Since I returned to posting here - indeed, since before then really - it has seemed as if the steady stream of new album releases from B's corner had dried up; of course, one possible explanation for that is that people behind the scenes are busy preparing monster box sets, but still...
However, that does seem to be changing just lately! Having only just written about one new release - and whilst still waiting to see how easy it might be to get hold of another (albeit from last year) - I was nudged by McClintic Sphere about not one, but two further new arrivals... and I was planning to deal with both of them in one post, but as it turns out there are just too many digressions too many observations to make on the first one, so that the second one will have to follow along in a day or two. The blog can wait ;-)
This first one, then, is another in the long line of solo alto recordings, with the slight difference being that it's not a new recording: titled Solo Bern 1984, First Visit, it comprises a performance recorded live at Altes Schlachthaus, Bern on July 7th 1984, and is released now as part of a special new imprint (itself called First Visit) on the Hat subsidiary ezz-thetics.
All of the solo albums are well worth hearing - by anyone with a serious interest in saxophone playing, never mind any friendly experiencers as such - and it would be fatuous to do the jazz-journo thing of making out that this is particularly or unusually excellent, but then again not all of the solo albums I've heard (which is most but not all of them) have grabbed me the way this one did. The set consists of twelve originals, plus two Coltrane numbers ("Giant Steps" and "Naima", both also interpreted elsewhere) and two of B's beloved "old chestnuts" from the songbook (in this case "Alone Together" and "I Remember You", both of which must be real favourites of the maestro's: they crop up again and again in various contexts). The originals are (of course) chosen for their variety as much as anything else, so that the programme takes in everything from soaring ballad structures to brutal exercises in multiphonics, overblowing and the like - and a bit of almost everything in between. With no desire to try to unpick each piece individually - anyone interested must simply set about getting hold of this and listening to it - I will just dwell on a few of the marvels on offer here, before turning to those pesky digressions I mentioned earlier.
Track 6 is Comp. 118f, primarily an exercise in buzz logics - though Composition Notes Book E does list several other specifics in its instructions for this piece - which sounds like an extremely demanding piece to play, requiring both a great deal of breath (as evidenced by the huge gulps of air B. takes every few seconds) and very close and precise timbral control. Even if he was already versed in circular breathing at this stage*, I am not sure that it would have been the appropriate approach to take for this, which naturally seems to want to be broken up into separable attacks as per this performance**.
This is immediately followed by the aforementioned "Giant Steps", played in a rather allusive, indirect manner with only occasional recourse to Coltrane's written theme, interpreted "in spirit" and taken at a suitably brisk pace. B's reading lasts just under four minutes, but given that it follows on from a piece which would surely leave many players dizzy and light-headed, and that he has only had 20-30 seconds of applause in which to recover and get ready, this really showcases his amazing stamina and tests his technical mastery to the full.
Track 8 then is Comp. 26b, rather a storied piece - first recorded in a Paris studio in 1972, it is dedicated to (Kalaparush(a)) Maurice McIntyre, was played live in 1974, and has been regularly revived at intervals since - which runs through an extraordinary sequence of orthodox and extended techniques, including (to great effect) the noisy clacking of keys at one point.
Track 12 is listed here as Comp. 118q (we'll get to this presently) and is basically "just" a five-note, ascending and descending arpeggio sequence which gradually acquires more and more harsh subvocalisation along the way, switches octaves, gathers speed, acquires more harsh tonal distortions, and - eventually twists itself into something quite different, over the course of three and a half minutes. There is a real release from some of the audience when this one ends, but once again it's a piece which must surely require such controlled power and technical skill that one can imagine it finishing most lesser players off. Come to think of it, this one does seem to be a circular-breathing exercise***, and one of quite extraordinary ambition, varying its pitch, timbre, tempo and dynamics along the way - all to great effect, of course.
So, this brings us to the digression phase of the post, as we turn our attention to some of the opus numbers given on the official release (and which pass unquestioned by Art Lange in his liner notes#). I just described a piece named here as 118q: but according to both Composition Notes Book E and the Catalog(ue) of Works, the 118 series only runs as high as 118L; track 5 is titled Comp. 99q, where the 99 series (offically) terminates at 99k. Track 10 calls itself Comp. 106r, where the official listings for the 106 series go only up to 106m. And as for track 4... ok, we'll come back to that in just a minute.
There is precedent for this sort of thing, and I'm not about to blame it all on Werner X. Uehlinger (even if we might legitimately ask him where some of these purported titles really came from). The 106 series does indeed only go up to 106m, but that didn't stop Leo Records from giving us "106n" or Intakt from putting out "106p"##; another Leo release gave us "118m", and its sister release offered both "99L" and "99m". Who knows where these titles originate, or whether any of the respective producers bother to check them much when putting these albums out? After all, it's normally only a tiny handful of super-pedants like me who would ever notice, and clearly it's taken me long enough... mind you, Graham Lock famously flagged up one such anomaly years ago, even if he didn't actually solve the puzzle. And let's be clear, some of this confusion might originate with the maestro himself: after all, the Catalogue confirms that there was in fact a Comp. 99a - unrecorded - but there is no listing for it in the Composition Notes, where the 99 series begins with 99b### .
The real enigma on this album, though, and the one which prompted me to do all this checking in the first place, is track 4, listed here as Comp. 170c. In this case, there is no problem with the opus number as such; but there is a major conceptual hurdle to clear with regard to the date of recording. The studio solo albums, at least, tend to focus on the most recent series of original solo works, whichever one that was, often dipping into the earlier canon as well, and/or throwing in the odd "cover" (more common in live settings). The studio album which unveiled the 170 series is this one, which showcased no fewer than seven entries from that series. The recording date was November 14th 1992. How could one of these same pieces have been played more than eight years earlier? This just seems extraordinarily unlikely, not least because in 1984, although the (Martinelli) numbering system was very much in place, the range of numbered pieces was nowhere near that high yet. Works with numbers in the range 15x - 16x very much continue to appear (for the first time) in the early '90s. So I am going to say unequivocally at this point that whatever track 4 was called at the time of performance, it most definitely was not known as 170c.
The odd thing is... if you compare it with the version on Wesleyan (12 Altosolos) 1992, it really could be the very same piece, allowing for interpretation on the day; as Lange notes in his liners here, few of the solo pieces are actually written-out, but instead comprise short (or in some case long) lists of instructions: this is absolutely borne out by the Composition Notes. So I can well understand how, somewhere along the line^, that title got attached to this piece; I just don't think that decision was properly thought through, and I suspect that what B. actually played in Bern back in '84 was a different piece altogether, which just happens to have several common features with a later work. (Even the maestro revisits his ideas, after all.)
The only other digression, really, is to note that it's a bit of a disappointing copout to say that "the space on the backcover is not wide enough to show the symbols of Anthony Braxton’s compositions". This is a digital-only release and the solo pieces have very simple, easily-reproduced diagrams assigned to them. Really not sure what happened there - unless of course the process was started, but foundered on the rocks of non-existent opus numbers, as detailed above - but it does come across as uncharacteristically weak of this producer, whose various labels have set such a high standard in the past for their design and packaging.
Gripes and puzzles aside, though: what a brilliant release, and well worth waiting for! Forget all about the mystery titles and just cheer along with the Swiss audience, from all those years ago...
* I remember hearing B. say (in a BBC radio interview) that he was taught circular breathing by Evan Parker, his "last saxophone teacher" - but he didn't say when that was exactly. [If I ever felt I had pinpointed that in the recorded discography, I have forgotten it now... (but see footnote ***)]
** 118f has been revisited a number of times, both live and in the studio - I'm not about to make a comparison at this point.
*** There are occasional missed notes, but no actual audible inbreaths that I can hear - and indeed if you listen closely enough you can hear him breathe while he is playing, so this has to be done with circular breathing. Pieces which don't use it, therefore, don't call for it.
# Not beating up on Lange, here: he is "one of the good guys" with a definite affection for B's music, and extensive knowledge of it - no question about that. But he's also Uehlinger's in-house essayist for this stuff, and there is only so much effort any writer will bring to that sort of paying gig: painstaking research/fact-checking is not likely to be included.
## The Intakt release - Willisau Solo, recorded in 2003 (released 2007) - has a pretty weird track list all round, it must be said... probably I should look into that at some point..!
### Composition Notes Book E, p.89. The diagram confirms this is 99b; p.88 contains the last of the notes for Comp. 98. It's as if Comp. 99a doesn't exist - but there it is, in the Catalog(ue) of Works.
^ The back cover confirms that this 2024 digital release is the first edition; but Lange's notes were actually penned in August 2015, "revised 2024"... so clearly this project has been a long time in the pipeline.
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