Bet you a tenor

 

(not quite as) rare as rocking-horse shit

1. McClintic Sphere has been busy behind the scenes, bringing stuff to my attention that he knows I won't have seen for myself... last weekend apparently saw a little flurry of activity around a post on Facebook by trombonist Jeb Bishop, linking to a live video of a 1979 trio performance by B. in which he could be seen playing a larger-than-usual saxophone. His question was: is this a C-melody, or a tenor? and the weekend then saw several luminaries from the creative music scene offer their opinions on this.

The trouble I had, when I set about writing this up, was that the video itself (a link to which McC had included in his email) had "gone private" at some point within the last few days. Luckily, it has already been reuploaded to Youtube and - as you can from the screenshot above - you can scoot along to the 22:30 mark and see for yourself what the master reed-wrangler was dealing with.

Opinions were offered, I'm told, by (drummer/ leader/ composer/ etc) Tyshawn Sorey, (guitarist/ bassist/ leader/ etc) Joe Morris and (all-round EFI reed terrorist) Mats Gustafsson; Sorey asserted that B. played tenor on some of the legendary '85 quartet tour, while Morris confirmed that B. owns a C-melody and played it on their duo record*. It was left to Gustafsson to make the definitive taxonomical identification: he said that B. is definitely seen playing tenor at the relevant point in the video. He would know, so who are we to argue? 

The performance in question showcases the prototypical version of what is now known as Comp. 94. By 1980, the role played here by Richard Teitelbaum had been taken over by guitarist James Emery, but the liner notes for the album which was eventually released on Leo Records explain the genesis of the piece, unveiled in its unfinished form - the composer was still writing part of it at the time - on the '79 European tour with the line-up which can be seen in the video. This is confirmed in B's Composition Notes. (Some previous thoughts on this piece were sketched out last April.) Again, when I first came to write this up here I ran into difficulties straight away, because a bootleg live recording I have which purports to be from Berlin, on 1st November 1979, with this same trio - and which I already had ready to hand, precisely because Comp. 94 is in my (rather disorganised) "in-tray" for detailed research relating to the album Ensemble Montaigne (Bau 4) 2013 - appeared at first to be a completely different performance. Happily, that turned out not to be the case: the audio boot is simply incomplete, starting in medias res. If anyone reading this has the same "Berlin 1979 trio" recording in their possession, with a running time of 48 minutes: rest assured that this is indeed the same performance which you can see in this excellent video - but with the first six minutes (or so) missing**. (Limitations of old audio-tape, and all that: better to miss the beginning, or the ending? - answers on a postcard, etc)

As for the instrument seen above, confirmed by MG as a tenor: as far as I am concerned this marks the first positive ID of a tenor sax on one of B's performances that I have come across. Yes, there have been rumours over the years - though not lately - of B. playing tenor, but I have tended to regard these as possibly spurious (at least until such time as they could be confirmed). During the seventies and early eighties, various recordings credited B. with soprano sax, too; but this was generally sopranino, misattributed, and this principle - avoiding the more usual choice in favour of something less obvious - is entirely in keeping with B's aesthetic. Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill have been known to play tenor; B. tended to stick to alto. Mitchell plays bass sax fairly often; B. generally plays contrabass. And so on: of course, we know that he can play all the saxophones and clarinets, among other instruments; but in the usual run of things, we hear him playing the following: alto, sopranino and contrabass sax, soprano clarinet, contrabass clarinet(s***), flute. Oh, and piano of course... But as regards other single-reed instruments, he may bring these out on special occasions#, but I've tended to think that people are mistaken if they credit him with tenor - or soprano - sax in particular. Until now..! As always, I am happy to be proven wrong on this point##.

2. The same YT account, in the name of Jay Korber, has just posted another video which will be of definite interest to anyone reading this, again filmed in Berlin: a forty-four minute performance of the '76 quartet, featuring some of the material included on Arista's Montreux / Berlin Concerts as well as two pieces which were excluded from that album - Comps. 40f and 23g; what we don't have here, but might have expected, is Comp. 6c. This was presumably played as an encore, then edited in out-of-sequence by Michael Cuscuna: we have already established that extensive editing and studio trickery was employed in producing the Montreux parts of that famous double-LP, so it need come as no surprise that something similar was done for the Berlin segment.

These look like terrific videos, and the poster has done us all a valuable service in making them available - there are plenty more concerts on that channel, and hopefully it will not be deemed necessary to take any of them down. (At some point I may get round to looking at the Berlin quartet in more detail... not now!)

3. I finally caved in and ordered a copy of Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013 from a seller based in the Czech Republic: shipping costs were not cheap for this, and there is also the pesky matter of added "Brexit tax" these days, but the total amount was still somewhat less than the price quoted by any UK sellers that I could find. It's eleven months to the day since I first posted about this box set, and more than ten months since I wrote in some detail about various unanswered questions which might possibly be resolved by it, once I could get hold of it; I was fed up of waiting - and besides, I didn't go to London in the end, did I? What I saved there might as well be spent here.... is what I finally persuaded myself. 

The package has not yet arrived, though the seller assures me it doesn't usually take very long (fingers crossed). More news as and when - including, at some point in the not-too-distant future, a report on the actual, physical box set...

4. It wasn't an overly onerous task, in the event, to establish for certain that the second primary territory played in Prague by the '84 quartet is, indeed, Comp. 110a - I'm still not too sure why there was ever any doubt about this, but it came up in my recent listening to the Black Saint remasters box, and the Prag album is not the easiest to navigate, so it was just a matter of setting aside some time to play the whole thing. In the event, rather than put that off indefinitely, I dug out my CD-R copy### and played it the next day after I posted about this; you do have to wait quite a while, for the several sections of Comp. 105a to come and go, and for a transition phase to pass too... but there it eventually is, confirming the accuracy of the graphic title reproduced on the album cover, and easily identified by comparison with the studio version^. So, that's one less thing for me to fuss over and wonder about ;-)

* This was of course a 4-disc box set, and it's pretty normal for B. to bring his full arsenal to this sort of date (cf. a similar affair with Gerry Hemingway, etc)

** I'm glad I was able to confirm this so quickly, because it's precisely the sort of unresolved question which would nag away at me otherwise. The (unfinished) Anthony Braxton Project lists the existence of the tape, and gives Berlin as the venue and the date, as well as confirming Comp. 94; but of course this might or might not have been the exact same recording which I had amongst my CD-Rs, claiming to be that concert. When I put the CD on last night to try and confirm a match with the video, I was disgusted... but looking at the different running times of the audio boot and the video, and coming back to the latter this morning, I figured out pretty swiftly what had very probably happened, and that turned out to be correct. (As for 94 itself: there are several pieces of research to be done on this before I am through with it, it's just a matter of bucking down and doing it...)

*** What we casually refer to as a contrabass clarinet actually encompasses several different instruments from the extensive clarinet family, although I believe I am right in saying that of all the possible variants, B. generally plays one in particular (the paperclip version - generally referred to around these parts as the seamonster). 

# C-melody sax is not an especially rare bird among B's recorded discography; of course, for a while he also favoured the (very rare) F-alto, which I saw him play at the Royal Festival Hall in 2004, but which was (alas) stolen to order on a subsequent trip to Europe - this was described, I remember, by THB in an online post somewhere, although I can no longer remember where I read it. [I believe the trip was the one they made for the Glasgow trio concert, but don't quote me on that.] Far be it from me to wish any harm on the thief, or on the person who ordered it stolen. They both have to live with themselves.

## The Restructures entry for the Composition No. 94 album did list B. as having played tenor, but like other such listings, I was never sure about it. Now that we have one confirmed appearance, we can safely assume that there will have been others... although, as regards the '85 tour, Sorey's assertion is a bit of an odd one. He himself was five years old at the time; where exactly is he getting his information from? -!

### One of two people sent this to me years ago, and I can't exactly remember who it was - thanks anyway! The typed track listing which came with it repeats the same "Comp. 110" entry from Restructures, but was probably taken from there anyway (?) - the official release looks pretty clearly to refer only to "110a", but I don't have this yet. (Working on rectifying that, at time of writing...)

^ The notes for the '84 studio date are very much concerned with pulse tracks, which were the latest thing in Braxtonworld at the time, and which were not confined to the 108 series. (No real detail is given as to why the 110s themselves were grouped together; 110c and 110d are both stated to be simple ballad structures which B. wrote for his wife, not intended to be played with pulse tracks, while (as already noted) 110b is on the missing list. I have not yet found time to consult the Composition Notes on this matter, though.)