I recently acquired a copy of the CD reissue of Creative Orchestra Music 1976, a much-loved release (from what some older listeners probably* still insist was B's best period, i.e. the '70s ), which I first wrote about just over fifteen years ago...
Of course, the problem with some of these Braxtothon entries was that I had set myself the task of analysing only the music I heard, which meant - where possible - reading absolutely nothing about the recordings in question beforehand. The idea was that I would listen to as many recordings as I (practically) could, in strict chronological order, learning only what I could as I went along, gaining momentum from a cumulative understanding of the material - and so on. After a certain point - pretty early on, really - I gave up on the idea of refusing to "skip ahead"; I couldn't pretend this was all taking place in a vacuum when apart from anything else, people were leaving regular comments in those days and I would (almost) always engage with these. I tried to avoid listening to entire albums if I knew that I was going to be covering them in due course, but I allowed myself to cherry-pick certain tracks for playlists. The idea of being perfectly ingenuous when I came to each recording thus went up in smoke**. But: when it came time to cover a particular recording, I would still make sure I read little or nothing about it; in particular, I was militant about not touching liner notes, where I had access to these. Most of the time, this probably worked out reasonably well. Occasionally, it came back to bite me... and that was definitely what happened with this album. A look at the notes - which were available on Restructures at the time, and very probably elsewhere - would have been pretty helpful, and would have saved me from one mistake in particular (anyone who wants to know what that was can read about the whole thing in the comments to the original post).
Hence, botched plans: and I should stress at this point that I am talking only about my own plans here, not B's. Nothing remotely botched about those... indeed this album is an absolute triumph of group commitment over adversity, the ensemble successfully negotiating some intimidating charts despite woefully inadequate rehearsal time.
So, to the liners - which tell us all about B's intentions for the project... Firstly, B. says right off the bat that the album "represents (his) first opportunity to have compositions for large ensemble available on record", something which caused a sharply raised eyebrow when I read it, since I myself had already covered the 1972 Creative Music Orchestra album, so I knew damn well that at least one project for larger ensemble had already been realised, not just conceived***. Did that earlier occasion simply not count, for some reason? But no, it didn't take me long to figure out the answer; it was just another case of needing to undo some of my unquestioned assumptions from the Braxtothon: the earlier performance took place on 11th March 1972, but the album was not released until 1977, and at the time B. was writing his notes for the present album (recorded in February 1976 and released by Arista later the same year), it may not have been clear to him that the earlier music was due to get released at all#. (The one source which I did always refer to - the Restructures discography, which listed recording sessions in chronological order, not albums necessarily - did not give a release date for the album in this case and I don't suppose it ever occurred to me that it took several years to get the '72 music released in its triple-album form.)
Secondly and thirdly: we're told that all this music was composed specifically for this project, and that by Creative Orchestra, B. is in fact drawing a distinction with other music(s) of his - though not, in fact, the 1972 concert (even if that had seen the light of the day at the time he was writing). The distinction is between this type of (semi-improvised) date and the fully-notated/through-composed works he was already devising for (just plain) Orchestra: this is made explicit by the notes. As for the materials, I'll come back to that below - but it's just worth noting in advance that all these pieces were written for these sessions, since an attentive listener could easily surmise that some of them might not have been.
The general notes (which appeared on the back cover of the original LP release, and can be found in the same place on the CD, though they are a lot harder to read in the latter format) are neither long nor super-detailed, but serve really as an introduction to the album as a whole; each individual track has its own notes inside, after all. B. wraps up the general intro by saying how fortunate he felt to have had these musicians available for this project, stressing the lack of rehearsal time (this, he claims, was about two hours per piece, on average - and nobody had seen the music in advance). A word on those same musicians, then: last November, in writing about the mid-eighties quartet with Lindberg, I'd said this wasn't really an "all-star affair" (and contrasted it with the return engagement two years later, which clearly was). That was one of those semi-lazy## assumptions: really, when you look at the overall personnel for the 1976 album, the quality of the individual names does jump out. True, there are certain names there which don't: I wouldn't know anything about Seldon Powell, Bruce Johnstone, Ronald or Cecil Bridgewater, Earl McIntyre, Jack Jeffers or Jonathan Dorn if I hadn't looked them up, and even now that I have, a few of them remain pretty obscure to me. But they were all chosen for a reason; and if we look at the ensemble in toto, there is really no shortage of "household" names there (granted that the household in question is the residence of at least one creative music listener..!).
Back in 2007 when I first heard this album, I'm not sure I even realised there had been a CD issue. This came out in 1987, as parallel editions for the US and European markets; both of them were under the Bluebird imprint, and from the look of the packaging, they would have been "budget-priced" (although what that actually meant in 1987, when CD itself was still considered a luxury format, is unclear - and of course any such considerations have long since ceased to count for anything in the resale market###). The original packaging is faithfully reproduced; faithfully, but somewhat inappropriately, since (as mentioned above) this sometimes results in some extremely small print which can really strain the eyes. The booklet is itself encased in a generic "Cool Price Jazz" card sheet, stapled to the outside of the booklet; the series, which included recordings by the likes of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Louis Armstrong et al seems an incredibly incongruous home for our man here, although there were also albums by Air and Ornette Coleman in the same series; this "outer jacket" indeed looks so out of place (see below) that I came very close to removing it^, but didn't in the end, as it's nevertheless unique to this release. It's pretty unsightly, but I guess it's here to stay:
There are a few other things to note specifically about this reissue. On the one hand, every effort was made to preserve the layout and content of the original notes; on the other, those notes themselves could really have benefited from some judicious editing at this point. There are numerous typos and spelling errors in the text; for all I know, some of these may have originated with B. himself, but even if they did, that's no reason to keep them in. Given the obvious (aforementioned) issues caused by resizing the back cover to fit on a CD booklet, would this not have been a perfect chance to sort some of these previous issues out? While they were at it, by the time of the CD's release it had long since been the norm to put out B's albums with the retroactive opus numbers allocated to the pieces, as well as the graphic titles; but here they are still just listed as "Piece One", "Piece Two" etc. Of course, I am well aware that any undertaking such as I've outlined in this paragraph would have necessitated some actual money being spent on the reissue, and heaven forbid that a major corporation such as BMG (which by this point had absorbed RCA) should imperil its profit margins by pissing away money unnecessarily... never mind any "ideal world" considerations, we have to be realistic here. - While I'm at it, the final point to make about the reissue is that although you can see for yourselves the proud boast "Digitally Remastered" on this, back in 1987 they didn't yet really understand what this meant, or how to do it properly. CD was not a widely collected format yet; labels could always promote something by saying it was "digitally remastered" because in order to transfer it to compact disc in the first place, a digital master had to be created; but the process which would come to be understood as "proper" remastering would only come a bit later, as the format itself proved its market endurance (and record labels had to up their game). Hence, as with other CDs produced from analogue source recordings in this era, the volume levels are way too low on this and the sound is pretty flat and lifeless^^. Naturally, I am not trying to talk anyone out of acquiring a copy: it's still a CD release of a classic album and in order to engage with the music, you just have to listen past the limitations presented by the mastering process and focus on the music. It really is that simple.*
***
And so to the material... this is not the time for a track-by-track; for all its faults, I already did that one fifteen years ago. But with my updated and better-informed perspective on all this, I may now be suitably placed to make some observations on the music which would have been beyond me, back in 2008.
The main reason I said above that one might assume not all of the material was prepared especially for this date is the numbering. Tracks two to six inclusive have consecutive opus numbers, assigned to them which is as we would expect: B. is just like most composers, in that he works certain ideas intensively and then moves on from them (although in his case, at least, some ideas take longer to explore than others: GTM occupied at least part of his creative brain for a number of years, and some of the other strategies devised around the same time proved similarly long-lived). In this case, a set of works intended for creative big band instrumentation all date from the same period and were thus located together in the numbering system when the time came. So why is the first piece on the album - now known as Comp. 51 - isolated from the others? The very next number, Comp. 52, is assigned to a piece written for quartet (and not recorded until 1981). Does this indicate a mistake? But no, it doesn't appear to: the Composition Notes - and I have only glanced briefly at these for the purposes of this post - suggest that Comp. 52-4 comprise a short series^^^ of three pieces for quartet including piano, and were also composed in 1976; whilst the six big band pieces are not designated as belonging to a series at all (despite the fact that they clearly were, in practice). If I'm going to be super-picky about this - and when am I not? - I would say that there was a mistake in the numbering: the series of three short pieces for (piano) quartet should really be numbered 51-3 inclusive, and the big band pieces 54-9; but it's a bit late to worry about that now, and it's the sort of minor anomaly which only lends a bit of charm to the exploration of this vast discography.
If there was another reason, it's to do with the nature of the pieces themselves. On the face of it, only four of the six pieces featured on the album are typical big band numbers, and one of these (Comp. 59 which closes the programme) is something of a special case; two of the three others - Comps. 51 & 55 - are "typical" only in terms of their arrangement, both featuring boppish themes which could plausibly have been written for a smaller group, then scaled up to fit a larger ensemble. Comp. 59, for "two soloists" (but specifically conceived for B. and Roscoe Mitchell, according to the liner notes) has an unorthodox ABCBA structure and, beyond the presence of the two soloists themselves, could be scored for anything between (say) six and sixteen players and would still basically work. On this first outing, the arrangement encompasses fourteen voices (plus conductor); there is no rhythm section on this number, although Dave Holland plays 'cello and Jonathan Dorn tuba - but these do not fulfil their traditional jazz-based roles. Comp. 58 is of course the J.P Sousa tribute number, and is really the only piece on the album which sounds as if it could only have been written with a big band in mind. The two remaining pieces, spaced evenly throughout the programme as tracks two and four, are of course Comps. 56 & 57, and these are not typical big band numbers at all, being respectively experiments in spatial and timbral relationships; it will be readily noted that these two pieces were the ones jettisoned for the 1978 redux, nor have they ever been officially recorded again (although other larger groups may still have thought of them: Wet Ink Ensemble took on Comp. 56 at any rate, as previously mentioned last October). It's worth noting, though, that however much this pair may not sound like suitable choices for the ensemble, B. actually used more players on these two numbers than anywhere else on the album: both of these numbers are scored for twenty voices, and even the most "action-packed" of the remaining numbers - without a doubt, the centrepiece march tune (now known as) Comp. 58 - only used nineteen; the others use around fourteen or fifteen each, however much they sound a lot "busier" than the two sonic experiments. ( You could bet money that anyone who was asked to guess whether the first or second track used more musicians would get it wrong, however carefully they were listening.)
There are still some salient points on individual tracks... Comp. 51, a terrific opener, appears to list the soloists in the wrong order in the notes (Cecil Bridgewater plays before B. himself); an attuned ear can clearly hear the leader's alto voice among the ten other horns in the early phases of this tune, even though he takes his actual solo last. Following the solos, the slight increase in tempo which accompanies the next phase of the piece is a very effective way to ratchet up the tension, and the floating, unresolved nature of the eventual ending ensures that this sets up the rest of the album beautifully. Comp. 56 - with its careful use of space - could disappear into the background completely unnoticed for any listener not really paying attention, but it's a most intriguing experience for the close listener. It's also the only number to feature Richard Teitelbaum on synthesiser (besides not one but two pianists, though one would never guess), and he comes across as being the key here, his spare sounds encapsulating the idea of space very neatly. Comp. 57, the study in timbral/textural balancing - so to speak - seems to suffer more than most from the limitations imposed both by the lack of available rehearsal and recording time, and by the single-LP format; B. starts out on flute for this one, but in the latter stage of the piece he switches to contrabass sax, with Mitchell having already moved from flute to bass sax, and unfortunately the wider implications of these to low-end horns working off each other are barely glimpsed, the piece fading away quite suddenly.
Comp. 55 would probably bear closer inspection all on its own, some time: B's liner notes explain (sort of) that this was the first recorded example of a Kaufman repetition-principle piece (Kelvin pieces along those lines being far better known, especially the much-recorded Comp. 6f), though in order to understand what that means, further exploration would be needed. It is notable, though, that the composition pivots continually around one ascending phrase, full of the maestro's characteristic leaping intervallic contours, which is eventually picked out by M.R. Abrams on piano with Holland shadowing him on bass, but the same motif, played by sections of the ensemble, recurs throughout. I imagine that anyone coming to this album in 1976 and reading in the notes that B. was much inspired here by Duke Ellington would have been rather confused; but then I'm hardly the best judge, not being greatly familiar with the work of "Sir Duke" beyond a few fairly obvious compositional highlights, and I can't really vouch for how "out" he may have got in his wilder moments. In any case, anyone working in the big band idiom is likely to end up dealing with Ellington's influence; but whether that influence would normally be expected to manifest itself like this is another matter.
Regardless of how much fun there is to be had with these four pieces, the two original side-closers are the obvious highlights in many ways - though I don't plan to dwell on these in any detail here. What I do just want to pick up on is one thing on each piece. Comp. 58, the crazy, Sousa-meets-Stravinsky parade-ground spectacular, should really be forcibly played to anyone who ever falls into the critic's trap of describing B. as "cerebral" or "academic" in his approach to music. The sheer playfulness of this piece would silence all of them; and it also hints at the maestro's immense compositional range. As for the closing "two soloists" piece: besides showcasing some truly unhinged (in the best possible way) playing from both Mitchell and B., this album closer seems most notable for its use of multiple notational strategies - albeit one would need the notes in order to know that; and for a fuller understanding of how it all breaks down, one would need recourse to the Composition Notes^^^. What we are told here is as follows: the structure, as mentioned above, takes the form of an ABCBA palindrome, beginning and ending in relative calm with some truly mad stuff in between; the A sections are fully-notated, whilst the B sections represent the two solos and employ "a controlled governing format (where events are regulated with regard to cue points and activation-sequences)", if you can get to grips with that; the central C section is "a controlled ensemble improvisation utilizing a tenbral [sic - sc. "timbral"] approach with regard to the long sound with variation". That is actually fairly transparent for once, although in terms of how it's notated, we are none the wiser: it is "conceptually arranged outside of standard functional systems". The point I wish to make here is just that B's restless experimentation with different possibilities for notation foreshadows, of course, the far more detailed and personal strategies he would come to adopt later on.
That's it. It is still a marvellously entertaining and interesting listen, however much I am now incapable of approaching it with any of my former ingenuousness... does it represent the apex of his career? Hardly, but then I was never convinced by this "all downhill from 1979" nonsense anyway, much as I love B's '70s output. Besides, when was I ever in a great hurry to declare that anything is the "best" of anything? Why would I limit myself to that mentality, when there is enough here to keep me busy for the rest of my life?
* It actually is that simple, and I should know because I've been doing it for years. To a large extent this was born of necessity: I never had enough money as a teenager to blow on an expensive stereo setup, and rather than save up for one, I typically spent all my money on records (or beer, etc). But the great advantage of this is that instead of allowing my ears to get lazy early in life, and then spend years using them mainly to detect "imperfections" in the quality of sound reproduction - which by the way is what many collectors, and pretty much all self-styled audiophiles, are in the habit of doing - I trained mine to hone in on the music itself, and was thus able to hear all sorts of detail in what others sometimes thought were quite crappy recordings. This doesn't mean that I prefer bad recordings, far from it; but it does mean that I don't have to worry about only tolerating "perfect" recordings which are fit for a super-high-end sound system. I have still never had one of these; this doesn't seem to stop me hearing and experiencing music very fully. [Maybe one day I will lay out all I might have to say on this subject; but given that some in the musical community would take it more or less as a declaration of war, I am in no hurry to do so: for the time being, I'm done with it.]
* The only collector I knew personally who (steadfastly) held this view is no longer among us, and can no longer defend his viewpoint - and therefore won't be named here. Other people of a generation older than mine have definitely expressed the same view - but I have no idea how many of them are still around or how prevalent the idea might be amongst younger friendly experiencers...
** This is rather close to being literally true - but then the whole project was born in smoke to begin with. What ya gonna do ;-)
*** B. had probably conceived of works for a hundred orchestras before the sixties were out; getting a lot of his more exotic projects realised was always a very different proposition, obviously.
# Since I had been only concerned with listening to recordings in strict chronological order, the question of how great a time might have elapsed from the recording date to the eventual release of an album featuring material from that date seldom if ever entered my head back then.
## That is to say, lazy in regard to that one remark - the article as a whole took me hours.
### You'd be very lucky to pick this up dead cheaply, but I didn't get at all ripped off for my copy. (At the time of release, CD was the most expensive format available in most territories, and I have no idea what the RRP would have been for a "budget" range... I myself didn't start buying CDs until later on.)
^ I bought this on Discogs, where the seller had flagged up in his listing that the version being sold has a different cover from the one shown on the site. All this really means in practice is that the photos they use on the site don't show the outer "jacket", which possibly only made its appearance on one of the two CD editions..?
^^ It really sounds surprisingly old-fashioned, at least until you get used to it; that could be true of any edition in any format, I'm not sure. But in order to get a properly engaging listening experience, I had to jack the volume way up for this. "Lifeless" is maybe a bit strong, but I want to make the point that no effort was taken to use the new format to its full advantage. It would also be interesting to hear the version included in the 2008 Mosaic box for comparison.
^^^ I've added this to my list of possible "microscope" recordings for later on down the line...
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