I suppose that before I get on with anything else around here, I need to tidy this up: after my last post about the 1973 Châteauvallon performance - which really does appear to be the only live recording in general circulation by that version of the group - I went back and listened to the rest of the set, and discovered a few things which are worth discussing. [I say "worth discussing": I am well aware that this will be of almost zero interest to anyone besides me, not least because I will be analysing a recording which as far as I know is not currently available online* and which some people who happen to read this may, therefore, not have heard. Still, if I don't get it out of the way here, I shan't feel ready to press on and cover other things...]
At the time of my previous post it just seemed like too much hassle to do the extra research and check which pieces were actually played in the concert - which took place on 25th August, something I don't seem to have got round to mentioning last time - besides those included in the video. A comment on YT said Comps. 23a and 6f, which seemed entirely plausible; but I could see that at the time of my original Braxtothon stop in 2007, I wasn't yet able to make a positive identification of the opening theme, only to say that it sounded familiar (something which tended to happen rather a lot, to be fair). In turn, it now seemed likely to be a bit too much of a distraction to have to go and track down the full recording - I know where my original CD-R
is, but not precisely where - given that we're talking about a part of the performance not covered by the video anyway.
However, what I hadn't remembered is that I did have the files backed up on an external hard drive, and in the end it was a much easier job than I thought to locate the recording. Hence, very shortly after publishing the post, I had the answer anyway. Sort of. (All will not be explained, actually - but quite a lot will be..!)
First things first: something else I had forgotten (until I revisited my 2007 post) is that the French radio broadcast begins with a single track from a solo recital given (allegedly) three days before, at the same festival. The Braxton Project "gigography" confirms(ish) this performance, where B. supposedly filled in for Lee Konitz; however the only piece listed under that entry is the Konitz tune "Sound-Lee" and there is no precise date, only the general guideline 18th-26th August (the same as is given for the quartet performance). The French radio announcer, for reasons which will forever remain unclear, introduces the piece broadcast as being Monk's "Ruby, My Dear", which doesn't resemble the music played even slightly; the sound file I have is entitled "solo 8h", which at least gave me something I could easily check and confirm or rule out, and sure enough: the single solo piece broadcast was actually Comp. 8h ("dedicated to artist Murray De Pillars"**), as waxed for posterity on For Alto (where it appears as track 3). It's (luckily) extremely simple to identify, as it makes much use of trills. (Whether there is also a random recording of B. playing a Lee Konitz cover... who the hell knows at this point. I suspect not, as the gigography appears to be relying on Coda for its information on both performances - and what was written about the quartet concert is factually inaccurate, however well-meaning it may have been at the time it was printed.)
The French radio announcer's link is at least partly captured on the sound file. The date for the solo concert is given specifically as Wednesday 22nd August, and it is explained that three days later, on Saturday 25th August, Braxton was joined by an "orchestra assembled for the occasion", which had nevertheless been well-rehearsed beforehand in the themes which B. wanted to play***. Wheeler is described as "an excellent English trumpeter" - an understandable mistake, since he was indeed based in the UK by that time - and Shaw is said to have been "borrowed" from the St. Louis Black Artists' Group. Jenny-Clark is said to be one of the best young French bassists, which was definitely true enough, but all this does make me wonder exactly how much of a working group this really was - and where I got that idea in the first place (... see below). The link cuts out just at the point - frustratingly - where the announcer is detailing the graphic titles of the pieces which make up the quartet suite which is about to be aired. But...
...the quartet file has another link included at the end of the main set, from which it emerges that the announcer, at any rate, is under the impression that the suite (which actually comprises at least four different compositions) has a single overarching title; and who knows, at that time, maybe that is indeed the information which B. passed along. The (alphanumeric content of the) title is given as: 4M/ JB15/ 73°-2 #. This, in turn, now puts to bed the idea that the TV people were simply making titles up (which never seemed very likely anyway), and explains why that (garbled) title appears onscreen at the beginning of Comp. 23c; we now know that titles were provided to the festival organisers before (or perhaps after) the show. Of course... we don't know if the right titles were given, or if they were scrambled somewhere along the way, or what; we do know that what is shown on the video (or announced on the radio) does not represent the final titles which were given to the pieces which were played. (But that's about it...)
The set does indeed begin with (what would later become known as) Comp. 23a. But all that really means is that for the first two minutes of the set, the quartet plays out the written theme which would eventually be associated with this piece; as soon as that is completed, they effectively switch territories: after a few seconds of floating space (with just some sparse bass and drum flashes in it), B. begins playing what appears to be a version of the Comp. 6f theme on sopranino. You really have to be paying attention for this, as once he finishes with that - and it could of course be mistaken for just one of his solos - the next fifteen minutes or so of music do not include any reference to the distinctive written 6f theme, with its fast "swooping" line followed by the short descending chromatic run, at all. This in turn is (at least somewhat) in keeping with other performances of this piece, which is the original## repetition structure: once the written part has been played (a few times, usually - as one would indeed expect from a repetition structure), the music tends to depart for hyperspace, and the musicians at that point will end up exploring something entirely unpredictable and special. That, for sure, is what happens here - we end up with some really intriguing passages, including ethereal vibes accompanying some unusually fierce playing by Wheeler. - But if anything identifiable as another composition is played during this portion of the set, I wasn't able to get hold of it. Eventually the whole group comes to the boil, with Shaw bashing hell out of his kit, and this is brought to an end when B. enters on flute, just before the 19-minute mark. At about 19.10, after a brief pause, Comp. 23c begins - and here of course is where the video comes in.
Unfortunately that's not quite the end of the story, though. By this point I had remembered that the main set is separated (in the audio files) from the "encore", Comp. 23d - which of course explains why I handled that number as part of the following session, in the original Braxtothon (once again, I had forgotten this... I think I can be excused after fifteen and a half years!). The video, on the other hand, includes that piece - and lasts almost exactly thirty minutes in total. Hence, the remaining part of the audio file for the main set should run about twenty-two to twenty-three minutes from the start of Comp. 23c... and it doesn't. It's longer, by several minutes. This was the kind of anomaly I simply couldn't overlook; fortunately, I was able to ascertain pretty fast that it's Comp. 23c itself which is the source of the problem. In the video it runs for about three minutes (which is normal, and basically matches the eventual studio recording); in the audio file, it is considerably longer. Once I played it through and listened very carefully, I figured out what happened here: the piece is almost completed when, in the radio broadcast (or at least in the files of it which were originally shared online back in 2006-7), but not in the video of course, it skips very nearly back to the beginning and continues from there. (This sounds as if it "should" be easier to detect than it is, in practice - because the piece itself keeps restarting and adding parts to itself, you get used to hearing it go back to the beginning; and unless you are paying very close attention - closer, apparently, than I was paying back in 2007! - it is incredibly easy not to notice this error.)
This glitch unfortunately renders this version of the file - at least until such time as I could fix it (using Audacity or something similar; I am well and truly out of practice at this sort of thing and no longer even have current software for it) - unsuitable for sharing, so even if I could clear the other hurdles to that*, I would not be doing it at this point. It also finally answers another question which I had, years ago, about whether all performed versions of this composition are the same: I had intended, a decade ago or more, to do some sort of comparative analysis of the various live renditions of Comp. 23c, as I was convinced that I had heard at least one recording of it which lasted longer than the standard three minutes. I now know that I was right... but also wrong! (Needless to say I did not get round to doing the post, or even to starting it.)
OK, so... that almost concludes my recapitulation here. But not quite...
The radio announcer, as I say, gives one title which supposedly covers the entire set, not including the encore (which itself is described as ARF/KM/CK, which - again - explains what we see onscreen at the start of Comp. 23d). He says further that we can forgive (B.) the peculiar title, as his music was some of the most beautiful heard in the past year - surpassing free jazz, and encompassing simply music ### ... which, for what it's worth - and very possibly none of this was communicated to the composer at the time - is precisely the sort of compliment/ recognition which B. had wanted all along, but never seemed to receive; well, there were some people after all, even then, who "got it". But what about this idea of a suite with a single title, and the suggestion (per Coda, as quoted on the gigography page) that the quartet's music was prepared specially for the occasion, and that the group was likewise convened ad hoc?
I am starting to suspect that this line-up never was a working group, as such - which at least would explain why there are no other recordings of it. Did anybody ever say explicitly otherwise, or did I just assume it? I would have got this impression above all from reading Forces in Motion - but although B. definitely reminisced to Lock about how good the line-up was, and how he regretted not having got them into the studio, maybe he never actually said that they were together any longer than it took to rehearse for this show, and to perform it. Obviously Wheeler was already a familiar face and voice, having played in a quartet with Holland and Altschul more than two years earlier; but the quartet, as such, does not really coalesce until 1974, and I think now that this festival line-up was just one of several excellent pick-up groups B. put together along the way.
As regards the titles, well, I am beginning to think they were just another work in progress. The three pieces which make up most of the set here in 1973 - and which later formed Side One of New York, Fall 1974 - were fully worked out by now (though probably not written for this occasion, as such); Comp. 23a is itself probably a work in progress, and Comp. 6f appears in a sort of fragmentary form, lending part of its graphic title to the title of the suite, but otherwise just helping to initiate the launch into the outer realms. Maybe B. did indeed decide at the time that the suite was one presentation, to be considered under one titular banner, as it were; and as for Comp. 23d - maybe the only thing which changed about that was its eventual graphic title. Maybe one day all of this will become clear... but very possibly it won't.
At some point - later this year, I hope - I will dig out the CD-R which came with the box of tapes. I shall be very interested to know if that contains a better recording, and especially intrigued to know whether the "extra bit" of Comp. 23c is missing from it. If so... I shall have to try and figure out how to transfer the music to digital form and share it.
***
As regards 1976, then - all that remains to say here is that whilst trying to verify whether the August 1973 set includes Comp. 6f, or not, I decided that the quickest way to answer that question was with recourse to the Wildflowers set, or in my present case^ to a single-disc anthology from it which I acquired years ago (before this blog was dreamed of). That contains a 1976 version of the piece with a jaw-dropping septet line-up; and it did the job. But it also immediately made me think: hang on, what the hell was this piece being revived for, at that point in time? I had to go back and check whether I had covered it in the Braxtothon... and was relieved to see that I not only did, but I addressed both the oddness of the selection and the piece itself, in far more detail than I would have attempted for this article. It's been a long time indeed since I read any of those early entries..! - and apparently I put more into some of them than I had remembered :)
* It's probably available somewhere online, I just wouldn't know where. But I can't point to it, nor can I share it just yet; the version I wrote about in 2007 wasn't the best quality recording, and - as I explain later in this post - it contains a really annoying fault (which is surprisingly hard to detect). I have no idea any more where would be a decent sharehost for such a thing, nor do I have the right software to "zip it up". I have no plans, therefore, to share any music files any time soon. (Or do I?! see the end of this post...)
** I had not personally heard of this dedicatee, so I looked him up whilst writing this. Murry/Murray Depillars/DePillars was a Chicagoan visual artist and educator, apparently. He died in 2008.)
*** Obviously the announcer's links are in French. Except where noted by inverted commas, I have not translated directly here, but rather paraphrased what was said.
# This also explains how the word "bis" ended up onscreen in the video: JB15 was misread as J bis (!), and the "degree symbol" was also misread as a zero, at some point in the editing process. (The part "73°-" refers specifically to Comp. 6f, and would usually be followed by the designation Kelvin.)
## That is, the original one as regards the recorded canon. If memory serves, there were numerous others which just got lost along the way. At some point I will check back to see what is said about all this in the Composition Notes.
### "... on peut lui pardonner le titre curieux; sa musique était une des plus belles que nous ayons entendues cet an dernier: cela dépasse le free jazz, cela retrouve la musique en particulier, en général, la musique éternelle - avec les thèmes qui signifient quelque chose"
^ I do actually have a three-CD-R version of the Wildflowers collection in its entirety (courtesy of the late blogger known in his day as glmlr). It was sort of intended for the blog Church Number Nine, but the latter ended up closing before we could post it. As with all of my CD-Rs, I know where it is without immediately being able to put my hand on it. I do however still have the one-disc "greatest hits" version, released on Douglas Music as Jazz Loft Sessions, and picked up randomly (and cheaply) in a (defunct) local record shop almost twenty years ago... little did I know, at the time...!
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