is discussing different sections of the piece (and who knows... maybe he isn't). He confirms that the piece "was quickly written - as a light visual impression", and then follows this up by saying that it can be performed by any instrumentation, "used by itself or in combination with any of the fifty to sixty works that make up my coordinate series of interchangeable works for extended improvisation"; but he does not explain which pieces comprise that "coordinate series", of which the 110 series is, presumably, a part. Not for the first time, we are told that the piece is dedicated to

- with a blank space, just like that, where someone's name was clearly supposed to be.

The third page of notes does at least clarify the reference to the "whisper" - that is, I think it does: a core element is a five-note phrase "that appears each time in a new (different) key (or in a different voicing)" and which is "offered as a 'hush' in the sound space of the music - something that can be felt (seen) and then disappears". The notes do confirm that the piece was first played by this very quartet - although there is nothing in the notes to indicate that it was specifically intended  to showcase the pulse track, rather mentioning almost in passing that "on that occasion the work was coupled with Comp. No. 108d", as if this were a one-off; in practice, we know that the piece became wedded to this type of interpretation, first in the studio, and then live in Prague with the same band; if 108d in the notes is not in itself a typo, B. changed his mind about which pulse track to use with this piece after he debuted it^^^.

Comp. 110b, then, has an intriguing graphic title:

- and four pages of written notes, like I say, as well as some notation (which I can't read). But given that we don't have a single recording of the piece, it seemed pretty pointless to do more than skim the notes: I have nothing to check them against. I did, however, manage to confirm that this piece, too, was premiered by the same quartet (probably at the very same concert - at Sweet Basil in NYC); and, frustratingly, that this piece actually is an inherently pulse-track-adjacent composition, at least if this description is anything to go by: "a rush of moving sixteenth note sound beams... that is suspended over short pockets of changing rhythmic emphasis". That sure sounds like a sort of pulse track to me, which leaves me wondering: so why was this number not included on the Black Saint studio album? But there we go. Oh, and here once again, the number is dedicated to a blank space...

... which itself is actually a little less confusing than is the case for poor old 110c, for which the notes raise so many further questions that I was left wondering if B. might not have been thinking of an entirely different piece when he wrote the notes, and just didn't get round to correcting them. For a piece summarised as a "ballade structure" on the eventual album, the notes on this one are bewilderingly detailed; but by this point I was sufficiently frustrated by this small undertaking that I didn't really make much effort to unpack the notes or to marry them up with what we hear on the record. Part of that is because although this piece is referred to throughout the notes as 110c, it is also said to have been composed in 1982 (!), or at least first performed then (and possibly therefore composed even earlier); and despite the graphic title referencing the missus, we are told the dedicatee of this number, and it wasn't her, but rather the guitarist Spencer Barefield~. Admittedly, writing a piece for someone is not necessarily the same as then dedicating it to them... but it sort of is, right? To be honest this more or less finished me off, as far as researching this post was concerned: like I say, it left me wondering whether B. had had in mind a different piece altogether, or was at best conflating two different pieces when he wrote the notes. Pretty much for this reason alone, I couldn't face the extra work of trying to see to what extent the written description matches the one recording which we have in the canon.

If I achieved anything at all with this bit of digging, then, it was just about highlighting that even geniuses and visionaries may not always be terribly reliable (indeed, they may perhaps be a class of people in whom such qualities might best not be sought at all)... Not that we have four sets of notes even to work from, but the three which we do have, plus the studio album on which three of the four appear, don't really explain what makes the 110 series a coherent series in the first place. But... that's OK. I can live with that. After all, the recordings which we have of those three pieces are still utterly delightful, and if it seems crashingly obvious in retrospect that 110b "should" have been added to the programme, maybe it was felt that it would have disturbed what is otherwise a near-perfect construction: two sides of three pieces each, with two complex pulse track explorations surrounding two lighter ballade structures. In the CD era especially, the album may feel at least ten minutes short on material - but there is no denying how beautifully balanced it is, and it will never ever feel light on content, rewarding just as much careful attention as the friendly experiencer is prepared to give it. Let's just keep hold of that, and move on...

* At the time I wrote that earlier post, I didn't have a physical copy of the Prag CD, but was working on it; I did manage to get one! [The notes don't add much that the partial scans available didn't already make plain, at least in terms of the primary materials used for the concert; I still don't know where Jason G. got the idea that it's "unclear which composition in the Comp. 110 series" was included. As far as I can tell, only one edition (1990) exists of this album - so it's not as if they initially got it wrong and corrected it later.]

** I did have to check this, but B. is using this specific spelling to denote "a piece of music in romantic style (with dramatic elements), typically for piano" - as opposed to the far more common and exoteric ballad, a term which I'm sure needs no explanation from me (though in practice it doubtless means slightly different things to different people). The musical term ballade can itself be defined in different ways, depending on where you look, but they all seem to agree on the piano as a key element (apparently based on the model provided by Chopin). Part of the reason I had to check this is because in modern French, the term balade (single "l") is quite common, but this is regarded as a completely separate word and is in no way specific to the study of the arts.

*** In order to read these at all, I had to take photos and blow them up - the album covers are reproduced so minutely for the 8-CD box set that I basically can't make the text out with my reading glasses, not that I've tried to do so in strong natural light (not always available, sadly...).

# These may or may not be equivalent to (what would now be) language type 9, "legato formings", though I would guess they probably are.

## While I'm at it, the Restructures entry for this album also makes the confusing observation that "108 A & 108 B are not listed on CD documentation". In this case, I don't have the benefit of an original CD for reference - but as far as I can see from scans available online, the pulse tracks were always listed. Jason would not have pulled these notes out of thin air, and must have had some reason for adding them - but I honestly don't know what he meant by them.

### In the case of Book E, for example, pp. 517-8 comprise the first two pages of notes for Comp. 69k, ported in from an earlier volume. This is in the middle of an interview by Ronald Radano, two pages of which are therefore lost to the reader.

^ There is, however, one in the Catalog(ue) of Works: "A set of four short (and relatively easy) structures for extended improvisation. Originally written for my quartet, this material can be used for any context - or positive purpose." For what it's worth, only 110d is described here as a ballad (sic) structure.

^^ Turning the page in search of written notes, the reader finds just further confusion: p. 367 probably is meant to list the opus number 111, followed by some detail - but instead all it contains is the engimatic heading ENVIRONMENT STROLLS (1970-1984), and a two-line summary pasted in from the catalog(ue) of works (where the exact same entry appears, though here it is at least confirmed to be Comp. 111). Some stuff is definitely missing from this fifth volume in particular. 

^^^ Later versions of 110a in Birmingham (1985) or with Oxley and Roidinger (1989) also collage the piece with 108b. 

~ A. Spencer Barefield, to give him his full(er) name, is more closely associated with Roscoe Mitchell - and so are the other musicians present for (what is stated to be) the premiere performance of 110c, if that is indeed what it was: they are listed in the notes as Toni Tabel (!) and Jaribu, but we would know them as Tani Tabbal and Jaribu Shahid. (Goodness knows what was going on with the copy editing at this point.)

Comp. 94, round one

 

I posted recently about a video of a 1979 trio concert in which B. was confirmed to have played tenor sax - but was only concerned, at the time, with that very specific aspect of the performance. Just by looking at the line-up and the date, it was obvious to me - from previous research - that the material for the concert was the larval form of Comp. 94, which I was already planning to study at some point in the not-too-far future; I earmarked it, left a tab open for it in my browser, and... actually, by my standards, I didn't leave it that long at all before I watched it ;-)  - but it took me a further week to get round to writing it up.

Comp. 94 itself is going to require quite a long run-up, from my point of view, before I can attempt to listen out for references to it in a collaged piece* such as, say, Ensemble Montaigne (Bau 4) 2013. This is not like many of the works from the four creative ensemble books, or (for example) something like Comp. 136 which has a very recognisable motif (which itself is far from being the whole of the written material for that piece, but which we can always expect to be quoted more or less straight away, when that piece is worked into another set of materials). Luckily - or unluckily, depending on how you look at it - I anticipate getting plenty of practice, since I have several different versions of 94 to work through, culminating in the version which (eventually) made it onto an album. 

The video seemed like a good place to start. It's one of quite a few from a YT channel run by Jay Korber**, and is typically excellent in quality; the music, once I started watching and listening, just blew me away. I knew already, from previous digging, that B. was presenting audiences with an unfinished piece on the 1979 trio tour of Europe - that he was still working on 94 even as the three players were allowing audiences into the laboratory - but if anything this just adds to the excitement for the modern viewer of the video. Fuelled by Richard Teitelbaum's outer-space synths***, B. and Ray Anderson treat the appreciative crowd to a performance of wholly unpredictable, entirely new and forward-facing music with not a single jazz cliche in sight.

From the outset, the material sounds more like what we would come to expect from B's '80s output than much of his music from the '70s - although one must always be careful about making such generalisations# - and the written parts which B. plays on sopranino sax early on (the music starts at 0:40 in the video) are filled with the wide interval leaps characteristic of the melody lines which will go on to preoccupy him for much of the next decade, seemingly quite divorced from concepts like key or tonality. 

Having established that B. played tenor sax at this concert, we would naturally assume that although he may start on sopranino, he won't stick to it for very long; what we wouldn't necessarily expect is for a trombone specialist like Anderson to be similarly restless, but he flits between alto and tenor trombones, and tuba, throughout the set, starting within the very first minute. Teitelbaum, stuck behind his banks of synths, doesn't have this option - but of course he can vary his sounds considerably, and he certainly does exactly that: when the camera focuses on him, which is fairly often, he pretty much always seems to be switching things around, altering the sounds and effects from his larger keyboard in particular. Variety of voicings is very much a key feature of this performance.

At 3:00, the camera behind Anderson locks in on his music stand and slowly zooms in, giving us a great view of his sheet music - and giving me a great opportunity to "nerd out" (as I believe they say across the pond), because as well as a couple of pages in fairly typical (for the time) Braxtonian notation, RA has a separate sheet peeking out from the top of his score with what is clearly a list of the basic language types on it, and these are not exactly the same ones which have become standardised since. The first four items on the list have not changed: long sounds, accented long sounds, trills and staccato (formings##). But the next entries on RA's list differ from what later became standard: high sounds, curve sounds, short accented sounds, extreme register shifts, multiphonic sounds. (Number 10 is hidden behind the score, and of course so is anything after that.) For what it's worth, the later list will place multiphonics at 6; intervallic formings (we may presume this is what was meant by "extreme register shifts") is now at 5; gradient formings - which may or may not be exactly what was signified by "curve sounds" - can now be found at 11 on the list. There is no mention of "high sounds" these days; but number 7 is still occupied by short attacks, and we may reasonably presume this refers specifically to "short accented sounds", since if this were not the case, these would fall into the category of staccato formings and there would be no need for two separate entries on the list.

At 3:45, all three players sound as if they are working the same material, although this is way out for 1979..! The piece is characterised by these periodic convergences, usually fairly brief, with longer phases of individual expression in between. At 4:40, B. picks up the alto for the first time, and over the next few minutes he will end up delivering a typical masterclass with it, eventually deviating from the written score entirely and developing his own ideas - though within the framework which the three musicians have set up; Anderson is (of course) worked very hard, continually called upon to prove that he can hold down the role in B's music originated by George Lewis, and Teitelbaum isn't just making spacy noises either: around the six-minute mark, he is even playing quite lyrically, and it's obvious that when he cedes his own role in this piece to guitarist James Emery, the latter will really have his work cut out for him. 

B's alto solo makes much use of force, which is to say, accented attacks, something he has always been very good at (giving the impression of stepping down hard on some notes more than others, to great effect). Of course, this is just one of the tools he uses in his increasingly-wild solo: even before he was an actual college professor, B. already resembled one, lacking only the elbow patches to complete the look - but he just tears that sax apart. By 9:40 he is back to reading from the score, and it looks at first as if Anderson will now head out on an excursion of his own; but not quite yet, as it turns out. Instead, we enter (seamlessly) a completely

new phase of the composition, with B. switching to clarinet, RA picking up the tuba, and B. in turn following him into the depths with the paperclip seamonster. As RT drops into the lower registers too, we are well and truly out in the depths of space at this point - with this phase still very much in effect at 13:00 and beyond, it will be interesting to listen out for this in other renditions of the piece. 

Around 13:46, RT conjures some sort of whistling feedback, though I'm not sure (after repeated viewings) how he does it - B. and RA are otherwise accounted for, still on contrabass clarinet and tuba respectively, and the leader's preternatural control over what is supposed to be an unwieldy instrument is astounding in this section. Approaching fifteen minutes, we have somehow ended up at the other end of the sonic register altogether, without any drastic change having taken place in the basic tessitura - these presumably will be emblematic of the "high sounds" at 5. on RA's list, and of course it has long been established that the maestro can produce very high squeaks on the contrabass clarinet; although in this case, as Anderson forces the breath through his tuba and Teitelbaum picks out some far-out tones, the piercing altissimo attacks emanating from B. are actually being produced on soprano sax, as is eventually revealed at 14:54 (the leader having switched axes again while the camera was fixed on Anderson). 

Heading towards 16:00, it is now time for RA - back on trombone at last - to get forceful in turn, and he really starts to tear it up. Indeed, so inspired and impressive is his solo here that both B. and RT lay out completely - until 18:35, when a new section - quieter, sweeter - of written material is commenced. Subtlety and restraint are the watchwords now: with squeaks from the soprano, ethereal keys - and Anderson playing what is either a detached mouthpiece or some sort of pocket whistle, we are gradually guided through this sparse new territory towards somewhere denser and hotter, B. now on tenor (which he first starts playing at 20:48) and RA on muted trombone. By degrees, the music becomes fiercer and more intense, gradually building until by 25:00 it's gone "full crazy", with all three players cooking like mad. RT plays both his synths at once, then turns to the bigger one and gives it his full attention, throwing in a whole range of effects. 

At 28 minutes, B. is tormenting his sopranino, alternating gentle notes with harsh overbreathing, and RA does something not dissimilar; but by 29:15 we're out in some deep-space nebula again, and the ease and rapidity with which the trio can change mood and ambience as they navigate this modular score### is just as amazing as the stamina they evince in sustained phases of wild intensity. Around 31 minutes, there is another brief snatch of written material from B., but although we know that parts of the score are written out as actual thematic content, this piece is also one composed in segments, each focusing on particular concepts of sound production; as far as I can tell, actual moments of reading directly from the score are relatively few and far between here. In any case, by 32:30 it's time for Teitelbaum's own solo, and here we really get treated to some mad stuff: the larger synthesiser doesn't seem to have a standard keyboard register, but instead the keys generate different sounds rather than variable pitches, unless perhaps that is driven by the performer's choices with the many wires and switches at his disposal; however it's realised, there is no doubting the wild creativity and effectiveness of the improvisation. 

Another change of mood of course follows this, with B. on clarinet leading the trio at 35:05 into a new phase with his "crying horn", RA and RT melding with this as best they can. By 36:20 Anderson has the tuba strapped on again, and B. switches up clarinet for soprano sax at once, producing around 36:42 a marvellously subtle effect by "woodpecking" a single note and then a lower note, mimicking in the process the effect of a delay or echo pedal - it's there and it's gone, but it stood out for me in the listening. From here, B. undertakes another solo, starting out by singing away on his soprano, but rapidly moving away from this into a performance which transforms the instrument into something quite different in character - different, especially, from what most players do with it. Alternating effortlessly between "straight", uninflected lines and harsh breathing / multiphonic attacks, again leaning down hard on certain notes to terrific effect, some of what he ends up playing here sounds remarkably similar to renditions of (Kelvin repetition series) Comp. 6f from several years earlier, but he runs on and on without ever running out of variations or fresh ideas, leaving nobody in any doubt as to his virtuosity.

This alternating of attacks, in turn, is not just something peculiar to B's solo, because a shortish ensemble passage exploring mainly isolated, broken-up and disjointed sounds is followed by another showcase for Anderson, who employs his own varied inflections in his playing, "bending" a lot of his attacks and playing with sudden changes in dynamics much as B. has just done. Anderson has a "lighter", less serious reputation than George Lewis, and sometimes gets overlooked as a result, but his technique is compendious and he is a very imaginative and creative player - another ideal foil for B., really. It's surely no accident that B. ended up writing a lot more "circus-style" pieces for the quartet while Anderson was in the band, this playing entirely to his strengths; but it's also surely not a "making-do" decision to have selected the same player for the extremely demanding piece we are presently considering. And besides: if anyone should ever be tempted to consider the maestro as a "competitive" musician, let us rather be mindful of his much-proven ability to inspire others, elevating their playing to new heights.

From around 47 minutes, we are more or less straight into another feature spot for Teitelbaum, with just some brief written phrases in between. This solo is not quite so far out as the first, but there is no faulting his level of concentration - unpredictable though the playing continues to be, there is nothing remotely random about it at all. As the leader stands with the contrabass clarinet at the ready, the synths get wilder and freakier, and heading into the beginning of the closing section (around 51:20) Anderson is now playing what appears to be a cornet (? - whatever this is, it's uncredited), and B. once more switches out his lowest for his highest instrument, contrabass clarinet for sopranino sax, with no change in the overall feel of the territory at this point. Somewhat mournful, or perhaps just contemplative, the three players draw out their sounds in unison, turning up the dynamics together as they approach the very end of the piece.

That's it! It's a fantastic video, and I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the piece: much as we might like to think otherwise, it's just not possible that everyone in the audience had any real idea what was going on here; but there will have been those present who were able to follow the music closely and continuously, and what a rare excitement it must have been, to be there to hear this music and know that one was witnessing the sound of the future, now. 

* I've said before that "collage" is a potentially misleading term in this context, since B. himself regarded it as a phase or period within his ('80s) work, the underlying principles of which were retained and developed later in an ever-more sophisticated manner; when it comes to arrangements or performances of his music by others, though, it still seems to be the appropriate term to employ.

** These videos are attracting quite a lot of attention, relatively speaking, but as far as I can tell the person who posts them has resisted any temptation to respond to questions from viewers about who he is or where he's getting this fabulous footage. It seems very likely that he's German, probably a resident of Berlin - where most of the performances took place... and beyond that, it may not be very helpful to speculate. Did he / does he work for a German TV station, or as an archivist? He seems to prefer these questions unanswered, and I'll respect that.

*** Frequently visible on RT's left is a Moog, which is no surprise at all. But the larger instrument which gets most of his attention during the performance -? I don't know what this is, and although I have tried to find out what equipment the electronic pioneer was using back then, I haven't yet been able to get an answer. My best guess is that it's something Teitelbaum either built himself, or had built for him to his own specifications - or perhaps it was some sort of electric keyboard which then underwent extensive modification. Whatever it was, he sure knew what to do with it...

# It's very easy to think of the four creative ensemble books as representing B's "seventies music" - whereas in fact, of course, they form just a part of that. Like Sun Ra, this composer was always not so much ahead of his time, as working to a timeline entirely of his own.

## Actually, number 4 on RA's sheet simply reads "staccatto" (sic). The term staccato line formings appears on what we would now regard as the official list, as published by TCF. 

### I have retained some memory of both the Composition Notes, as such, and the (fairly extensive) liner notes for the eventual Leo / Golden Years of New Jazz CD which finally saw this piece officially released, and they lay out the structure of the composition in detail - but I have deliberately resisted re-reading them at this stage (time for that, in due course).