... and now for the good news

 

This gorgeous poster image was produced for a solo concert given by the maestro on 6th October 2023, under the auspices of The Unwrinkled Ear: two nights after the reunion show with Wolf Eyes, B. played one of his solo saxophone recitals at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. So far, just two clips have turned up from this performance - and thanks again to McClintic Sphere for hunting these down and passing them on: a beautiful ballad structure (which I definitely recognise*) and a superb multiphonic piece. Filmed on an audience member's phone, these are far from professional, but they capture the sound pretty adequately.

The quality of the playing is not even remotely surprising - or not to anyone who has listened to any of B's previous solo recordings (live or otherwise). What is extremely heartening to see is that B's apparent physical problems of two days prior to this were an aberration of sorts: there looks to have been a chair available for his use during the solo recital - visible to his left, at the right of the "picture" in these two video clips - but he didn't need it, or at least not during these two pieces. The second number, especially, is very demanding from a technical point of view, requiring a substantial sample from the maestro's huge lexicon of extended techniques; and some of these necessitate quite a lot of physical exertion as well as a high degree of skill. This exertion, I am pleased to report, does not seem to trouble him.

I'm being realistic about this: none of us is immortal, and B's career is as finite as the next musician's; obviously, it will all end at some point. But there is a difference between knowing and accepting that, and having to deal with visual evidence of his struggling to fulfil engagements which have already been booked; the difficulties implied by what happened at the Wolf Eyes show are not something that any of B's admirers would wish for him. Clearly, some days are worse than others; but it does look as if the stumble-and-fall at the Zebulon Cafe was a one-off... for now.

This is arguably more reassuring in B's case than it would be for (just) any performer of his age, because unlike most musicians, the maestro is still pushing boundaries and striving to create new work even in his (academic) retirement. Terms such as Lorraine and Thunder Music have recently been added to the panoply of his existing compositional strategies, and his restlessly inventive mind shows no sign of slowing down. If his body is able to hold out for a while yet, this will mean that he can continue to lead from the front... and much as I might wish for him to enjoy some peace and quiet at his advanced age, I rather doubt that that is what he would wish for himself.

As for the music in these two clips - well, what more can we say at this point? B's approach to solo performance continues to be an inspiration: he sets himself a ridiculously high standard, and never fails to meet it. Heard here in an environment full of natural echo, carefully captured by multiple microphones (so that the percussive clacking of keys on the second piece is just as faithfully rendered as any of his actual notes), he displays yet again the immaculate skill and unmatched subtlety of expression that has been amazing us for decades now. Cherish him while you can.

***

McC also passed along to me a few other links at the same time - not to full sets but to "trailers"; but even these would seem to warrant a separate post in due course. The solo clips, in the meantime, demanded their own attention...

* I know for sure that I have heard this before, and I want to say that I've heard it on more than one occasion; but I can't identify it, for the time being. It sounds tuneful enough to be a standard, almost; and B. does play standards at his solos recitals, so we should never rule that out, but I think it's an original. His lyricism on alto is one of his more consistently underrated qualities (though not by me..!); but his original ballad structures tend to retain a level of abstraction that refuses to resolve into anything straightforwardly "melodic". I have a feeling that if I spent long enough trawling through my (admittedly rather large) collection, I would find this piece before too long. But I did have a quick attempt at it and was not able to do it. - As for the experiment in multiphonics, that would be harder to identify in principle: I believe that all of the solo series include at least one composition somewhat along these lines, and I am quite some way from being able to say with any confidence which one of them is being played here. Whatever it is, it sounds fantastic...

Reunion with Wolf Eyes

 

Wolf Eyes and Anthony Braxton

Zebulon Cafe, Los Angeles

4th October 2023

The notorious original meeting of B. with (former?) noise terrorists Wolf Eyes took place, of course, at the Victoriaville #22 Festival in 2005, and chances are that anyone who is reading this already knows the story of how it came about - but just in case: B. caught the experimental band's show at a festival in Sweden in 2004, and was so excited by their music that he bought all their CDs from the merch table, joking afterwards that he had been feverishly planning to move to Sweden so that he could play with them (not realising at first that they were American). When the band was booked to play at Victoriaville the following year, on the day between B's duo with Fred Frith and the working sextet's GTM performance, it seemed inevitable that the maestro would end up sitting in with the group. John Olson described the meeting as "a perfect match"; B. himself said "they felt like family immediately. The communication was immediate."* As we all know, this ended up being released on CD. 

Fast-forward eighteen years...

The "rematch" features a slimmed-down Wolf Eyes, now just a duo with longtime member Olson** partnering founder Nate Young. The concert comprised two sets: one of almost fifty minutes, and a much shorter one in which two brief pieces were played. [Thanks to McClintic Sphere for sending me the links to these clips.] In an ideal world we would only need to consider the music; unfortunately, that wasn't the main takeaway from watching these videos. For those of us who had been wondering if age would ever really start to catch up with the evergreen Mr B., the answer is found right here. We need to deal with this before we go any further.

The good news is that I'm not sure what happened is quite as bad as I probably just made it sound. B. begins the first set standing up, although a chair has been provided for him in case it's needed; within the first ten minutes, it becomes clear that he is struggling a bit. In full flow, he begins stumbling backwards towards his chair, and as the backs of his legs locate it, he sits down hard and immediately stops playing. (This occurs at 09.45 in the first video.) He makes an instant attempt to stand up again, but doesn't manage it; a second attempt is successful, and he takes a couple of steps forwards as he begins to play once more - with all of his usual fluency and power: Olson and Young are completely absorbed in their own work, and if either of them has noticed what just took place, they give no sign of it. When B's knees begin to give way again, he staggers backwards in search of the chair, finds only the front edge of it, and at 10.30 he commits his weight to the unbalanced chair, overturning it and falling to the ground in the process. There are shocked gasps from the audience, and Young and Olson stop playing and help B. back to his feet, righting the chair and settling him on it before returning to their places as if nothing has happened; after a few seconds to compose himself, B. begins playing again, rather tentatively at first, but by 11.25 he is in full control again. Some altissimo squeaks precede a short demonstration of his "harsh breathing" technique, one of his trademarks for years now, and this elicits a broad smile and rhythmic nods from Young. From this point on, it is almost as if nothing untoward has happened.

B. continues to play seated for the rest of the concert, which is evidently not his preferred way to do things, but the flesh is weak... or at least weakening. From the chair, he proceeds to give a perfectly good account of himself and although he lays out for several minutes late in the set, this does not appear to be forced on him. He plays with all his customary authority and control and does not seem to be overly discomfited by his fall - and to be clear, it's not precisely a fall that we've just witnessed, more that he sits on the wrong part of the chair, which then cannot hold him. But it's not nice to see, and I was quite glad that McC had already warned me about this. What is clear, and undeniable, is that much as B. wishes to play standing up, his legs - I presume it's really his knees - can't cope with this for more than a few minutes. This happens to us all eventually, assuming we live long enough; with all the musicians of the "free era" who have already departed from this plane, it's quite a wonder that B., Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill are all not just still among us, but still active and creative, but age will catch up with everyone and as much as I have dreaded having to address this issue in these pages, it was inevitable that I would have to do so at some point.

At the end of the first set, the applause is loud and enthusiastic, and B. rises cautiously to his feet to take a bow, and punch the air a couple of times; there is a quick consultation between the players, and Young announces that "Anthony wants to chill, then come back and play...". And this is indeed what transpires, although as outlined above, the second set is more like a double-encore really. The maestro wisely remains seated for this, but once again, he takes the applause standing up and repeats both the careful bow and the clenched-fist salute. Life in the old dog yet. As the three players make their way slowly from the stage, B. does like an old man: the brain - and lungs, and fingers - still functions as well as ever, but the appendicular skeleton is starting to feel all those long years. 

At the risk of delivering an anticlimax, then, there is relatively little to say about the actual music: not that there is anything wrong with it, it's more that it is just what one would expect to result from this sort of meeting. The maestro sticks to alto sax throughout; Young plays electronics exclusively, with just some occasional vocals (especially in the second set); Olson uses electronic processing as well, but mainly plays a small horn or pipe followed by a three-piece metal frame with a mouthpiece attached, apparently of his own devising. The ambience in the long main piece is mournful and ominous rather than harsh and confrontational (hence my wondering in the first line above if the group is now to be considered "former" noise terrorists, after all this time), and it need come as no surprise at all that B. feels at home within such a soundscape, which is really not that different from some of the more experimental DCWM pieces. At least some of the electronic processing appears to consist in sampling the aerophones in real time and playing them back in modified form, or at least that's how I heard it. The first short number in the second set is a little more aggressive in tone, with not just a regular electronic pulse but a sort of siren effect as well. None of this puts B. out in the slightest... but then, if he actually listened to his CD purchases back in 2004 and afterwards, he will have been fully prepared for all this and more ;-)

For the time being, at least, the live performances continue - it may be that eventually our man will be restricted to composing and will no longer want to play live at all, but let's be thankful that we aren't there yet. A few days after this performance, B. gave a solo concert, also in LA - I have been pointed towards some (short) clips from this, too, but haven't seen them yet. Another post will be in order, in due course...

* This event has its own fairly detailed Wikipedia page these days. (I had remembered the background and context to the meeting - but the direct quotes were new to me.)

** John Olson in particular is a hugely prolific noise musician, basically an American analogue to Masami (Merzbow) Akita. He also runs the American Tapes label - which, again, is ludicrously prolific in its output. Much of its catalogue was both strictly limited-edition, and regarded as highly collectible: I know that at one point our very own Avto G. used to find himself bidding for these items on eBay against Henry Rollins, a dedicated collector of such stuff who was (apparently) convinced that Olson's label and its output were the "new thing" of our time and would command high prices in years to come...

Looking forwards (Cent's 2024 manifesto)

 

This feels more than usually pointless, but... I'm going to do it anyway. 

After the last eighteen months, the question is not whether I can keep posting, but whether I can actually say anything worthwhile. I have mentioned before how acutely aware I am of being up against the limits of my musical knowledge when trying to get properly to grips with this stuff; that's not going to get any easier in the near future. Of course, I am also aware that "I can't read or write music" or "I haven't formally studied music" are no longer valid excuses: all of that was true in 2007, but I have had ample time to teach myself if I had really wanted to*. More than sixteen years on, both of those sentences are still true, but neither of them really counts for anything. Still, the fact of the matter is that I am very much an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to musicological analysis, and if I ever became tempted to forget that and adopt ideas above my station... an afternoon's intensive listening to the maestro's oeuvre would soon jerk me back to reality. I don't understand this stuff nearly as well as I would like.

But I've been through all this before, and it's never stopped me yet. I just make very slow progress... as anyone can see from how long it's taking me to engage with Herr Dahinden's 2013 Swiss offering. Trying to obtain a real understanding of this performance entails more than simply establishing whether or not we can substitute Comp. 147 for the posited Comp. 174 in the listed programme; it means internalising Comps. 94, 96 and 98 to the point where I will recognise any material quoted from any one of them as soon as it pops up. That, admittedly, would presumably be a hell of a lot easier if I could hear music as notes, as structures, rather than just as sound. But that's not where I am and it remains to be seen if I am up to the task. And bear in mind, it is entirely a self-appointed task, and one which probably no-one else cares about - ! As Nick Cave would have it, "Onward and onward and onward I go/Where nobody else could be bothered to go"**. 

So there's that... and my unfinished business with repertoire... and I'm still striving to get truly inside the massive phenomenon that is GTM, really get to the heart of it. What with one thing and another, there is plenty to keep me occupied here, even if hardly anybody is reading it***. Besides, B. is still out there, still active as both creator and player, and I will want to report on any news as I get it. If McClintic Sphere fancies chipping in as well, so much the better... I'd be astonished if 2024 yields another attempt at the "most posts" record, but I hope to remain active and post regularly over the next twelve months, and we'll see where that takes us. The world outside is clearly in a parlous state, and very little about the future can be taken for granted; but while there is still art and beauty in it, I still feel a need to play a small part in acknowledging that.

(Oh, and there is still the unanswered question of when I will get into the box of tapes, and what I will do about it... )

* This is actually somewhat debatable, as the times in those years when I was most strongly drawn to deep musical research coincided with other demands on my time and attention. Nevertheless, there must have been opportunities in the last sixteen years for me to teach myself a lot more than I already know; perhaps I am just afraid to commit myself fully..?

** "Do You Love Me? (Part 2)" (1994). [Let Love In is probably my favourite Bad Seeds album, when it comes down to it... certainly that and Murder Ballads are the two I listen to most often these days.]

*** At time of writing, we are already fourteen days into January - and the blog has not yet racked up a hundred hits for the month. This gives a pretty clear idea of what sort of attention it gets when there is no bot activity... but then, it's also rather obvious that I am avoiding trying to gain a wider audience at this point. (In an era when every bugger is seemingly spouting off on Youtube or TikTok or - wherever, I "ought" to be able to find my niche, but I'm far from sure that I really want to try...)