ZIM video

 

Anthony Braxton: ZIM Septet%

mœrs festival

Moers, Germany, 3rd June 2017%

Composition 411%

video here

% Precise details are not quite straightforward for this one: as a cursory glance at the video itself will reveal, the band was - or wasn't -  billed as B's "ZIM sextet", despite the evident presence of seven musicians onstage. This wasn't some sort of obscure Henry Threadgill tribute*; descriptions online differ as to whether the band was a "sextet, plus special guest Ingrid Laubrock" or just, you know, a septet after all. The onscreen titles in what appears to be an official video recording of some sort** - these appear at 3.05 during the main set, and again at 49.28 just before the start of the brief encore - specify the Anthony Braxton ZIM Septet, even though the video itself is credited to the ZIM Sextet on Youtube. It makes fundamentally more sense to consider Laubrock a part of the band, as her association with B's music dated back several years already at this point, and besides, she is listed as a member of the ensemble (nonet) for the four studio recordings made at Firehouse 12 in August 2017 which later made it onto the ZIM Blu-Ray extravaganza.

- The precise date is not given on the video; an internet search confirms that the 2017 mœrs festival took place from 1st-5th June, and a further search furnished a link to an unofficial CD release of the concert*** which gives the date as 2017-06-03. 

- Finally, the opus number for the performance comes only from a comment on the video page, courtesy of one Walter Foerderer; he gives the Composition number and lists the band (as sextet plus guest), albeit with the odd typo or two, and without citing any authority for this otherwise-useful information. [Walter did reply to me via Youtube to say that the video was broadcast on Arte.tv, which is whence he derived the personnel list (and presumably the opus number)... Very switched-on readers may note that Comp. 411 is one of the "ringers" listed on the Youtube channel which I used a lot in September of this year, while I was getting going again; according to the official track listing on the Blu-Ray, Comp. 411 is not included... the full details regarding this little anomaly can be found here.]

I have had this video cued up on a tab in my browser for weeks - it is actually one of several - and eventually got round to watching it last week. Multiple choice question: the experience was a) most enjoyable, b) bewildering and frustrating, c) potentially life-changing (or at least taste-changing) or d) all of the above? And the answer: d), of course. Watching this performance, and (foolishly) trying to enhance my understanding of the music by reference to the printed notes included on the Blu-Ray#, simply served to remind me that for all the time I have spent listening to the maestro's music(s), and all the words I have written about it, my understanding of his thought-system is actually still pretty limited##. This did not, you'll be relieved to hear, prevent me from enjoying the performance. Oh, and it is very much the case that an immersion into this kind of music could completely and permanently alter an open-minded listener's understanding of what "music" is, and might be###. 

The first really noticeable thing about a ZIM group^, then, is the doubled-up harps: these are actually pretty noticeable just in an audio context, but if you are watching one of these performances then you simply can't miss them. One to each side of the stage, they bookend proceedings most impressively. As noted above, the line-up is given by user Walter Foederer: anyone reading this would know of course that THB is on assorted brass, with Ingrid Laubrock on tenor and soprano sax, Tomeka Reid on cello and Dan Peck on tuba; the identity of the two harpists would have been harder to establish, since four of them appear on the Blu-Ray collection, but Jacqui Kerrod is in all the different ensembles, so she is pretty much a dead cert, and the other player (stage left/viewer's right) is Shelley Burgon. [Ms Kerrod was closely-enough involved with B's music to play at least one duo concert with him, in Italy the following year (this was later released as an album).] You know me, I'm always reluctant to take someone else's word for it, so I made sure I did image searches for both players in order to satisfy myself that they are correctly identified above. 

B. counts the band in - sort of - having first signalled to them with four fingers, making sure they have all seen and registered that. Does this refer to a time signature? Certainly not. Basically, nothing so "normal" as melody or time seems to exist in this music, for all that parts of it look to be through-composed; it is bound by a set of logics entirely its own, or at least entirely of B's devising. The detailed - but highly esoteric - liner notes for the Blu-Ray state that "(the ZIM) prototype is in the eleventh position in a twelve step layer cake"; leaving aside the probably-unintended, arguably-unfortunate connotations of the phrase "twelve step", this seems to imply that the ZIM system is the penultimate development of B's Tri-Centric musical universe, and... the second-most complex..? am I going too far with that? Maybe I am. Nevertheless, even listeners who think they have a reasonable handle on, say, Ghost Trance Music at this point may find themselves forced to admit - as I was - that they don't really have much of a clue about this stuff. Luckily, as I've already said, that doesn't stop us listening to it and deriving enjoyment from it. Understanding it really is another matter. The hand signal, by the way, presumably is to do with something else set out in those same explicatory^^ notes: THE INTERNAL MECHANISM OF THE ZIM MUSIC FOCUSES ON A FIVE PART DECISION CONSTRUCT (all caps in the original). If that's the case, then "four" would mean, let's see... ah, here we are: FLIGHT PATH GROUP MEETING BEFORE PERFORMANCE. - Oh. Is that right?  You know what, I'm just going to watch and listen (thought I). Who knows, maybe one day I will be able to get someone to elucidate this stuff for me, but for now... 

When the music actually starts, it feels fast, and it struck me straight away how unusual it was to see harpists playing in such a frenzied manner. (The others, well, we're all more or less used to that sort of thing by now.) But then, within a minute or two, the music settles into a much more restrained mood with prevalent legato phrases. This continual switching - not just from one section to another, but from one mood, one sound-world to another - absolutely seems to be a defining characteristic of the ZIM musics, as far as I can tell; it is certainly something which I kept noticing while watching this, and is something I remember from working my way through the twelve full-length recordings, back in September. Individual segments of the music feel utterly discrete, qualitatively distinct from each other, separated by more than just brief pauses. It has to be exceptionally demanding to play, but now that we can see the band, it is evident also how rewarding it must be: they really all do look as if they are enjoying themselves. - That is, when they are not glued to the score or looking intently at each other for cues, or minute attitudinal shifts which would herald some sort of change. I say "the score", but whenever one of the cameras permits us a decent look at the sheets laid out on a player's music stand, we see at least two different sets of notation: a page or two of written music, and a page of symbols or graphics. This, at least, is not completely new and not unique to the ZIM model: we have all seen similar sets of rubrics before. Different types of attack have long been represented graphically in B's works, although that, too, is a system continuously being developed and elaborated upon. Here, the sheer variety and specificity of different techniques being prescribed for the group is quite dizzying.

Around 7.30 there are some extraordinary "flutters" which are probably largely drawn forth from Reid's cello, with the assistance of B. and THB, but it's quite often surprisingly hard to pinpoint who is responsible for a particular utterance in this maelstrom of innovation. Shortly after this, with the fluttering attacks still present, B finds himself on bass sax, though he limits himself to very sparing and sparse sounds with it, visibly absorbed in the music nonetheless. Again, it's a real delight to be able to see this stuff being performed, whether that is because we can marvel at how intensely the players must focus, how sensitive they must be to each other's cues - or just to lap up little trifles such as THB using a CD as a mute (10.55). 

Even with just seven players onstage, sub-groupings can and do arise, and previous (partial) familiarity with B's approach to leading ensembles suggests that this aspect will itself be both agreed beforehand, and open to change at a moment's notice. At 22 minutes and counting, B. is back on bass sax and properly freaking out with it, this time; Laubrock looks over at THB to check what is expected from her next entries, and as the camera gives us a full view of the stage, we see Bynum taking over conducting duties at this point. A few minutes later, however, he is having a wig-out all of his own. This particular quality of the music is absolutely not specific to this prototype: individual players are both very tightly marshalled in terms of what to play at certain times, yet granted complete licence for personal expression at others. Indeed this, above all, may turn out to be the single quintessential characteristic which links all of B's musics.

At around 27.25, we are presented with what feels temporarily like the start of a new movement, signalled by slow, unison crescendi with pauses between; but this, too, is just a fragment, which in no time at all is replaced by something quite different. At 30.00, we are back in frenzied territory again. The music changes so rapidly, and covers so much ground, that over the course of the performance - less than an hour of clock time - it feels as if we are exposed to about a week's worth of music. If anybody thought this was already the case with GTM or Diamond Curtain Wall, etc (and it was, it is), it applies even more here. 

The most visibly-obvious "clue" in the whole concert comes around 32.50, when, with what already seems to a fully-inhabitable soundscape in effect, THB embarks on a complex series of gestural instructions, pointing first to his head then down to the ground - repeating this to make sure it's been seen and understood - and then holding up five splayed fingers, with the same wide-eyed emphasis employed by B. in holding up four, just prior to the start of the performance. This, then, presumably(ish) relates to... where are we... the following opaque pearl: SEQUENCING OF THE INTERSECTIONAL MATERIALS INTO ONE STRING-LINE TO PROVIDE THAT PARTICULAR INSTANCES CAN BE NOTED. You know what, it really would be great to get one of the players drunk one night and ask them informally how much of this stuff they really understood while they were playing the music. Bynum, fairly obviously, would be able to expound at great length about pretty much all of it, and I imagine that James Fei probably could too; maybe some of the other guys and gals who have been section leaders at different times would have a decently thorough grounding in it. Does everybody? Do they need to? (... and: does this matter? I'm not sure it does.)

More than is usually the case, this is exceptionally hard music to write about. There is one little collector's item still to flag up, though: at 45.40, Shelley Burgon breaks a string. She instantly yanks her fingers away to avoid getting cut, indicating how taut these strings normally are, when they aren't flying around; it's not even a particularly forceful passage at that point, but as previously noted, the harps do take some hammer during the performance as a whole, and it really is quite something to see. There isn't long to go by this stage: at 47.10, the music is drawn quickly to a close, and B. - as is his wont - jumps in to name the players and say thank you, before the audience has a chance to react and drown him out.

React they do: the audience is no doubt as to what a great opportunity they have just seized by being there for this event. An encore is demanded, and given: as with many of the DCW sets before, the band plays again for just a couple of minutes, but so much ground seems to be covered even here that this little fragment, a chip from a hologram, seems somehow perfectly emblematic of the whole.

* In the unlikely event that anyone reading this doesn't get that reference: Threadgill led for a number of years a "sextett" (sic) which comprised seven players, the two drummers being counted as one. (Didn't he also have at least one outing where a sextett featured only one drummer, but still counted seven players? Am I misremembering that..?)

** I don't actually speak German, not having studied that language at school. But I believe this was filmed by students of the Cologne Art School and the Dusseldorf Music and Media Institute. Or something close, at any rate.

*** This won't be too hard to find, I daresay. I shan't link to it here as it's quite obviously an unauthorised, bootleg release. (I didn't even look to see how many other such concerts were available from the same place.)

# I haven't actually bought this, yet - the liners are all scanned to the master entry on Discogs. 

## To some extent this is very much my own fault: I do own the Tri-Axium Writings, after all. I did even try to read them at one point, but wasn't able to make much headway. They are very hard to follow and I had numerous other claims on my attention at the time. It's still possible to return to them... 

### I do have to specify "an open-minded listener" here: Youtube user Jazzgent (...) probably summed up the feelings of listeners with more, ah, traditional taste in music when he said "Boy, this sounds like s**t so it must be good!"Obviously, not everyone will understand, or even want to...

^ In the liners for the Blu-Ray B. alludes to a ZIM quartet, which apparently played in Alabama (hard though that might be to credit) before the larger ensembles were conceived. There is not, yet, any official record of this group that I am aware of.

^^ I used to wonder - back in my teens - whether there would ever really be a useful distinction between the verb "explain" and its Latinate equivalent "explicate" - but do you know, I finally think I found one! The ZIM liner notes can hardly be labelled "explanatory" since, in current parlance, that would imply that they actually make the subject matter easier to understand. (Not, alas, the case.) Nevertheless they do explicate or "unfold" it, in a rather more literal sense. Hmmm ;-)