Repertoire: Norton and Min

 

Kevin Norton & Haewon Min play the music of Anthony Braxton

(Barking Hoop 2001)

This is not a very well-known entry in the discography (insofar as any entries in this sort of discography could be described as "well-known" to begin with). Kevin Norton, who had taken over from Gerry Hemingway as the maestro's principal drummer of choice a few years previously, was still theoretically in that role when he undertook this project - although for the most part, around this time, any engagements which he had with B. were playing standards, rather than new material as such (he had formerly been heavily involved with the earliest experiments in GTM). B. himself, in the meantime, cast his musical net far and wide as the new century and millennium came along, playing with many different partners and collaborators and in many different contexts, and for a while, at least, he didn't really appear to have a working group at all, at least as far as the recorded discography now reflects such activity; expanded groupings continued to explore GTM (recordings of which would eventually surface on NBH), and these did still feature Norton, plus a shifting cast of multiple reedmen; whenever a stable grouping did reconvene, it was to play lots and lots of standards. Mostly these were captured on Leo Records or CIMP, with one (pretty obscure) outlier on Norton's own Barking Hoop label; the core quartet, sometimes augmented by other guests, comprised Norton himself plus bassist Andy Eulau and guitarist Kevin O'Neil*. 

Meanwhile, Norton was married at the time to concert pianist** Haewon Min, and decided to essay a duo examination with her of some of his bandleader's music, resulting in a concert on March 22, 2001 at Roulette in NYC, attended by the maestro himself. Norton released the results on his label, later the same year; two decades afterwards, he made the material available via Bandcamp, and provided a little bit of background as well: "(t)he idea behind the project was 1) to dig deeper into Braxton's compositions and 2) involve Haewon... because she is a (sic) accomplished concert piano (i.e. "the classics" Beethoven, Chopin, etc) but would bring a fresh approach to the improvisation". 

The material

A cursory glance at the track listing for this album suggests that Norton didn't put a great deal of thought into his selections: three of the five tracks were sourced from one single earlier album, Duets 1976 (with Muhal Richard Abrams). This made life easier for me, in preparing this post - but does seem a little eccentric, given how much work there was to choose from, at this stage. Despite the fact that the '76 album comprised duets with piano, which would seem to have made it an ideal place to start looking for suitable material, it's not even the case that all three of these selections were obvious ones: Comp. 40p was originally a feature for B's contrabass sax, something which cannot possibly be replicated by a percussionist, however skilled. Comps. 60 & 62, from the same three-piece series, are far more evidently suited to the present purpose, being ambitious and forward-looking piano-focused works in which the role of B's horn can fairly readily be taken on by mallet percussion.

In addition to these three pieces, the set was rounded out by two numbers from the first two creative ensemble books, and although once again neither looks like an obvious choice, a little more thought suggests reasons why Norton might have been attracted to them. Comp. 23h - one of the less renowned inclusions on the classic Five Pieces 1975 - was originally arranged for the quartet and begins with a monophonic melody for the two horns; but although it's quite short, it does later morph into something of a feature for Barry Altschul. The even earlier Comp. 6n, on the other hand, was dedicated to Jerome Cooper and, who knows, perhaps that was enough reason for Norton to want to play it. In looking at the setlist as a whole, it might be presumed that Norton wanted to select material with plenty of scope for detailed interpretation by piano, without burdening his wife with the expectation of having to compete with Marilyn Crispell, and thus avoiding pieces which were strongly associated with her; but in actual fact this doesn't hold up either, since both 60 and 62 had been played by Crispell, the latter as a duet, no less***. Ultimately, all we can conclude is that Norton must have had his own reasons for choosing the pieces that he did - and it will be interesting to check out the results. 

In terms of my own preparation for this, given that only 6n is already pretty familiar to me, it was deemed prudent to do some comparative research beforehand. I went back and listened to Duets 1976, which I covered in Braxtothon phase three (and have probably never listened to since, or not in its entirety#), and also refamiliarised myself with 23h: in this case, the album itself is one which I remember pretty well overall, but as noted above, this is not one of the better-known tracks, nor was it recorded anywhere else as far as I know##. (Details for the other appearances in the canon of 60 and 62 can be found in footnote three*** below; 40p, of course, shows up in an ingeniously-collaged form on Jump or Die - but is otherwise generally notable by its absence.) 6n, on the other hand, may only have been recorded a handful of times as a primary territory but it is so widely played as tertiary material - during the collage era and especially in GTM performance - that it practically counts as a staple. Once you're able to recognise this theme, you will hear it over and over again###.  

I did refer to the Composition Notes (Book C), but only for a brief overview of 40p, 60 and 62... 

Comp. 40p had never been performed live at the time of publication of the Composition Notes. It "can be performed by any instrumentation"; it just so happens that in recording it in the studio, the composer chose to use it to explore "low pulse dynamics": hence the contrabass sax. There is no reason why anyone else performing the piece should employ similar instrumentation; however, the piece is explicitly stated to be all about the blues, as such (and the blues "will go on forever"), which does make this a bit of a head-scratching selection for a mallet-percussionist and a concert pianist, but... let's see. The piece is said to be "a rhythmic music that provides an exciting platform for creativity", and that's certainly the case with the 1976 rendition.

Comps. 60 & 62 are, as stated above, two from a series of three related works^, and share a number of similar features, both being "chain structure(s)" - a term actually taken from the notes to 62 - rather than "head" structures, fluctuating between sections of notated material and open sections for improvisation; of 60

it is specified that improvisation "should comprise fifty percent of the music", which again provides a pretty stiff challenge for someone trained in a conservatory. 60 is said to be "one part chamber music / one part sound environment structure", and it is written in such a way as to allow very different interpretations. (Strictly speaking then, the 2001 cover should sound quite different from the 1976 version.) 62, meanwhile, is written with one multi-instrumentalist in mind, plus one piano, and in B's ideal world each of its seventeen core sections - "nine component material blocks... eight improvisational inter-spaces" - would see a switch of voices by the first player. We already basically know that this is not gonna happen here... but for all these provisos, both of these pieces would seem to be pretty decent selections for the 2001 album. (Whether the same is true of 40p is another matter.)

The music

In a break from my usual modus operandi, I'm going to try and deal with the performance aspects of the album without going through the tracks blow-by-blow (even though that is of course the way I made my notes while doing the preparation for this post - and given that there will still be individual observations to make regarding each track). To some extent, this is because my feelings about the music while I was listening to it, and immediately afterwards, don't precisely match my overall conclusions on it.

If we didn't already know that the music was performed live, I doubt we would be able to infer that from the eventual recording, from which any and all trace of audience noise has been scrupulously removed in the editing process. The piano also has a rather "classroomy", slightly brittle timbre to my ears - but, the more creative music I hear, the more I have to get used to pianos which don't necessarily sound as if they're in tiptop condition; and although this is most notoriously the case in club venues - or used to be - it could pretty much happen anywhere, as far as I can tell. But we're not yet done discussing the sound of the recording, because the elephant in the room here is the tonal palette, which is desperately limited overall. Four of the five numbers feature Norton on marimba; only the shortest piece uses anything else, in fact. Now: this is only a problem if one is not listening closely to begin with, because the attention to detail in the music is often exquisite... but of course we know that most listeners, with the best will in the world, need a little help to stay focused. For anyone who didn't, the whole thing could easily have slipped by in a blur, and it may just be the case that removing all the applause was relatively easy, because there wasn't too much of it to begin with. That sounds horribly harsh and cynical, and it's really not meant to be... I just have a nasty suspicion that it may not be far from the truth. This is real purists' stuff, and I don't know how many of those were around in 2001. (I would love to be completely wrong about this.)

The two "bookends" for the set, Comps. 60 and 62, are handled in pretty similar fashion: both (of course) played by Norton on marimba - on which instrument he really is a superlative player, by the way - they alternate between the written-out, prescribed-phrase material (very easily identified, since both players negotiate almost all these passages in unison) and the improvised/open sections, with slightly variable results, but generally acquitting themselves pretty well. That is to say: Norton always sounds like an expert navigator, and Min only doesn't if one is applying the strictest scrutiny... in other words, if you know that her training is likely to make it hard for her to improvise completely naturally in such scenarios, then you do inevitably notice at times that the actual content of her playing is not always that imaginative. Otherwise, she plays with (of course) great fluency and (near-)total confidence. Taken on their own terms, within the inherent limitations of the instrumentation, these pieces have plenty of variety and a good deal of tonal colour. The essential problem with both numbers, in the light of what I observed in the previous section of the post, is that they seem to follow the templates laid down by B. and Abrams rather too closely, when really that ought not to be the case. That, and the fact that since Norton doesn't switch instruments at all during the reading of 62 - he does use some sort of oscillator at one point^^ - he has effectively ignored one of the composer's most crucial instructions. Still, with all that said, both of these pieces make sense in terms of their inclusion, even if you could make a case for only including one of them when their overall treatment is this similar.

Comp. 40p - the second track here - actually sounds delightful, putting to rest at once any concerns about the missing low end in the instrumentation, and for the most part it does bear out B's assertion that "the sheer weight of the vamp discipline will advance its own cause". The problem with this number remains what I thought it would be, which is that the pianist, trained on Beethoven and Chopin (...), lacks a feel for the blues; again, the more you know about this when listening to it, the more likely you are to hear what's not quite right about it, which is a shame because if you just listen to it without trying to closely to analyse it, it's really extremely enjoyable. Norton, for his part, fills his improvisation with invention and creativity; Min does her best to rise to the challenge, sounding bright and lyrical at times, if a little stilted at first, but her attempt to inject "blues" into her work seems limited to the known pianist's trick of striking two adjacent keys at once, to simulate the "blue note" which otherwise cannot be achieved on a tempered keyboard. She tries this a few times then abandons it; she never runs out of her steam in her own solo, but I don't hear the blues in there. In the final analysis, it's delightful to hear this piece played in a live setting, and I'm sure it must have pleased the maestro to hear it included, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that, having gone to the 1976 album in the first place for likely source material, they came across this number unexpectedly, both liked it, and worked it in without necessarily stopping to wonder whether they could truly do it justice. [I still feel like a total downer for even saying this, but you know me by now... I am compelled to report as I find.]

The two selections I was least sure about to begin with end up satisfying me the most: in their different ways, 23h and 6n turn out to be perfect choices for the date. In the former case, this has much to do with the fact that it's the only number on which Norton actually varies things up, starting out on vibes and then switching to mixed small percussion for the second part of the piece (again following the pattern established by the "canonical" earlier recording). In the first half of the reading, he sticks to vibes exclusively, matching the piano in rendering the monophonic written line - so, taking on the "horn" role here, rather than playing as a drummer. The two musicians execute this section perfectly, effortlessly negotiating even the trickier fast sections of the written material. When Min gently breaks out into something freer, this is when Norton moves over to his arsenal of small percussion, first on triangle, then quickly adding in a variety of different surfaces - and yes, clearly this part of the piece is what attracted Norton to it in the first place. Min merges in very well here, the two players combining to create a shimmering soundworld full of unusual colours and restrained dynamics. 

6n sees a reversion to the marimba - in terms of tonal and timbral variety, we've already had all we're getting with 23h, the central number in the set and also the shortest - but the piece is handled in a wholly unexpected way: for the first four minutes and twenty seconds, Norton plays it entirely solo, covering the written territory so expertly and fully with his handful of mallets that the attentive ear finds nothing missing at all. This, perhaps, is why he wanted to play this one: he knew what he could do with it. Only when the familiar opening theme returns, more than halfway through the reading, does the piano join in; and after a vanishingly brief overlap, Min then takes over and Norton lays out. Her improvisation seems mainly limited to harnessing the work's rhythmic drive and running through some harmonic variations on the thematic material, but this does take us into some beautifully discordant territory for a while. Norton joins again for the briefest of restatements before the close. It's an unusual way to approach the piece, but it definitely works. 

Both 23h  and 6n share the "crooked keys" which B. specialised in during the seventies in particular, and which I identified so frequently in the Braxtothon days: haunting, askance motifs which slide into the ear before locking in place, then tugging the attentive listener into the composer's soundscape. After seeing what this pair achieves with these, it's very easy to see why they wanted to play them. And, ultimately, it's quite clear why the project was undertaken in the first place: these two, with serious technical skill and under Norton's expert guidance, have a lot of fun exploring the materials - and any friendly experiencer with a lasting interest in the music will find much to appreciate about this set. It remains a bit of a mystery why Norton didn't expand his tonal palette far more than he does: the closing number in particular really cries out for it. But for those who are willing to put in their time and attention, this album does provide rewards.

Norton, incidentally, has teased on his Bandcamp that "I may upload other recordings of this project on Barking Hoop Archival in the not too distant future". That was almost four years ago, and he hasn't done it yet; nor is it completely clear whether he means more BraxRep as such, or just more duo recordings. But I would certainly be interested in hearing more like this, even while the natural audience for such a project must surely be very small. Its commercial appeal, obviously, is almost negligible; but I'm pretty sure Norton (well into his sixties) has long since figured that out. This is the reality we are living in: but in a way that just makes it more special for the few of us able to appreciate it.

* O'Neil had, himself, first played with B. in far more adventurous contexts; bassist Eulau's is a name which I personally only associate with the huge outpouring of standards which were recorded around this time. (He was not, in other words, another Joe Fonda, capable of playing all different types of music; or if he was, B. apparently didn't trust him to take it on. His other credits seem for the most part to be far more conservative fare - although I see that he was briefly in another trio with Norton, again in 2001.)

** I know nothing about this musician, beyond what is discussed in this post. Besides this album, she appears in B's discography only once, as far as I am aware - and I believe that is actually a mistake: according to Restructures, she was a member of the Cygnus Ensemble at the time they recorded their (short and ruler-straight) reading of Comp. 186 for the 2000 album Broken Consort; except that, as far as I can see, Haewon Min played no part in this recording at all, and may or may not ever have been a member of the group. The Discogs entry for the album lists the pianist as Joan Forsyth, who plays only on one piece (the one composed by group leader William Anderson). This is backed up by the group's own website. I have also heard the recording in question - not the whole album, just the version of 186 - and don't remember any piano on it: it's listed as being arranged for violin, cello, flute, oboe, and two guitars - which is this group's core instrumentation. (Apologies for linking only to an incomplete and unindexed version of the discography in this footnote: at the time of writing, the Wayback Machine web archive is still down, hence not only can I not presently link directly to the listing for this album, I also can't check whether or not Min's being erroneously credited on it was repeated in later versions of the discography. It may have been corrected at some point.)

*** Comp. 62 was one of the four pieces included on Duets - Vancouver, 1989. As for Comp. 60 - this is one of the coincidences attending my decision to write about this project when I did, because when I first settled on it, I had only a CD-R of the Duets 1976 album for reference, and although I had long since forgotten this, the same pair of CD-Rs contained my original copy of Quartet (Birmingham) 1985... which is the only other recording in the canon to include a (collaged) version of Comp. 60. (I later acquired the CD reissue of the Birmingham album, so it's been quite a while since I dug out those CD-Rs.)

# I did include the reading of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" on the second of my three playlists, way back in the day. For whatever reason - or no real reason at all, beyond time and life being what they are - I am pretty sure I never went back to Duets 1976 until now... when I did, there was another coincidence which finally obviated the need to dig out my CD-R copy at all; but as this will be the subject of the next post, I shan't elaborate here..!

## With the Restructures archive unavailable for the time being (see second footnote above), I have relied on smartpatrol's list instead for this kind of thing. Thanks once again to that individual - whoever they are.

### As if to drive home the point, I heard it just this afternoon in the 2008 Chiasso septet reading of Comp. 356 (not an official recording, but some more tenured readers and listeners will doubtless have this one in their collections). Like I say, 6n is such a common choice as tertiary material that this scarcely even counts as a coincidence... it would almost be stranger if I hadn't heard it ;-)

^ Comp. 61, unrecorded at the time of publication of the Composition Notes, had been performed in duo settings - and possibly by the working group/ creative ensemble, although B. is unable to swear to that. Ha, but of course now it is better known as having been recorded by Thumbscrew, unless of course it wasn't. (I've said all I intend to say on that subject, at least until any further information comes to light.)

^^ I don't have nearly enough technical knowledge to understand exactly what Norton is doing at this point in the piece, although it's pretty effective. But someone as versatile as he is could surely have varied his voicings considerably in this reading, and he just doesn't do that.