Triumphant (overdue) debut

 

(tongue slightly in cheek here..!)

In the end, we booked a week away around the time of the BraxProm - as it shall henceforth be known (around here, anyway...) - on the understanding that if I did change my mind and want to attend in person after all, I would still be able to get to London from where we were staying. This would have been possible, but it would also have been a considerable hassle, so ultimately I was happy to stay put - although I did have reason to regret that a bit, as it turned out.

I settled for listening to it on the radio, anyway. This post, I should point out right now, is not a detailed analysis of the eventual performance; that will (hopefully) follow in due course, once I've studied the composition notes (and done a bit more research). This, in the meantime, will simply detail my initial impressions on the night, and some general conclusions regarding the concert, together with its presentation by BBC Radio 3: there will (inevitably) be a great deal of nitpicking, so I had better say up front that I really enjoyed the Braxton set (lest the reader get so fed up with hearing me moan that this happy conclusion might fail to be reached..!).

Cynic that I am - not without good reason, I will say - I had assumed that the overall programme for this concert was assembled with Ellington first in order to draw punters in; everyone has heard of him, whereas only some serious music listeners have heard of Williams; needless to say, not nearly enough people are familiar (yet...) with the work of the maestro, so I figured that his piece had been carefully tucked away after the interval so that the less adventurous members of the audience could continue to avail themselves of the Albert Hall's hospitality, without having to venture back to their seats. In other words, my initial take on the programme as a whole was that B's name was being stuck on there as a sort of afterthought. This, I will now admit, turned out not to be accurate: credit where it's due, the organisers were actually putting the Braxton piece last as the climax of the event, not the aftershow. (Presumably they trusted Ilan Volkov; I find it hard to believe that enough people at the BBC had even heard of B. for them to have made this assessment themselves.)

I should also point out that I could have been disabused of my false assumptions before the music had even started; as it worked out, I was slightly late tuning in on the night, and the Ellington suite was already very much underway by the time I did. In the event, my opinion on the programme changed gradually during what remained of it; I later discovered that the brief introduction by R3's announcer - sorry, I don't know who that was* - made it clear that the final piece had very much been billed as the main event. I may feel justified in my cynicism, but that doesn't mean that it won't sometimes lead me to wrong conclusions! In retrospect I think I may have been unnecessarily harsh towards the Proms in general (though I am still not taking back anything I previously said about the British listening public). 

But we'll get to that**. As the concert was being broadcast live, I only patched in during "Sophisticated Lady" - and was (eventually) a bit amazed at how much I had already missed. Otherwise, my observations at the time were limited to noting that the music was "sugary and frothy", dominated by the sort of syrup-laden string arrangement which was all the rage back in the 1940s - and which I thought had died an unlamented death, decades ago. It's a sound which I associate very much with (old) Hollywood, which about says it all, and I've never been able to understand why anybody would like it; that is, I get why it is a suitable accompaniment to cinematic melodrama***, but I genuinely can't fathom why on earth anyone with any degree of discernment - regardless of individual taste - would wish to listen to it. I can barely tolerate it; and I couldn't (still can't) help thinking that Ellington - who composed more than two thousand pieces of music, and who was absolutely taken seriously by (at least some of) the classical fraternity during his own lifetime - was desperately poorly served by this quarter of an hour of disposable slush. Once I realised what I was dealing with here, I was pretty glad to have arrived late; as it was, I still had to sit through "Caravan" - a piece which continues to intimidate the hell out of student drummers, here reduced to another smoothed-over, saccharine period piece, on which one can almost hear the sleigh bells. Having survived this, just about, I concluded now that poor Ellington's name had only been stuck on the list in order to draw in some unsuspecting punters - and that the main event, presumably, was coming up next. (I definitely couldn't understand how any of the audience would cope with what was to come after the interval, at this point.)

So, part two of the programme was of course the UK premiere of the Zodiac Suite by Mary Lou Williams - and while the orchestra was getting set up for that, R3 cut to a short link including a few thoughts from the pianist on the night (and "replacement cover star"), Aaron Diehl, whose trio was with him for this next piece. We were told by the announcer that MLW tried to "experiment to keep up with what's going on... I even keep a little ahead of them, like a mirror that shows what is going to happen next"; but this work, composed in 1945#, kept reminding me above all of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and/or## An American in Paris (1928)###. It is true that every so often something dissonant and interesting would draw my attention, and of course it's also true that I was generally quite distracted while the music was playing, and would never claim to be in a position to express an informed opinion on it. I will listen to it again, now that such a thing is possible; for now, I am (obviously) mainly concerned with putting across my views of the concert as a friendly experiencer of B's music, and I shan't bother myself with trying to make a serious assessment of this other work. The only actual observation I made during the performance - besides noting the apparent Gershwinisms - was that those awful strings kept finding their way back into proceedings, and I could only hope that whoever was responsible for the arrangements^ in the first and second parts of the programme was not allowed anywhere the third.

I was not in the best of moods heading into the interval, then; but furiously scribbling notes kept my mind suitably focused, and although by now I was surer than ever that the persons who assembled this programme had a very peculiar concept indeed of its target audience, I was still eager to hear how the players, under the joint guidance of Volkov and of three of B's senior students, would handle what was to come.

***

The interval itself - at least as regards the radio broadcast - was largely spent giving the BBC audience a potted history of the maestro; it needn't come as any great surprise to anybody that I found a number of things to grumble about here. Before we even got to that bit, though, over the applause which followed the Zodiac Suite, the announcer speculated about whether we might have detected any influence in the foregoing music of the various movements' dedicatees: for example, "Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell... now there is a pair of pianists" - leaving me to wonder exactly which one of those three was being left out there^^. This isn't precisely important, no; but the problem is cumulative, and each individual piece of carelessness becomes (I think) symptomatic of a wider lack of respect.

One thing I will give them: the team made a conscious effort to pronounce the name Anthony Braxton, which (for those of you who might not be aware) is not how we generally pronounce that name, here in the UK. Regardless of whether or not the name includes an "h", it is usually pronounced Antony; but of course they would have learned that this is not the way the composer himself says his name, and they made an effort to get it right^^^. Point in the Beeb's favour... good to have that one in the bank, given what came next. 

Several musical excerpts were played in pretty quick succession, interspersed with semi-informed chitchat between the announcer and her guest for this part of the programme, Robert Worby (who - I have since learned - is the BBC's resident "New Music expert" and also a composer in his own right). The first piece, after a very basic introduction, comprised the first seventy seconds of Comp. 51 from the album Creative Orchestra Music 1976; this was announced proudly as "Cut... Number One" as if this were the actual title of the piece~. It surely wouldn't have been that difficult for someone to find out the correct opus number - if, for example, the announcer had stopped for just a second and asked herself "Wait, is that actually the title?"... - It is also a strange choice since it was announced as featuring B. on saxophone - which of course it does, but he is only one of four reedmen on that number, and cannot clearly be picked out from the mix at that point. If looking for examples of his playing, not just his writing, why would you choose a big band number?

The second piece, Comp. 6e from 3 Compositions of New Jazz, is at least given its correct numerical title (because of course that is how it's given on the CD). And, yes, we can now hear the maestro playing - very briefly: one minute or so is played, the very beginning of a twenty-minute piece of music. (Would a "proper" composer be treated in this A-B-C way..? I think not.) The chat between the pieces is no better or worse than one might expect from such an occasion, really - Worby sounds as if he is genuinely enthused by B's music and by the achievements of the AACM generally, even if he hardly comes across as an expert on this music, and the presenter tries gamely to sound excited (while pretty clearly giving the impression that she would be far more comfortable talking about Elgar or Brahms). When a snippet is played from Comp. 136 a little later on - this being Roland Dahinden's version of that piece - the announcer simply reads all four names off the back of the CD, crediting B. as having played saxophone on a trio reading which does not include him. Even a cursory look at the notes for that album would make it clear that all the tracks feature trios, not a quartet - and guess what, so would actually listening to the music which was just played. Not good :(

On the positive side: Comp. 305 - the 2002 duet between B. and THB - finally seems a good choice, even if this may be somewhat accidental (they are discussing language music at that point), and even seems inspired in retrospect (in the light of the live performance); and Worby quotes Cage~~ as saying that "simultaneity replaces harmony" in modern music, something I had not heard, but which seems powerfully emblematic, fundamentally true, of the many different compositional strategies deployed by B. in particular. [I am doubtless showing my ignorance here by admitting that I did not know this already - but I have never made any secret of my own lack of formal tuition.] On a less positive note, when Worby gushes about B's graphic scores and says that "some of the very early ones look like constructivist paintings... beautiful colours, amazing" it is really not clear whether he is actually correct (a few of the very early pieces do indeed have fully graphic scores with no notation whatsoever) or whether he is thinking of Falling River Music, in which case he is way out, by decades even - no pieces are cited in support of this assertion, so one would just have to give him the benefit of the doubt. (Or not...) One subject on which Worby does sound well informed is the matter of conducting, especially when multiple conductors are used - as will be the case here, something I did not know until that point (and which left me finally regretting not being physically present for this concert, as mentioned above). 

Several minutes were used from an interview with (bassoonist and longtime collaborator) Katherine Young, who provides (at last) some valuable insights into B's methods and working practices, and crucially cites his preference for fairly minimal rehearsal "so that everyone is slightly nervous". This ties into another of the maestro's favourite axioms, also quoted here by Young: "You haven't done your job if you haven't made a mistake"~~~. We are told - though not everyone may have been listening - that although the materials have been announced beforehand as Comp. 27 (+46, 59, 63, 147, 151, LM), there is no set plan, and in practice all the musicians - some more than others - have agency to change the direction of the music at will, when it feels appropriate to do so. This much, I hope anyone already knows if they are reading this blog; the presenter definitely did not, and does not really seem to have taken it in. But, on the subject of conducting, and agency: no mention was made on the night of the composer's own absence, as if he had never intended to be there - and his role (for he would clearly have been one of the three conductors, with Volkov and James Fei) appears to have been split: Ingrid Laubrock has taken his place on reeds, but Young herself is the third conductor. One is left to infer that this must have been decided at rather short notice, and to wonder how nerve-racking that may have been for the bassoonist, who (by her own admission) had already been hard at work, woodshedding some of the difficult notated parts, for weeks beforehand.

***

And after all that preamble, all that frustration, we finally arrive at the promised music - and, delightfully, it is quite sublime.

I had managed to finish my frantic scribbling just as the presenter finished talking, so was able to put the pen down for a minute, sit tight and focus in closely on the actual music. Beginning with very quiet and restrained sounds, the piece opens up fairly quickly - at least, this is how I remember it (again, my self-dictated remit here is to cover my impressions on the night, so I deliberately have not replayed the concert yet). The first note which I made here concerns those pesky strings again: as if they are stuck in the mode which was required of them for the two suites before the interval, they still somehow manage to sound a bit syrupy to my ears - but, thank goodness, this doesn't last long. After the opening couple of minutes, Fei and Laubrock cut loose, and this in turn unlocks some far more ominous, dense and chewy string textures. From here, the music really takes off, with the three experts in B's system showing the way to the others. Tasked now with playing far less orthodox sounds, the strings are finally freed from their previous confines. 

I noted that Fei is the perfect "stand-in" for this sort of occasion, so intimately involved with B's musical systems for such a long time now that he lives and breathes them, surely more knowledgeable about this stuff than any other musician bar THB; with B. himself absent, Volkov could not have anyone better to help him guide the less experienced players@ through the constantly-shifting territory. Long, sustained tones indicate that language type 1 has been cued up (by whoever was in charge of that; this was when it really hit me how much I was still missing, by not being present in the audience); a miniature crescendo develops, with the strings very much playing their part, but for all the general excellence on display, there is no doubt about the star players, all three of whom are on top form. By this point I was starting to feel some real excitement, even while concentrating intensely: complex and ambitious though it is, the music has real cohesion to it, and the performance is turning out far better than I dared hope.

Somewhere around the halfway mark, I hear elements from Comp. 59, the first of the supplementary materials I have been able to recognise: the call-and-response effect between woodwinds and orchestra (first giddily described all those years ago) is instantly identifiable. But I will also say right here that I did not manage to spot any others on the night; we'll see what emerges from repeat listens..! I was naggingly reminded soon after this of something I am sure I have heard just recently, by a simple two-note motif, repeated a few times like a bird's call; I couldn't put my finger on it and I'm pretty sure it is nothing to do with any of the other pieces listed.

I made hardly any other specific notes from this point on, focused as I was on just enjoying the music. I did find myself noting that although the audience was being worked far, far harder here than they were before the interval, I hoped that they were also feeling suitably rewarded, since this level of musical creativity and technical invention is not something they will stumble across every day. The character of the applause which followed the decay into silence of the last notes would suggest that my hopes were well grounded: even if there seemed to be a slightly stunned quality to some of the reactions, there were real whoops and cheers in there too, something which the pre-interval pieces entirely failed to elicit, and the applause continued for several minutes as the players and conductor presumably took their various bows. In the end, I myself felt a mixture of ecstatic pleasure at the performance, and mild exasperation at the extent to which my own ingrained cynicism had led me to set my expectations low enough that I hadn't prioritised attending the concert, especially once I knew that B. would not be present. Even without him, this would have been a valuable opportunity to see the tricentric model in action, with the assembled players responding to the three conductors. It wasn't to be; but who knows, now that it's been established that music like this can be played for an appreciative audience in this country, might we reasonably expect more of it in the future..?

***

Once I had access to the full broadcast, I realised that what only gradually dawned on me during the evening - the fact that the Braxton piece did actually have top billing on the programme - was flagged up right at the outset by the presenter. Some of my hardened cynicism was unwarranted; the Proms are in fact used as a vehicle for introducing British concertgoers to sounds they may not have heard before, and indeed this wasn't the first work by an AACM alumnus to be unleashed under the auspices of the festival: a piece by George Lewis has already been played, apparently (though I only learned this during the course of the night, and I don't know which piece was played, or when). The Proms as a whole - unlike the (in)famous

Last Night, in which the likes of "Land of Hope and Glory" still get played, and everyone pretends there is still such a thing as the British Empire - are probably rather more forward-facing and open-minded than I'd assumed. (And it was an assumption: clearly, I don't normally follow this sort of thing at all.) 

Of course, this doesn't mean that the organisers are always able to grasp that for which they have reached: the existence of this desperately lopsided programme - put together under the aegis of American experimentalism with roots in jazz - is proof of that. Once the enthusiasm which greeted the final piece has been registered, the subdued applause which followed the Ellington suite - with its stale and outdated arrangements - can be heard for what it was: polite but unimpressed, even bemused, since anyone who was actually looking forward to the evening's climax must surely have wondered at the bland fare they were fed as an appetiser. The second piece at least makes some sort of sense on this kind of bill; but if they wanted to include some Ellington - and why not? - then surely some fresher and more contemporary treatments could have been provided. But that would not have been thought necessary. The rather lazy or half-hearted attitude behind this approach - we'll do it, but we don't have to worry about whether or not we are doing it "properly", because of course it's not real music anyway@@ - very much spills over into the presentation of the live broadcast: the announcer conveys some sense of enthusiasm for the "new sounds" which are going to be heard, but of course she has not bothered to do any homework in preparation for it, leaving that to Robert Worby, who can be expected to have done enough for both of them. 

It seems to be my fate that I am always the "ungrateful voice" on these occasions, but I have set myself the task of speaking as I find, reporting faithfully back on the conclusions I have reached through careful listening and reflection. What I will say by way of summary: I learned nothing new from this about the BBC or those who represent it, or (for that matter) about the British approach to the creative arts, generally; I will stray towards optimism in positing that when the presenter spoke afterwards of "this major American composer", she meant it, perhaps newly won over by what she had heard. Perhaps she will now be inspired to explore further; perhaps not. But the event took place and was well received, and I will take that as a win for friendly experiencers everywhere. The music itself, ultimately, is what is most important in all of this.

* If the presenter's name is given anywhere during the broadcast, I haven't caught it. I also don't listen enough to Radio 3 to recognise her by voice alone; basically, I had not listened to Radio 3 at all for more than ten years, since I stopped listening to their occasional jazz programmes; just recently we got a new car and I have added the channel to the shortlist of stations which I flick through (and usually end up turning off). Years of getting into complex and ambitious music seems to have left me incapable of standing most of what gets played on a "classical" station these days, especially now that R3 itself has gone the way of Classic FM and just plays "hits", not full works...

** After the concert was broadcast, I was sorted out with a recording of it by McC. (Thanks are also due to the artist formerly known as King Kennytone...) Besides the obvious advantage of being able to listen again, this has also allowed me to listen to the very beginning of the broadcast for the first time.

*** Mrs C. wandered in while I was swearing and expostulating about "awful and revolting strings", and asked; what is wrong with them? "They make me think of a nice old black and white movie... I like it!" Little did she realise that she was perfectly illustrating my point XD

# At least, that's the date given on the concert's webpage, and it's backed up by Wikipedia - but we are told that there were multiple versions of the work. It looks to me as if 1945 represents the date of eventual completion, and the version used for this concert would seem to have been the last one.

## I haven't heard either of these works in a very long time - certainly not since I took a serious interest in music. Whether I was reminded of one or the other, or both, I couldn't say - and it took me a few minutes to identify the "bell which was being rung".

### I was unsure enough about the dates here that at first I couldn't even be certain whether MLW's piece was influenced by Gershwin, or whether it was perhaps the other way round - this would hardly have been an isolated example of a black artist having their ideas plundered by a white follower. I was pretty sure the Gershwin works dated from the 1930s or earlier, but this is not exactly my speciality, and one of the drawbacks of the place we stayed last week - out in the countryside - was feeble and unreliable internet. (Luckily I was able to hear the radio broadcast through the TV, otherwise I would have been unable to listen on the night at all.) In the end, I had to wait until we returned home to check these little details. 

^ It was mentioned fleetingly in the broadcast that the Ellington pieces were arranged by Morton Gould. This name meant nothing to me, so I looked him up: he died in 1996, which makes these particular arrangements (realistically) at least thirty years old, probably more. He would appear to have been respected in his field(s), but as far as I am concerned the string arranging in particular on these numbers is shocking, reducing the work of a significant composer to the status of a commercial. The announcer gushed brightly about the "Hollywood sparkle" which Gould's arrangements lent to the music: from my point of view that is enough of a condemnation that I don't need to provide any gloss on it. What I do wonder is why nobody in the orchestra - or Volkov himself - objected to playing this drivel. Presumably the timeframe and budget did not permit anything more up-to-date; but it left me thinking that Ellington's legacy would have been better served by not playing the pieces at all. As for Zodiac Suite, presumably the arrangements were those finalised by Williams herself, in conjunction with Milt Orent.

^^ One might assume Powell, since even the most blinkered of classical snobs must surely have heard of the other two. But I have heard enough Radio 3 just recently to know that Powell's is very much a known name to the channel, though I am not quite sure how or why. Has enough time lapsed since Tatum was active that people have forgotten who he was? It's an odd one, since "pair" is a highly specific term and doesn't admit any leeway.

^^^ This did actually leave me thinking that perhaps *I* need to make more effort to get it right. I have always pronounced the name Antony, despite knowing that B. says it differently. But we Brits also pronounce the name Cecil as Sessil, and that doesn't stop me referring to Seasil Taylor... hmmm...

~ All this means is that whoever sourced the excerpts was using the CD reissue, which itself simply reproduces the original packaging and therefore does not update the titles (I have already posted about this). It still sounds a bit ridiculous to announce "Cut Number One" as if it were somehow the name of the piece.

~~ Worby's biog on the BBC website informs me that he actually worked with Cage himself, back in the laye eighties. So he can be assumed to know a thing or two about modern music... I didn't know until the other night about his radio show on Saturday nights, but I may try and listen to some of it on the iPlayer. (I 

am still pretty uninformed about a lot of contemporary notated music.)

~~~ The presenter, who was talking to Young - at some time before the night of the concert, obviously - completely misses the point of this dictum, understanding her to have said that she had been practising the parts with mistakes worked in. If you stop and think about that, it tells you quite a lot about the causal carelessness of the presenter's attitude, and by extension that of the channel in general. How could that have meant that?

@ All I mean by that is: less experienced at playing B's music. I understand that Volkov has been working with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for some time already, and they can all be assumed to be players who are used to interpreting and performing "new music" -  I don't know why I'm repeating that term... I don't like it, born as it is of the entrenched prejudice that only "classical" music is music at all. Speaking of which...

@@ I don't think this has anything to do with B's ethnicity, mind you, or even really to do with his nationality (although that is more plausible, as I will explain presently); it's just derived from the (still) prevalent opinion among "classical types" that nothing without a pretty tune to it is music at all (given that if it's not played by conservatory-trained musicians in evening dress, it can't be considered music in the first place - so when Beecham said that "great music is that which enters the ear with facility", this could not be carried forward to apply to Britney Spears or Ed Sheeran: pop doesn't count, and neither does jazz. Don't get me started on Beecham). Some of this is doubtless rooted in the traditional view of music as an application of mathematics (of course, none of these people would ever stop to consider that someone like B. might be working from much the same type of basis, only wider in scope). Some of it is just inherited prejudice, which I have seen first-hand on more than one occasion. As for the idea that American music (art, literature...) might be taken less seriously: it may surprise some readers to learn that there are still people over here who think that way, even now. Naturally, this is itself based on the false assumption that the British are arbiters of artistic taste and excellence, an idea which doesn't really hold up to even fairly casual scrutiny.