Over the last several months, apparently, a 3-day series of performances in Brooklyn was announced, featuring the music of Anthony Braxton. (I say apparently, because I only heard of it a few days ahead, but googled it after the fact and found an article dating from late March.1)
Originally intended for 2020 as part of a Braxton 75 celebration, the performances were scheduled for this month to celebrate the maestro's birthday. Some heavy hitters of the Braxton world were involved -- performers included James Fei, Ingrid Laubrock, and Nate Wooley, and the event was put together by a group called Experiments in Opera, which includes Matthew Welch and Aaron Siegel. 2.
The brief announcement I saw didn't elaborate much on the material, but described it as "Theater improvisations." A New York Times review over the weekend (and, indeed, the months-old announcements I found) clear things up. It was, in fact, a high-powered revival of compositions 279-283; the "standup comic" material.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/arts/music/anthony-braxton-experiments-in-opera.html
The review is by Seth Colter Walls, who has been writing sympathetically about Braxton for a decade or more; the review was published online during the 3-night run (but not in print until the following Monday) and encouraged readers to "grab one of the remaining seats while you can."
This material has been mentioned on the blog recently, and neither Cent nor I have heard much of it -- just one short clip that I think I got from CIMP's website over a decade ago. And the Times review admits that "with just two people, sometimes the recording's charm peters out."
These performances added a third performer; in addition to the narrator (comic?) and an instrumentalist, (Each night, the instrumentalist was different. Wooley on Thursday; Fei on Friday, and Laubrock on Saturday) the performances featured soprano Kamala Sankaram, who has performed on several of the Trillium recordings, as well as Syntactical GTM Choir (NYC) 2011.
With no written material for soprano voice in the compositions (I assume), the performers took advantage of Braxton's open attitude toward performers combining his compositions. Thursday's performance at one point featured Wooley playing Comp. 23D while Sankaram sang lines from Trillium E. What the comic was doing at the time is not mentioned.
The sympathetic reviewer admits, "on the page, this might not seem like much," and I'm not tempted to disagree. I love 23D, and I love the operas. I even agree that the operas themselves are funny. It sounds like an entertaining evening. But does putting these pieces together, with a narrator (comic?), make something greater than the sum of its parts? 3.
Walls muses at one point that the performances deserve "attention, and perhaps documentation" to illuminate Braxton's conceptual side. And there is a great deal to fill in here, not just to show his conceptual side, but to breathe life into it.
I am intrigued; had I been within range, I might have taken the reviewer's advice & grabbed a ticket. But I'm left to wonder, again, about this material. Decades after a relatively low-profile release, a core group of Braxton luminaries saw fit to bring it back as a Braxton 75 tribute. Was this just the ultimate back catalogue obscurantism? Or is there something special there after all?
McC.S.
2. Correction: Welch was a founder of EIO but is apparently no longer affiliated. The graphic involves a magician doing a trick with a rabbit, a hat, and the graphical title for Comp. 101 (doing a card trick with the TCF logo in the other hand, as well?)
https://experimentsinopera.com/portfolio-item/braxton/
3. EIO has posted some info to their various social media; including graphic scores and a list of 300+ potential joke types. http://www.facebook.com/experimentsinopera/ or https://www.instagram.com/experimentsinopera/?hl=en A few photos of the performances, as well.
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