Lest We Forget

Borah Bergman (1926 or 1933-2012)
By Ken Waxman

For someone who didn’t even record until he was in his forties, Borah Bergman’s prodigious talent soon marked him as one of jazz’s most skillful experimental pianist, a reputation he maintained until his death on October 18 last year.

An enigmatic figure, Brooklyn-born Bergman was either 79 or 86 when he died. He claimed he shaved seven years off his age in the biography for his first record date in 1975. That relatively mainstream disc on Chiaroscuro only hinted at his powers, which came to the fore during the subsequent decades in solo performances and as he partnered many of free jazz’s heavy hitters both in Europe and North America.

Bergmann’s improvising was most incredible in a solo setting, since after years of practice he developed his left hand so that he could play as speedily with it as the right; also allowing each hand to operate independently of the other. When he played ballads he used a crossed-hands technique: right hand for bass notes, treble for the left. Often described as an ambidextrous player, he preferred the term “ambi-ideation” since it stressed the equality of both hands.

Ironically for such an Ur-modernist, Bergmann’s first influence, which he often cited, was the powerful near-stride styling of Earl Hines, who he first heard at 12 on the “Potato Head Blues” record with Louis Armstrong. As a teenager he was also impressed by one-handed classical pianist Paul Wittgenstein, famous for commissioning and performing Maurice Ravel’s “Concerto for the Left Hand Alone.” Still by the time he was in his twenties, Bergmann was a bopper, with a preference for the keyboard advances of Lennie Tristano and Bud Powell. During that time he rarely performed in public however, concentrating on his career as a teacher of English and Music in the New York school system and perfecting his unique style with constant practicing.

Crucially, his mature style was seeded in the ‘60s when he first heard saxophone-centred Energy Music. Already impressed by chamber music, Bach and Dixieland as well as modern jazz, Ornette Coleman’s first LPs with Don Cherry, where the instruments played both contrapuntally and polyphonically, made him decide to replicate that freedom in a solo setting. Similarly, the stamina, speed and passion John Coltrane brought to his mammoth solo on “Chasin’ the Trane,” which Bergmann also heard at that time, was another influence. Listening to the LP at 45 rpm he practiced along with it, gradually evolving a stream-of-consciousness method to liberate his own playing from its technical restrictions.

After he was introduced to the producer of Italy’s Soul Note/Black Saint records by the editor of Musica Jazz, and released well-received discs like Upside Down Vision in the early ‘80s, he became renowned for his solo playing. And he was indefatigable. Few will forget an appearance at a late ’90s Vision Festival when he came on after 1 A.M. after a full evening of overwhelming music by a series of downtown bands, and was still improvising at full intensity more than one hour later.

Later on Bergmann aptly demonstrated that empathy existed alongside this technical prowess, sharing recordings with powerful drummers like Hamid Drake and Andrew Cyrille and more spectacularly with reedists such as Oliver Lake, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton and Ivo Perelman, plus advanced European saxophonists like Evan Parker, Frode Gjerstad and, on three separate occasions, fellow go-for-broke improviser Peter Brötzmann. Eight By Three (Mixtery Records) from 1996, with Braxton, Brötzmann and Bergmann is particularly rewarding.

One trio session from 1997 featuring the pianist Brötzmann and Cyrille is entitled Exhilaration. And that feeling is what’s often experienced listening to Bergmann’s matchless performances.

--For The New York City Jazz Record April 2013

April 6, 2013

Lest We Forget

Willem Breuker (1944-2010)
By Ken Waxman

The blend of anarchism, precision and humor suggested by Willem Breuker Kollektief (WBK), the name of the ensemble the Dutch saxophonist/composer led for 36 years until his death from lung cancer on July 23, 2010, underlined the fascinating contradictions in his music. A collective has everyone on equal footing no matter how skilled, yet this Kollektief had Breuker as the undisputed boss of a group of first-class soloists. Furthermore the sly joke in this wordplay was also reflected in the WBK’s on-stage horseplay. Breuker not only ensured that the unmistakable modern jazz played included themes by notated composers such as Kurt Weill and George Gershwin, but also a large helping of physical and instrumental comedy that might culminate in the vocalizing of a ’20 ditty like “Yes We Have No Bananas”.

Amsterdam-born on November 4, 1944, Breuker, who usually played tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, had established himself as a free jazz player par excellence before he was 25. In 1967, he, drummer Han Bennink and pianist Misha Mengelberg founded the Instant Composers Pool (ICP), and he worked with variations of that group until 1973. However Breuker was never committed to any single project. Even before he acrimoniously split with the ICP in 1973 to form the WBK, he had already been featured on three European free jazz classics. He, alongside tenor saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, was part of pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach’s first Globe Unity disc in 1966; he, plus saxophonist Evan Parker is on Brötzmann’s Machine Gun from 1968; and vibist/bass clarinetist Günter Hampel’s The 8th of July 1969 had him matching wits with multi-reedist Anthony Braxton.

Later on the 10-piece WBK gave Breuker the scope to feature his own musical ideas, over the years utilizing the talents of star sidemen such as trumpeters Andy Altenfelder and Boy Raaymakers, trombonist Bernard Hunnekink, saxophonist André Goudbeek, bassist Arjen Gorter and vocalists Loes Luca and Greetje Bijma. Besides writing music specifically for the band members, who in many cases remained with the ensemble for years, some of Breuker’s more than 500 compositions were designed as theatre, opera or film scores, written for brass bands, chamber music ensembles, fanfare or symphony orchestras, and even for carillons or barrel organs. Starting in the ‘60s he organized improvised music workshops wherever he toured; and from 1977 to 2005 curated an Amsterdam music festival. In short, Breuker was involved in so many projects and created so much music on his own and with the WBK, that listening to even a wide selection of his discs only roughly approximates the extent of his talents.

--For New York City Jazz Record October 2012

October 7, 2012

Rastascan

Label Spotlight
By Ken Waxman

“There was never a master plan, except to release music I enjoy and promote musicians I want to help”, says Bay area drummer Gino Robair when asked why he started Rastascan records in the early 1980s and has kept it going ever since.

Over the years the California imprint, named after the term “rasters” from television technology, has put out music on CD, LP, DVD and cassette, as downloads and even on flexi-disc, with sessions featuring artists ranging from Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker to lesser-known improvisers. “Unlike many labels that take a curatorial stance or try to ‘produce’ each record, I give the artists full control over the presentation of their work,” explains Robair. “They determine the look of the graphics, the order and choice of the music, the titles of the album and pieces. That’s one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about running a label; seeing and hearing the full artistic statement that the object represents”.

Based in Redlands, Calif. in the early 1980s, Robair figured that starting a label was the only way to make the music he and his friends played available. Plus “my favorite artists had started their own labels: the Residents, Harry Partch, Charles Mingus, Carla Bley, Sun Ra,” he recalls. Lacking the funds to put out LPs, cassettes and one magazine- inserted flexi-disc were released on Rastascan. When the drummer relocated to the Bay Area in the late 1980s, he revived Rastascan with a 12-inch single featuring Robair, Braxton and guitarist Aric Rubin. “I pressed 500, but only about 125 got out; the remaining stock was accidentally destroyed by a distributor.”

Despite this setback, he pressed on with Rastascan, which to date has released 66 sessions from local and international players. Although early discs were by Californians such as reedist Randy McKean’s So Dig This Big Crux BRD 012 and the band Debris Terre Haute BRD 011, its international profile was established with Lower Lurum BRD 016 by German daxophone player Han Reichel, and still available as a download. “I enjoyed his music very much, but there wasn’t anything by him available in the U.S.,” recalls Robair. “So I wrote him asking if he’d be interested in sending me something to release. I was floored when he agreed.”

ROVA Saxophonist Jon Raskin, who has known Robair since 1986 and put out several CDs on Rastascan, notes how has the label supports a range of different sounds: “Rastasan includes works that have compositional elements as well those that range from studio manipulations and non-traditional music notation to more traditional music that has innovative improvisation. Gino supports the artist’s viewpoint and goals with his label, which is greatly appreciated when many labels follow an ideology.”

Being a label owner also allows Robair to match the format to the project based on such factors as recording quality, length of pieces, and potential audience. For example, Braxton’s Nine Compositions (DVD) 2003 BRD 060 is made up of tracks longer than a conventional CD can handle. “So rather than make a seven-CD box set that few could afford, I put it all on a DVD, which sells for a lot less and doesn’t require me to chop up the pieces between discs,” he explains. “It also allowed me to maintain high-resolution audio quality”.

In another example, The New Black’s White Album BRD 061 featuring Robair, guitarists Jeremy Drake and John Shiurba and David Rothbaum on analog synthesizer, is a double-LP, recorded direct-to-disc “because I felt that ensemble’s music would translate well to vinyl. And it gave us a chance to do a side of locked-loops, which we improvised.” Then there was the catalogue number, BRD 063, used for Robair’s opera I Norton; 1963 is the year he was born. “I’ve always admired how Saturn Records’ catalog numbers were numerologically important to Sun Ra”.

Despite Robair’s musical presence on about half of Rastascan’s releases, it’s anything but a vanity project. Such unique discs as Peter Brötzmann’s Sacred Scrape/Secret Response BRD 019 and Breaths and Heartbeats BRD 015 by the British Parker-Guy-Lytton Trio are in the catalogue. The former is notable for preserving the sound of a short-lived American trio headed by the German saxophonist; the latter because, contrary to his usual practice, saxophonist Evan Parker edited the pieces on it in a specific order. There was also a 10-year period during which none of Robair’s work appeared on the label. Then he figured “if I’m putting so much time, money, and effort into the label, I should also promote my own music”.

London based saxophonist John Butcher, who collaborated with the percussionist on New Oakland Burr BRD 051 and the recent Apophenia BRD 065, as well as releasing London and Cologne Saxophone Solos BRD 026 on Rastascan, explains his commitment: “In early 1996 I got a phone call from Bill Hsu, asking me if I wanted to play a concert in San Francisco. He also suggested I release a CD on Rastascan to coincide with the visit. I didn’t know the label, but it would pay production costs and a recording fee for me. Not being used to being paid to put out recordings, amongst other reasons, I accepted and met Gino when I played solo in San Francisco that summer. He handed me a box of London and Colognes. We got on and played together in various groupings when I went to the West Coast the next year, eventually settling down to a duo. He's great to play with and be with. He’s into music for all the right reasons, and has great energy.”

This energy includes the determination for Rastascan to continue releasing physical product even though some sessions are now available from on-line services. “I’m not anti-download: I just hate poor audio quality,” Robair explains. “We spend so much time and money recording music at as high a fidelity as we can afford, only to see it end up in a highly compressed format that someone listens to from a pinhole stuck in their ear. Imagine if the only way to experience a painting was by staring through a keyhole at a color photocopy of the original.”

However downloads remain a strategy for making out-of-print sessions available again, “since I’d rather spend the money on a new release”, he adds. Eventually as the Web’s speed and bandwidth increases, the drummer predicts that full-resolution digital audio will be distributed as easily as compressed formats are transferred today.

Until that happens, high quality Rastascan releases will be available in a variety of formats in limited editions and regular runs.

--For New York City Jazz Record September 2011

September 10, 2011

Label Spotlight:

SoLyd Records
By Ken Waxman

Like that of many successful endeavours ranging from the mass production of the automobile, the feature-length cartoon or the personal computer, SoLyd record label’s driving force is one person. While Andrei Gavrilov, may or may not like the comparison to Walt Disney, Henry Ford or Steve Jobs, it’s his ideas, taste and finances that keep the Moscow-based label afloat and is responsible for its massive, (more than 400 releases) somewhat idiosyncratic catalogue. “Sometimes, when I look over the catalogue I get confused myself,” he admits.

Founded in 1993 and named for his daughters Sonia (So) and Lydia (Lyd), Gavrilov is not only SoLyd’s “head, president, owner, director, you name it” but also the label’s entire staff. A freelance journalist/broadcaster/translator since 1983, one of whose more unusual jobs is supplying Russian translation for the TV broadcast of the Academy Awards, Gavrilov initially worked for independent Russian publishing houses. He often wrote about art and music, which put him in contact with many musicians who subsequently appeared on SoLyd.

“I’ve known Andrei Gavrilov since the early 1970s when he used to attend all of the concerts when our Trio (Ganelin, Tarasov, Chekasin) played in Moscow,” recalls percussionist Vladimir Tarasov. “He is good friend to all jazz musicians in Russia. When the Sonore label, which published many CDs from our Trio, my solo and other projects went out of business, he bought the publishing rights and the sound archive.” Plans to reissue these sessions on SoLyd haven’t yet been realized. But in 2006 Gavrilov allowed Leo Records to include Tarasov’s Sonore material in its 11-CD Tarasov box set.

Re-issues don’t play too large a part in the SoLyd catalogue. In fact, says Gavrilov, “SoLyd releases only the music that I personally am interested in at the moment, and tastes can change with the time,” he notes. “But even though tastes change, the main principle remains – the project must be something new, something unorthodox and off the beaten track.” SoLyd has never concentrated on a single musical genre. So while jazz fans may know its CDs featuring improvisers, the catalogue also includes contemporary classical music, Russian rock and blues and local, radical “singing poets”. However the majority of rock releases are from bands either initially unknown or are side projects of more popular bands. The few pop CDs that became best-sellers – by Russian standards – also turn enough of a profit to help subsidize so-called avant-garde sessions.

Although SoLyd releases a combination of newly created and already recorded sessions, one fact remains constant: Gavrilov pays all costs involved, and each CD is marketed the same way. This decision was crucial during the late 1990s when the value of the American dollar to the ruble skyrocketed. With many recording firms bankrupt, disc pirating became rampant. To counter this and still sell CDs, legitimate companies such as SoLyd put out budget versions of their discs. Not surprisingly no improvised music was released as these budget “best-of” compilations. While SoLyd hung on to its artists and distributors, earning suffered. That situation finally rectified itself by 2008, but another irritant remains. As Gavrilov states, “Western distribution is the main problem for Russian labels.”

Today SoLyd discs are available for download and distribution through outlets such as CD Baby, Qualiton, Downtown Music Gallery and Amazon.de, but “for more than 10 years I bombarded European and US distributors with e-mail proposals for different kinds of collaborations. I sent out hundreds of samples with minimal results,” he recalls. “Many absolutely great, wonderful Russian musicians and recordings remain unknown in the west because Western distributors do not want to deal with Russian labels.”

That many of these “great, wonderful Russian musicians” released on SoLyd are part of the so-called avant-garde, concentrating on this music wasn’t a conscious decision, reports Gavrilov. It’s just that for him improv became more interesting over the years and other music less so. Many of the first avant efforts had nothing to do with jazz. One consisted of spontaneous improvisations by contemporary composers Vyacheslav Artyomov and Sofia Gubaidulina; another was by rocker Boris Grebenschikov. Ganelin Trio saxophonist Vladimir Chekasin’s Bolero-2 was the first jazz-improv session. Today the catalogue includes discs by pianist Alexey Lapin, bassist Vladimir Volkov and saxophonist Alexey Kruglov among many others.

“Gavrilov was a person who told me that a generation of musicians had arrived in Russia who are young, play well and think for themselves.” remembers Tarasov. “He told me about Alexey Kruglov, rented a studio and asked me to record two CDs [Dialogos SoLyd 403 and In Tempo SoLyd 404] with him. Playing with Kruglov I realized what Gavrilov had said was true. The saxophonist doesn’t play behind or ahead, he plays together with me and that’s great.”

Happenstance also accounted for SoLyd releasing CDs by non-Russians. Among the first was a CD of a Moscow concert by American pianist Joshua Pierce, followed by efforts like the Russian Second Approach trio’s disc with Roswell Rudd. Other SoLyd releases include ROVA’s Planetary (SoLyd SLR 0407), Anthony Braxton/Marel Yakshieva Improvisations (duo) 2008 (SoLyd SLR 0383/4), Matthew Shipp/Sabir Mateen Sama Live in Moscow (SoLyd SLR 0408) and Jones/Jones [Larry Ochs, Mark Dresser and Tarasov]’ We All Feel The Same Way SoLyd SLR 0396). Some sessions were even recorded in the United States. “It doesn’t really matter where the recording is made – you obtain the rights, you pay for them – what’s the difference between Moscow and New York?” asks Gavrilov.

“I only met Gavrilov once in May 2010, but working with him as an artist is a breeze,” says Ochs. An admirer of Tarasov’s playing the SoLyd owner was so impressed with a mix Ochs had done of music from a Jones/Jones mini-tour, that “he accepted the master immediately and released it in September 2009 on the occasion of our performance during the Moscow Biennale.” A Moscow recording the trio made is now set for 2011 release. As for the ROVA connection, the saxophonist recalls: “Somewhere between the mixing of Jones/Jones CD 1 and the recording of CD 2 I suggested a ROVA recording for his label. I thought the connection ROVA had with Russia, because of its two tours there in the 1980s, might interest him. Sure enough he decided that a ROVA CD, our first release on a Russian label, would be cool.”

Besides the second Jones/Jones set, other future SoLyd improvised music releases include Tarasov playing with pianist Matthew Goodheart and ROVA saxophonist Jon Raskin. It’s sessions like this that make jazz fans hope that distribution deals will soon make all SoLyd CDs easier to access.

--For New York City Jazz Record August 2011

August 6, 2011

Anthony Braxton/Gerry Hemingway

Old Dogs (2007)
Mode Avant 9/12

Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet +1

3 Nights in Oslo

Smalltown Superjazz STSJ197CD

Sun Ra

The Heliocentric Worlds

ESP-Disk 4062

Rivière Composers’ Pool

Summer Works 2009

Emanem 5301

Something in the Air

By Ken Waxman

Boxed sets of recorded music have long been a holiday gift. But sophisticated music fans won’t settle for slapped together “best of” collections. Boxes such as these, collecting multiple CDs for specific reasons, should impress any aware listener.

Anthony Braxton/Gerry Hemingway’s Old Dogs (2007) Mode Avant 9/12 for instance, is another installment in the ongoing recorded history of multi-reedman Braxton. The four CDs feature him and percussionist Hemingway, an integral part of the reedist’s bands from 1983 to 1994, but who has rarely played with him since that time. Each 60-minute inventive Invention was recorded in real time without edits or alternate takes. Extrasensory cooperation is demonstrated as Braxton moves among seven saxophones and Hemingway a percussion collection. Should Braxton’s soprano saxophone obbligato turn staccato and superfast, Hemingway responds with centred vibraphone pings plus affiliated marimba pops. If subterranean contrabass saxophone tongue stops and watery glottal punctuation raucously sound, then abrasive ruffs on ride cymbals and drum rims produce nearly identical timbres. Hemingway’s percussion command is such that in a heartbeat he can produced a tone midway between that of a dumbeck and a set of tin cans to contrast with the reedist’s irregular tonguing; then as swiftly bring his entire kit into play using press rolls and ruffs to replicate foot-tapping swing that complements Braxton’s rare forays into masterful, story-telling runs on tenor saxophone.

Another masterful saxophonist is German tenorist Peter Brötzmann. He never does anything by halves and Chicago Tentet +1’s 3 Nights in Oslo Smalltown Superjazz STSJ197CD consists of five CDs. No essay in self-aggrandizement, three of the discs feature band subsets. The two CDs featuring the ensemble are filled with the palpable excitement from 11 players collectively honking, fluttering and snorting. There’s space for all, with saxophonists Brötzmann and Mats Gustafsson creating reed gymnastics that encompass fortissimo runs, nephritic split tones and glottal punctuation. Contrapuntal brass layering melds Per Åke Holmlander’s elephantine tuba snorts, gut-bucket slurs from trombonists Jeb Bishop and Johannes Bauer, as drummers Paal Nilssen-Love’s and Michael Zerang’s flams and cymbal pressure chug underneath. Although it may seem that harmonies created by yapping horn blasts and polyrhythmic string friction from bassist Kent Kessler and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm are opaque, the band has such control that the climax isn’t blood vessel bursting flashiness, but contrapuntal divisions exposing every texture. Two smaller groupings stand out. The tenor saxophone battle between Ken Vandermark and Joe McPhee allows undulating trills to bring needed balance to the duo’s initial ghostly shrieks and altissimo split tones. Elsewhere, Bishop, Bauer, Holmlander and McPhee on pocket trumpet, meld such extended techniques as metal buzzes, pedal-point burbles and peeping lip trills without losing chromatic mooring.

Similarly the three CDs which make up Rivière Composers’ Pool Summer Works 2009 Emanem 5301 are divided among sessions by a quartet of Americans, bassist Kent Carter and woodwind player Etienne Rolin, plus Germans, violist Albercht Maurer and clarinetist Theo Jörgensmann, plus trio and duo interaction. What’s instructive is how the musicians’ smaller meetings suggest ideas that eventually coalesce into the title suite. On the successive Music for a Ghost Story and Dance to This, Jörgensmann/Carter/Maurer build up wide-ranging modulations into a capriccio-like showcase including Jörgensmann’s flying glissandi, Carter’s string slaps and Maurer’s portamento runs. These movements are put to good use during the CD-length suite. From the exposition, where Rolin’s broken-octave basset horn extensions, chanter-like respiration from Jörgensmann’s clarinet, high-energy viola lines and sul tasto bass runs expand the theme, the variations cycle through quartet, trio, duo and solo episodes. If the clarinet outputs altissimo screeches, it’s calmed by Carter’s sul tasto stops; while speedy violin glissandi set the stage for mid-range reed licks. Putting aside bel canto or dissonant timbres, the climax downshifts to clarinet glissandi which push all into a gentling, diminuendo finale.

The wild card in this group is Sun Ra’s three-CD set of The Heliocentric Worlds ESP-Disk 4062. It confirms the composer/pianist’s legacy as an avant-garde Duke Ellington. Key players, such as saxophonists Marshall Allen and John Gilmore, plus Ra himself on pioneering electronic keyboards, solo impressively. Not only does the re-mastered 1965 set contain a recently discovered third disc, but each CD includes bonus material: a documentary film, a photo archive and contemporary writing. Like Ellington, Ra’s intricately shaded and organized arrangements create symphonic timbres with only 13 musicians. Phantasmagoric and polyphonic, extended tone poems like The Sun Myth are shaped by full-band expressions plus harmonies which contrast tuned bongos and sul ponticello bass thumps, or elsewhere contrapuntal saxophone vibrations and boogie-woogie piano runs. While The Cosmos takes its shape from call-and-response horn work, on other tunes Ra’s musical alchemy encompasses formalist piano tones, chalumeau bass clarinet smears and frenetic trumpet triplets.

Each of these attractively packaged boxed sets demonstrates how expansive musical quality can be presented in an intelligent fashion. And each – or all – would make a fine addition to your CD collection.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 16 #4

December 9, 2010

Time and Anthony Braxton

By Stuart Broomer
The Mercury Press

Stuart Broomer knows Anthony Braxton.

He has listened to the American multi-instrumentalist/composer’s music from the beginning, attended concerts by him since the early 1970s, written about the musician many times, and over the years interviewed Braxton formally and informally.

Because of this familiarity, Broomer sets himself a more difficult-than-usual task here, unlike historic biographies, journalistic chronicles or transcription-heavy texts designed to demystify a musician’s style. Instead the author’s focus is on how Braxton alters and dislocates time through his multi-faceted compositions and improvisations.

Overall the book offers many insights. But in some ways the sheer breathe of Braxton’s considerations and achievements may be too much even for Broomer. As he admits towards the end: “The Braxton world … represent[s] something akin to the solar system with planets revolving around a sun and moons resolving around plants. Hard to observe, the totality of his musical universe expands while its parts become closer together.”

Succinct and thought-provoking, Broomer’s book is studded with aphorisms like these that will no doubt enter the language of informed musical criticism. However, with Braxton seemingly able to create and record new variants of his music; give them distinctive geometrical composition titles; articulate catchphrases for them almost yearly; and involve himself with ensembles ranging from duos to orchestras at points Broomer appears to be playing catch up. By the book’s end, some statements seem more akin to a record reviewer’s first draft of history then cerebral considerations. Itemizing ever-more-recent sonic discursions from Braxton, Broomer appears to be valiantly attempting to shoehorn everything into his thesis.

The most valuable part of this volume is how Broomer explains the origins of

Braxton’s mature style. It’s not just derived from the modern jazz tradition which extended the virtuoso speed of Hard Bop to time and rhythmic dislocation perfected by Albert Ayler and John Coltrane. It also welcomes the more languid influences of Cool Jazz as well as the harmonic freedom of as so-called serious music, from its 19th Century codification onto serialism and Stockhausen. “A ‘classical’ composer as well as a ‘jazz’ musician, Braxton would seek his own route,” Broomer writes, adding: “…Braxton was an artist who could find new paths where others saw only dead ends.”

Much of the volume is divided into sections which analyze Braxton’s work under categories such as Solo Music, Quartet Music and Ghost Trance Music, paying particular attention to time. For instance: “the role of velocity …. is … initially apparent in the sheer speed and precision of the early quartets of the 1970s …Articulating tempos … faster than any jazz group ever had, these groups often blurred the line between composition and free improvisation.” Descriptive as this may be, this passage also pinpoints Broomer’s tendency towards hyperbole throughout. Too many performances are described as masterpieces, remarkable or perfect.

Focus instead on Broomer’s insights. For instance, in terms of the orchestral works, he elucidates how rather than using 12-tone rows to create equality among pitches “Braxton was concerned with the kind of porous auditory space in which musicians and listeners could move freely within a work … it’s a profound listening to inner and outer possibilities, so that his methodologies are dictated by the music itself.” Citing examples of how the reed man’s playing of familiar tunes revitalizes jazz standards, he writes: “Braxton’s own wealth of devices and his sheer intensity welds this music into an expressionistic tapestry that both records and transforms that era, all its disparate parts weaving through each other and creating new melds and meanings in the process” Or here’s an explanation of the composer’s habit of having ensembles mix portions of several compositions while performing: “Braxton was now collaging his own compositions … pasting them together in a …highly improvisatory way …He was traveling through the continuum of his music in way that provided unexpected collisions and synergies.”

Time and Anthony Braxton is a necessary volume for Braxtonophiles and anyone wanting a handle on contemporary serious music. At its best, it’s a Baedeker to the frequently written-about, but rarely properly explored sonic continent that is Braxton’s music.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For MusicWorks Issue #107

July 3, 2010

Anthony Braxton + Italian Instabile Orchestra

Creative Orchestra (Bolzano) 2007
RAI Trade RTP J0013

Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra

GIOPoetics

Creative Sources CS 114 CD

Creating large form improvisations involving groups of musicians in polyphonic agreement without losing the spontaneity implicit in smaller groups has long been a challenge for composers. Many methods have been tried in order to introduce and maintain sonic freedom when the ensemble is larger than the standard 16-piece Jazz band. These mostly European sessions outline two successful ways of doing so.

Consisting of many of that country’s most advanced players, the 17-piece Italian Instabile Orchestra (IIO) has been coping with this conundrum during its existence, playing compositions germinated by band members as well as creations for guest soloists such as pianist Cecil Taylor. For his part, American reedist/composer Anthony Braxton has also been dealing with the large-group challenge at least since the late 1970s. Creative Orchestra (Bolzano) shows how members of the IIO express themselves individually through the medium of four Braxton compositions – with the composer’s participation.

Much younger in conception, the 20-piece Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO), which successfully utilized a variant of the IIO-Braxton partnership when bassist Barry Guy worked with the band in 2005, resolves the large ensemble challenge in a different fashion. Rather than numbered compositions, here the GIO plays three short improvisations plus a so-called discretely structured piece by saxophonist and GIO member Raymond MacDonald

Each approach is equally valid as is the music on both CDs.

Although Braxton’s distance from Jazz – whatever the term means – is well known, his composing and playing is informed by Jazz> Considering that the IIO is made up of some of the peninsula’s most accomplished Jazz players, Bolzano may be the American’s most overtly Jazzy date in years. Unfortunately no soloists are identified. Although it’s pretty obvious that the distinctively rough and funky tenor saxophone of Daniele Cavallanti and jocular and pumping baritone saxophone of Carlo Actis Dato are featured, along with the sharp and serrated spiccato of Emanuele Parrini’s violin.

Layered and polyphonic, the Braxton scores list either towards notated formalism or looser Jazz-styled rhythms. It’s a credit to Braxton and the IIO that neither sonic strand is supreme – nor does either submerge solo or group free-form improvisation. More praxis than pastiche, the initial composition is hung on a series of stretched and swelling sound blocks, often with rococo-like clarinet warbling and string-section pulses sustaining the lyricism. The piece eventually opens up to reveal and then swiftly swallow distinctive solos. These include sharp, stop-and-start cello arpeggios; tenor saxophone tongue slaps and snorts; wood block thwacks and snare ruffs from the percussionists; plunger trombone and trumpet interpolation; Parrini’s overriding fiddle line; and expanded warbling grace notes from an alto saxophonist who may be Braxton, Eugenio Colombo or Gianluigi Trovesi.

Easing into “Composition No. 92 Part 1”, the beat is strong enough to suggest the Peter Gun theme. Horn glissandi and muscular rhythm section comping move the piece chromatically forward, as Giovanni Maier’s bass walks and Vincenzo Mazzone’s and Tiziano Tononi’s dual kits rumble, clatter and smack. Meanwhile one of the trombonists – perhaps Giancarlo Schiaffini – smears and brays raucously to match the triple-tonguing and vamping from Cavallanti. Eventually percussive rim shots and slaps plus metal-resonating reed bites from the tenor man lead to the becalmed patterning of “Composition No. 164 Part 1”.

Don’t imagine that the orchestral shifts are so obvious that the band dons alternate Count Basie-like or Arturo Toscanini-like coloration. But the textured mixtures are maintained throughout the performance as staccato and alternately smooth, thick and thin, as tough and tender passages complement and mirror one another. Feathery light trumpet spits meet thick reed vibratos; tick-tock, high frequency piano chords mix it up with lightly paced contralto clarinet and airy flute runs; and rattling percussion extensions face subterranean baritone saxophone and tuba growls. Often forte, mercurial string stops find their variations intercut with hocketing blasts and puffs from the horns.

If the IIO and Braxton deal with large-scale improv by alternately legato and staccato measures, plus solo and group passages, then the GIO – recorded less than two weeks earlier –follows a different game plan. Essentially the poetics here are group poetics, with no differentiation between soloist and accompanist. Simultaneously independent and interrelated, every sound appears at the same time. What that means is that ragged, jagged and abrasive cross currents mix sul ponticello below-the-bridge scrapes from the strings, split-tone chirps and ratchets from the reeds and bell-muted brass grace notes.

Solid, yet minimalist, the narrative is advanced in broken octaves with distant choked voicing, shuffle bowing and understated valve squeezes from the brass. Most characteristic is “I’m Sorry But I’ve Fallen.” As a legato, sequenced flourish is introduced by trumpeter Matthew Cairns, the six strings scrub and rub bow patterns while the two drummers slap, stroke and drag pulses from their kits. Diminutive interludes encompassing George Burt’s acoustic guitar strums and MacDonald’s crying alto saxophone vibrations easily fade back into the sonic miasma of wood-splitting strokes from the bassists, discordant electric guitar lines and high-pitched flute peeps. No summation, the tune reflects the preceding piece and adumbrates the dissonant and dense movement that follows it.

Formally tracking the linear progress of large group improvisation is probably as fruitless as trying to construct a historical time lines for any music. However listening to either or both of these notable sessions will show how performances by these particular formations are evolving on their own.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Bolzano: 1. Composition No.. 63 2. Composition No. 92 Part 1 3. Composition No. 164 Part 1 4. Composition No. 92 Part 2 5. Composition No. 164 Part 2 6. Composition No. 59

Personnel: Bolzano: Pino Minafra, Alberto Mandarini, Guido Mazzon (trumpets); Lauro Rossi, Sebi Tramontana and Gincarlo Schiaffini (trombones); Martin Mayes (French horn); Anthony Braxton (sopranino and alto saxophones); Gianluigi Trovesi (alto saxophone and Eb clarinet); Eugenio Colombo (alto saxophone, flute and bass flute); Daniele Cavallanti (tenor saxophone); Carlo Actis Dato (baritone saxophone); Emanuele Parrini (violin); Paolo Damiani (cello); Umberto Petrin (piano); Giovanni Maier (bass)and Vincenzo and Tiziano Tononi (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Poetics: 1. Apricot Path 2. Dog’s Got My Money 3. I’m Sorry But I’ve Fallen 4. Distributed Talk

Personnel: Poetics: Matthew Cairns (trumpet); George Murray (trombone); Raymond MacDonald (soprano and alto saxophones); Graeme Wilson (tenor and baritone saxophones); John Burgess (bass clarinet); Matthew Studdert-Kennedy (flute); Emma Roche (flute and baroque flute); Nick Fells (shakuhachi); George Burt (acoustic guitar); Neil Davidson (electric guitar); Krzysztof Hladowski (bouzouki); Ernesto Rodrigues (viola); Guilherme Rodrigues, Jessica Sullivan and Peter Nicholson (cello); George Lyle and Armin Sturm (bass); Richard Bamford and Stuart Brown (drums and percussion) and Aileen Campbell (voice)

January 6, 2010

Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra

Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra GIOPoetics
Creative Sources CS 114 CD

Anthony Braxton + Italian Instabile Orchestra

Creative Orchestra (Bolzano) 2007

RAI Trade RTP J0013

Creating large form improvisations involving groups of musicians in polyphonic agreement without losing the spontaneity implicit in smaller groups has long been a challenge for composers. Many methods have been tried in order to introduce and maintain sonic freedom when the ensemble is larger than the standard 16-piece Jazz band. These mostly European sessions outline two successful ways of doing so.

Consisting of many of that country’s most advanced players, the 17-piece Italian Instabile Orchestra (IIO) has been coping with this conundrum during its existence, playing compositions germinated by band members as well as creations for guest soloists such as pianist Cecil Taylor. For his part, American reedist/composer Anthony Braxton has also been dealing with the large-group challenge at least since the late 1970s. Creative Orchestra (Bolzano) shows how members of the IIO express themselves individually through the medium of four Braxton compositions – with the composer’s participation.

Much younger in conception, the 20-piece Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO), which successfully utilized a variant of the IIO-Braxton partnership when bassist Barry Guy worked with the band in 2005, resolves the large ensemble challenge in a different fashion. Rather than numbered compositions, here the GIO plays three short improvisations plus a so-called discretely structured piece by saxophonist and GIO member Raymond MacDonald

Each approach is equally valid as is the music on both CDs.

Although Braxton’s distance from Jazz – whatever the term means – is well known, his composing and playing is informed by Jazz> Considering that the IIO is made up of some of the peninsula’s most accomplished Jazz players, Bolzano may be the American’s most overtly Jazzy date in years. Unfortunately no soloists are identified. Although it’s pretty obvious that the distinctively rough and funky tenor saxophone of Daniele Cavallanti and jocular and pumping baritone saxophone of Carlo Actis Dato are featured, along with the sharp and serrated spiccato of Emanuele Parrini’s violin.

Layered and polyphonic, the Braxton scores list either towards notated formalism or looser Jazz-styled rhythms. It’s a credit to Braxton and the IIO that neither sonic strand is supreme – nor does either submerge solo or group free-form improvisation. More praxis than pastiche, the initial composition is hung on a series of stretched and swelling sound blocks, often with rococo-like clarinet warbling and string-section pulses sustaining the lyricism. The piece eventually opens up to reveal and then swiftly swallow distinctive solos. These include sharp, stop-and-start cello arpeggios; tenor saxophone tongue slaps and snorts; wood block thwacks and snare ruffs from the percussionists; plunger trombone and trumpet interpolation; Parrini’s overriding fiddle line; and expanded warbling grace notes from an alto saxophonist who may be Braxton, Eugenio Colombo or Gianluigi Trovesi.

Easing into “Composition No. 92 Part 1”, the beat is strong enough to suggest the Peter Gun theme. Horn glissandi and muscular rhythm section comping move the piece chromatically forward, as Giovanni Maier’s bass walks and Vincenzo Mazzone’s and Tiziano Tononi’s dual kits rumble, clatter and smack. Meanwhile one of the trombonists – perhaps Giancarlo Schiaffini – smears and brays raucously to match the triple-tonguing and vamping from Cavallanti. Eventually percussive rim shots and slaps plus metal-resonating reed bites from the tenor man lead to the becalmed patterning of “Composition No. 164 Part 1”.

Don’t imagine that the orchestral shifts are so obvious that the band dons alternate Count Basie-like or Arturo Toscanini-like coloration. But the textured mixtures are maintained throughout the performance as staccato and alternately smooth, thick and thin, as tough and tender passages complement and mirror one another. Feathery light trumpet spits meet thick reed vibratos; tick-tock, high frequency piano chords mix it up with lightly paced contralto clarinet and airy flute runs; and rattling percussion extensions face subterranean baritone saxophone and tuba growls. Often forte, mercurial string stops find their variations intercut with hocketing blasts and puffs from the horns.

If the IIO and Braxton deal with large-scale improv by alternately legato and staccato measures, plus solo and group passages, then the GIO – recorded less than two weeks earlier –follows a different game plan. Essentially the poetics here are group poetics, with no differentiation between soloist and accompanist. Simultaneously independent and interrelated, every sound appears at the same time. What that means is that ragged, jagged and abrasive cross currents mix sul ponticello below-the-bridge scrapes from the strings, split-tone chirps and ratchets from the reeds and bell-muted brass grace notes.

Solid, yet minimalist, the narrative is advanced in broken octaves with distant choked voicing, shuffle bowing and understated valve squeezes from the brass. Most characteristic is “I’m Sorry But I’ve Fallen.” As a legato, sequenced flourish is introduced by trumpeter Matthew Cairns, the six strings scrub and rub bow patterns while the two drummers slap, stroke and drag pulses from their kits. Diminutive interludes encompassing George Burt’s acoustic guitar strums and MacDonald’s crying alto saxophone vibrations easily fade back into the sonic miasma of wood-splitting strokes from the bassists, discordant electric guitar lines and high-pitched flute peeps. No summation, the tune reflects the preceding piece and adumbrates the dissonant and dense movement that follows it.

Formally tracking the linear progress of large group improvisation is probably as fruitless as trying to construct a historical time lines for any music. However listening to either or both of these notable sessions will show how performances by these particular formations are evolving on their own.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Bolzano: 1. Composition No.. 63 2. Composition No. 92 Part 1 3. Composition No. 164 Part 1 4. Composition No. 92 Part 2 5. Composition No. 164 Part 2 6. Composition No. 59

Personnel: Bolzano: Pino Minafra, Alberto Mandarini, Guido Mazzon (trumpets); Lauro Rossi, Sebi Tramontana and Gincarlo Schiaffini (trombones); Martin Mayes (French horn); Anthony Braxton (sopranino and alto saxophones); Gianluigi Trovesi (alto saxophone and Eb clarinet); Eugenio Colombo (alto saxophone, flute and bass flute); Daniele Cavallanti (tenor saxophone); Carlo Actis Dato (baritone saxophone); Emanuele Parrini (violin); Paolo Damiani (cello); Umberto Petrin (piano); Giovanni Maier (bass)and Vincenzo and Tiziano Tononi (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Poetics: 1. Apricot Path 2. Dog’s Got My Money 3. I’m Sorry But I’ve Fallen 4. Distributed Talk

Personnel: Poetics: Matthew Cairns (trumpet); George Murray (trombone); Raymond MacDonald (soprano and alto saxophones); Graeme Wilson (tenor and baritone saxophones); John Burgess (bass clarinet); Matthew Studdert-Kennedy (flute); Emma Roche (flute and baroque flute); Nick Fells (shakuhachi); George Burt (acoustic guitar); Neil Davidson (electric guitar); Krzysztof Hladowski (bouzouki); Ernesto Rodrigues (viola); Guilherme Rodrigues, Jessica Sullivan and Peter Nicholson (cello); George Lyle and Armin Sturm (bass); Richard Bamford and Stuart Brown (drums and percussion) and Aileen Campbell (voice)

January 6, 2010

Anthony Braxton Quartet

(Moscow) 2008
Leo Records CD LR 518

Anthony Braxton

Trio (Victoriaville) 2007

Victo cd 108

Taking some time from his Ghost Trance Music and large ensemble work, over the past couple of years, multi-reedman/composer Anthony Braxton has recruited a more intimate touring ensemble, which on the evidence of these CDs, perfectly frames and personalizes his new compositions.

Initially called the Diamond Curtain Wall trio and filled out by guitarist Mary Halvorson and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum – both of whom studied with Braxton and play in his larger groups – the band recently became a quartet with the addition of bassoonist Katherine Young, a 2003 graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory.

Performing a single, different Braxton composition on each of these live sessions, recorded approximately one year apart, the recital-sized combos are equally impressive. The discs demonstrate not only the bonding of the trio members – on Victoriaville – but also – with Moscow – how additional sonic colors amplify the composition when exposed within the oblique polyphony that characterizes Braxton’s work.

Be aware though, that despite the number, the quartet isn’t a 21st Century version of Braxton’s most notable foursome – the 1980s band with pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Gerry Hemingway. For a start with decidedly less standard instrumentation, this band is removed even further from so-called jazz than its predecessor. Secondly its unique musical definition encompasses the use of multiple instruments by each horn man on both sessions and – on Victoriaville – Braxton himself manipulating electronic fields. On the other hand, even more than 20 years later and with Braxton’s sidefolk correspondently younger than him, there’s still no sense that the sessions are those of a master and his disciples. Everyone participates equally in creation. The solitary point of congruence with the earlier quartet is that with Bynum and Halverson now leading their own bands and in-demand on others’ session, this group will likely not stay together very long.

That’s a pity, since Halverson’s alternately sedately strumming or flinging distorted textures throughout the nearly one-hour “Composition No 323c”, opens space to give Bynum and Braxton manifold opportunities to create, singly or together. “Composition No 367b” take the concordance one step further as Young’s spurting pedal-point tones provide an additional bottom upon which the others’ improvisations can freely range.

Besides the electronic shimmers, alterations and whooshes, which Braxton uses sparing on the first disc, timbral multiplicity is expressed through the different horns’ tonal properties. Braxton plays sopranino, soprano, alto, baritone, bass and contrabass saxophones and Bynum cornet, flugelhorn, trompbone, piccolo and bass trumpets, shells and mutes on Victoriaville. Moscow’s instruments of choice are sopranino, soprano, and alto saxophones and contrabass clarinet from Braxton and cornet, flugelhorn, piccolo and bass trumpets and valve trombone for Bynum.

While Bynum moves from body tube echoing to scattering sharp triplets to arching silvery grace notes throughout, no matter which horn he has at his lips, Braxton assumes different persona depending on the reed. On bass saxophone his shaking snorts create an ostinato that helps define the piece’s foundation; on clarinet, discursive glissandi add unexpected timbres to the interface; and on alto saxophone his rubato line is as close to conventional jazz as he ever will be. Halverson’s near-folksy finger-picking, chromatic near-fretless runs or single-not reverberations constitute varied responses.

With oscillated pulses adding sound loops to fill any pauses, Bynum occasionally finds himself in double counterpoint duets with Braxton. Peeping and squeaking the note sequences they harmonize or just as suddenly play out antipodal contrasts. Eventually the brassman’s braying split tones and the reedist’s low-pitched slurs and honks reach a staccato interface which then pitch-slides into guitar lines. Without climaxing the three are led by the guitar’s licks down the scale and an eventual full stop. Coda is a series of blurry, spinning electronic pulses.

Lacking electronics, but with pedal-point hocketing tones from the bassoon, in the Moscow performance“367b” seems a close cousin to “323c”. Evidentially more emboldened in the year that has passed, the guitarist introduces more rasgueado and double strummed voicing in her playing. Similarly Bynum’s use of the piccolo trumpet is more obvious with measures frequently chirped and triple-tongued. On alto saxophone, Braxton extends these twittering cries and, without breaking the line, extends them just a little further.

Moreover, his triple sonic personalities show here, as the spetrofluctuation, tongue-slaps and glottal pressure apparent in his contrabass clarinet work, the sopranino curlicue trills and storytelling alto saxophone textures vie for equal space. Exaggerated crunching chords from the guitarist mark shifts in the more-than-70 minute composition, with distinctive bassoon gurgles additionally below the front-line horn.

Now that Halvorson is free to contrast clawhammer, quasi-banjo strokes in concert with the saxophonist’s hungry animal-like growls and Bynum’s capillary triplets, the four parts –including pedal-point bassoon echoes – continue along separate paths that combine pleasingly at certain junctures. A final recital variant includes thick strumming, tobogganing down the scale by Young and Woody Woodpecker-like pops from Bynum. Short tremolo sparring between Braxton and Bynum signals the widely vibrating piece’s conclusion.

Positive interaction, technical facility and split-second responses characterize both CDs. Each confirms the skills of Braxton and associates in the small group format.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Trio: 1. Composition No 323c

Personnel: Trio: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn, trompbone, piccolo and bass trumpets, shells and mutes); Anthony Braxton (sopranino, soprano, alto, baritone, bass and contrabass saxophones and electronics) and Mary Halvorson (guitar)

Track Listing: Moscow: 1. Composition No 367b 2. Encore

Personnel: Moscow: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn, piccolo and bass trumpets and valve trombone); Anthony Braxton (sopranino, soprano, and alto saxophones and contrabass clarinet); Katherine Young (bassoon) and Mary Halvorson (guitar)

February 23, 2009

Anthony Braxton

Trio (Victoriaville) 2007
Victo cd 108

Anthony Braxton Quartet

(Moscow) 2008

Leo Records CD LR 518

Taking some time from his Ghost Trance Music and large ensemble work, over the past couple of years, multi-reedman/composer Anthony Braxton has recruited a more intimate touring ensemble, which on the evidence of these CDs, perfectly frames and personalizes his new compositions.

Initially called the Diamond Curtain Wall trio and filled out by guitarist Mary Halvorson and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum – both of whom studied with Braxton and play in his larger groups – the band recently became a quartet with the addition of bassoonist Katherine Young, a 2003 graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory.

Performing a single, different Braxton composition on each of these live sessions, recorded approximately one year apart, the recital-sized combos are equally impressive. The discs demonstrate not only the bonding of the trio members – on Victoriaville – but also – with Moscow – how additional sonic colors amplify the composition when exposed within the oblique polyphony that characterizes Braxton’s work.

Be aware though, that despite the number, the quartet isn’t a 21st Century version of Braxton’s most notable foursome – the 1980s band with pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Gerry Hemingway. For a start with decidedly less standard instrumentation, this band is removed even further from so-called jazz than its predecessor. Secondly its unique musical definition encompasses the use of multiple instruments by each horn man on both sessions and – on Victoriaville – Braxton himself manipulating electronic fields. On the other hand, even more than 20 years later and with Braxton’s sidefolk correspondently younger than him, there’s still no sense that the sessions are those of a master and his disciples. Everyone participates equally in creation. The solitary point of congruence with the earlier quartet is that with Bynum and Halverson now leading their own bands and in-demand on others’ session, this group will likely not stay together very long.

That’s a pity, since Halverson’s alternately sedately strumming or flinging distorted textures throughout the nearly one-hour “Composition No 323c”, opens space to give Bynum and Braxton manifold opportunities to create, singly or together. “Composition No 367b” take the concordance one step further as Young’s spurting pedal-point tones provide an additional bottom upon which the others’ improvisations can freely range.

Besides the electronic shimmers, alterations and whooshes, which Braxton uses sparing on the first disc, timbral multiplicity is expressed through the different horns’ tonal properties. Braxton plays sopranino, soprano, alto, baritone, bass and contrabass saxophones and Bynum cornet, flugelhorn, trompbone, piccolo and bass trumpets, shells and mutes on Victoriaville. Moscow’s instruments of choice are sopranino, soprano, and alto saxophones and contrabass clarinet from Braxton and cornet, flugelhorn, piccolo and bass trumpets and valve trombone for Bynum.

While Bynum moves from body tube echoing to scattering sharp triplets to arching silvery grace notes throughout, no matter which horn he has at his lips, Braxton assumes different persona depending on the reed. On bass saxophone his shaking snorts create an ostinato that helps define the piece’s foundation; on clarinet, discursive glissandi add unexpected timbres to the interface; and on alto saxophone his rubato line is as close to conventional jazz as he ever will be. Halverson’s near-folksy finger-picking, chromatic near-fretless runs or single-not reverberations constitute varied responses.

With oscillated pulses adding sound loops to fill any pauses, Bynum occasionally finds himself in double counterpoint duets with Braxton. Peeping and squeaking the note sequences they harmonize or just as suddenly play out antipodal contrasts. Eventually the brassman’s braying split tones and the reedist’s low-pitched slurs and honks reach a staccato interface which then pitch-slides into guitar lines. Without climaxing the three are led by the guitar’s licks down the scale and an eventual full stop. Coda is a series of blurry, spinning electronic pulses.

Lacking electronics, but with pedal-point hocketing tones from the bassoon, in the Moscow performance“367b” seems a close cousin to “323c”. Evidentially more emboldened in the year that has passed, the guitarist introduces more rasgueado and double strummed voicing in her playing. Similarly Bynum’s use of the piccolo trumpet is more obvious with measures frequently chirped and triple-tongued. On alto saxophone, Braxton extends these twittering cries and, without breaking the line, extends them just a little further.

Moreover, his triple sonic personalities show here, as the spetrofluctuation, tongue-slaps and glottal pressure apparent in his contrabass clarinet work, the sopranino curlicue trills and storytelling alto saxophone textures vie for equal space. Exaggerated crunching chords from the guitarist mark shifts in the more-than-70 minute composition, with distinctive bassoon gurgles additionally below the front-line horn.

Now that Halvorson is free to contrast clawhammer, quasi-banjo strokes in concert with the saxophonist’s hungry animal-like growls and Bynum’s capillary triplets, the four parts –including pedal-point bassoon echoes – continue along separate paths that combine pleasingly at certain junctures. A final recital variant includes thick strumming, tobogganing down the scale by Young and Woody Woodpecker-like pops from Bynum. Short tremolo sparring between Braxton and Bynum signals the widely vibrating piece’s conclusion.

Positive interaction, technical facility and split-second responses characterize both CDs. Each confirms the skills of Braxton and associates in the small group format.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Trio: 1. Composition No 323c

Personnel: Trio: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn, trompbone, piccolo and bass trumpets, shells and mutes); Anthony Braxton (sopranino, soprano, alto, baritone, bass and contrabass saxophones and electronics) and Mary Halvorson (guitar)

Track Listing: Moscow: 1. Composition No 367b 2. Encore

Personnel: Moscow: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn, piccolo and bass trumpets and valve trombone); Anthony Braxton (sopranino, soprano, and alto saxophones and contrabass clarinet); Katherine Young (bassoon) and Mary Halvorson (guitar)

February 23, 2009

Kyle Brenders

Flows and Intensities
No Label No #

Anthony Braxton & the AIMToronto Orchestra

Creative Orchestra (Guelph) 2007

Spool Line SPL 130

Ken Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble

Trolleys

Trio Records TRP-009

Ken Aldcroft

Vocabulary

Trio Records TRP-SS01-008

EXTENDED PLAY – AIMToronto

By Ken Waxman

Barely four years since its founding, The Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto (AIMToronto), has raised the profile of local improvisers, while nurturing the scene. This almost 200-member, non-profit collective helps find venues in which to hear improvised music – most prominently Somewhere There in Parkdale – presents concerts featuring visiting musicians interacting with locals, and has organized a large improvisers orchestra. One of AIMToronto’s highest profile gigs took place at the Guelph Jazz Festival in 2007, where 18 AIMToronto members played the music of the American improv guru Anthony Braxton with the composer on soprano saxophone. The result was Creative Orchestra (Guelph). It showcases 18 AIMToronto members following the ever-shifting tonal centres in five Braxton compositions.

Throughout these sequences and intervals it’s evident that overtones and undertones are as audible as the melodies, so the aural coloration takes on a 3-D-like effect. Germane to these tracks are the bravura contributions of vocalist Christine Duncan, who personifies the program not only with guttural or bel canto warbling plus inflated or truncated syllables, but also with parlando declarations. Another connecting thread is percussive – with strokes, vibrations and rattles apparent in varied pitches and pressures from Nick Fraser’s and Joe Sorbara’s drums and Brandon Valdivia’s clattering xylophone. Most characteristic of the pieces is Composition 307, a variation of sprechstimme, with Duncan’s falsetto dramatics sharing space with antiphonal vamps from the horns or gong-ringing and rim shots from the percussion. As the resonance arranges itself architecturally, slurs, syllables and sequences peep from the layering, with particularly noteworthy contributions from tenor saxophonist Colin Fisher, growls from Ronda Rindone’s clarinet and Scott Thomson’s shaggy trombone triplets.

The Orchestra’s artistic director, saxophonist Kyle Brenders, studied with Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan University and his recording Flows and Intensities suggests one of Braxton’s solo outings. Each of the eight compositions – all but two by Brenders – is oriented around a specific theme or motif played on soprano or tenor saxophone. Working with extended reed techniques and circular breathing, the results are alternately pretty or gritty. Not conventionally “pretty” however, since the modus operandi involves chunky air blown through the horns’ body tubes, echoing ghost notes, adagio pitch-sliding plus extended meditative and undulating textures where audible air intake alternates with flutter tonguing. Repetition of selected clusters or tones are part of the strategy as are times where Brenders seems to be playing two parallel reed lines – one consisting of puffing notes, the other ornamenting them with ghost tones.

Another alumnus of the orchestra’s Guelph foray is guitarist Ken Aldcroft, whose solo guitar lexicon on VoCaBuLaRy is as varied as Brenders’ is for saxophone. Using diverse tuning, the guitarist’s distinctive flattish tone makes full use of flanging and reverb. Some tracks become exercises in controlled feedback, others are built around metallic micro tones and snapping flat picking. Sometimes his spiky runs reference Monkish licks; other times, loops, claw-hammer banjo tones or serrated rock-music extensions are present. Like Brenders he creates a call-and-response pattern as if a guitar duo is present. However his repeated phrases often fade into silences or transform themselves into patterns that form a combination of slack-key and microtonal slurs. These spidery, interlaced textures reverberating back onto one another are most accessible on Sterling Road Blues, which matches a non-showy blues progression that emphasizes the bass, with hesitant string-clumping, finally downshifting into ringing, but not reverberating timbres.

Bringing this game plan to group improv, Trolleys finds Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble meandering between group and solo work. Trombonist Thomson, alto saxophonist Evan Shaw, drummer Sorbara and bassist Wes Neal join Aldcroft here for an outing where pauses are as much a part of the sound as polyphony, though there are points at which disconnect is evident between soloists and band. Individually each player impresses, especially Sorbara with drum stick nerve beats, thick ruffs and distinct hi-hat bops; Shaw, who undulates accentuated lines with a wide vibrato and snorting obbligatos; plus Thomson’s tongue-blurring plunger work and staccato grace notes. At points the trombonist’s blustery braying corrals the others into a bluesy stop-time amble which moves forward for a period until all the players disperse on individual paths. A rubato near-ballad, Apples showcases the most co-operation, involving multilayered counterpoint from each player. Shaw’s irregularly shaped reed osculation makes common cause with Aldcroft’s rhythmically sophisticated echoing fills, while walking bass propels the intersection of burbling trombone runs and ringing guitar licks. Before the climax, Sorbara gooses the tempo as the piece speedily double then triples in time, adding discursive riffs from Thomson and Shaw.

Impressive as part of an orchestra, AIMToronto members are just as estimable individually.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #5

February 1, 2009

Anthony Braxton & the AIMToronto Orchestra

Creative Orchestra (Guelph) 2007
Spool Line SPL 130

Ken Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble

Trolleys

Trio Records TRP-009

Ken Aldcroft

Vocabulary

Trio Records TRP-SS01-008

Kyle Brenders

Flows and Intensities

No Label No #

EXTENDED PLAY – AIMToronto

By Ken Waxman

Barely four years since its founding, The Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto (AIMToronto), has raised the profile of local improvisers, while nurturing the scene. This almost 200-member, non-profit collective helps find venues in which to hear improvised music – most prominently Somewhere There in Parkdale – presents concerts featuring visiting musicians interacting with locals, and has organized a large improvisers orchestra. One of AIMToronto’s highest profile gigs took place at the Guelph Jazz Festival in 2007, where 18 AIMToronto members played the music of the American improv guru Anthony Braxton with the composer on soprano saxophone. The result was Creative Orchestra (Guelph). It showcases 18 AIMToronto members following the ever-shifting tonal centres in five Braxton compositions.

Throughout these sequences and intervals it’s evident that overtones and undertones are as audible as the melodies, so the aural coloration takes on a 3-D-like effect. Germane to these tracks are the bravura contributions of vocalist Christine Duncan, who personifies the program not only with guttural or bel canto warbling plus inflated or truncated syllables, but also with parlando declarations. Another connecting thread is percussive – with strokes, vibrations and rattles apparent in varied pitches and pressures from Nick Fraser’s and Joe Sorbara’s drums and Brandon Valdivia’s clattering xylophone. Most characteristic of the pieces is Composition 307, a variation of sprechstimme, with Duncan’s falsetto dramatics sharing space with antiphonal vamps from the horns or gong-ringing and rim shots from the percussion. As the resonance arranges itself architecturally, slurs, syllables and sequences peep from the layering, with particularly noteworthy contributions from tenor saxophonist Colin Fisher, growls from Ronda Rindone’s clarinet and Scott Thomson’s shaggy trombone triplets.

The Orchestra’s artistic director, saxophonist Kyle Brenders, studied with Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan University and his recording Flows and Intensities suggests one of Braxton’s solo outings. Each of the eight compositions – all but two by Brenders – is oriented around a specific theme or motif played on soprano or tenor saxophone. Working with extended reed techniques and circular breathing, the results are alternately pretty or gritty. Not conventionally “pretty” however, since the modus operandi involves chunky air blown through the horns’ body tubes, echoing ghost notes, adagio pitch-sliding plus extended meditative and undulating textures where audible air intake alternates with flutter tonguing. Repetition of selected clusters or tones are part of the strategy as are times where Brenders seems to be playing two parallel reed lines – one consisting of puffing notes, the other ornamenting them with ghost tones.

Another alumnus of the orchestra’s Guelph foray is guitarist Ken Aldcroft, whose solo guitar lexicon on VoCaBuLaRy is as varied as Brenders’ is for saxophone. Using diverse tuning, the guitarist’s distinctive flattish tone makes full use of flanging and reverb. Some tracks become exercises in controlled feedback, others are built around metallic micro tones and snapping flat picking. Sometimes his spiky runs reference Monkish licks; other times, loops, claw-hammer banjo tones or serrated rock-music extensions are present. Like Brenders he creates a call-and-response pattern as if a guitar duo is present. However his repeated phrases often fade into silences or transform themselves into patterns that form a combination of slack-key and microtonal slurs. These spidery, interlaced textures reverberating back onto one another are most accessible on Sterling Road Blues, which matches a non-showy blues progression that emphasizes the bass, with hesitant string-clumping, finally downshifting into ringing, but not reverberating timbres.

Bringing this game plan to group improv, Trolleys finds Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble meandering between group and solo work. Trombonist Thomson, alto saxophonist Evan Shaw, drummer Sorbara and bassist Wes Neal join Aldcroft here for an outing where pauses are as much a part of the sound as polyphony, though there are points at which disconnect is evident between soloists and band. Individually each player impresses, especially Sorbara with drum stick nerve beats, thick ruffs and distinct hi-hat bops; Shaw, who undulates accentuated lines with a wide vibrato and snorting obbligatos; plus Thomson’s tongue-blurring plunger work and staccato grace notes. At points the trombonist’s blustery braying corrals the others into a bluesy stop-time amble which moves forward for a period until all the players disperse on individual paths. A rubato near-ballad, Apples showcases the most co-operation, involving multilayered counterpoint from each player. Shaw’s irregularly shaped reed osculation makes common cause with Aldcroft’s rhythmically sophisticated echoing fills, while walking bass propels the intersection of burbling trombone runs and ringing guitar licks. Before the climax, Sorbara gooses the tempo as the piece speedily double then triples in time, adding discursive riffs from Thomson and Shaw.

Impressive as part of an orchestra, AIMToronto members are just as estimable individually.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #5

February 1, 2009

Ken Aldcroft

Vocabulary
Trio Records TRP-SS01-008

Ken Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble

Trolleys

Trio Records TRP-009

Kyle Brenders

Flows and Intensities

No Label No #

Anthony Braxton & the AIMToronto Orchestra

Creative Orchestra (Guelph) 2007

Spool Line SPL 130

EXTENDED PLAY – AIMToronto

By Ken Waxman

Barely four years since its founding, The Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto (AIMToronto), has raised the profile of local improvisers, while nurturing the scene. This almost 200-member, non-profit collective helps find venues in which to hear improvised music – most prominently Somewhere There in Parkdale – presents concerts featuring visiting musicians interacting with locals, and has organized a large improvisers orchestra. One of AIMToronto’s highest profile gigs took place at the Guelph Jazz Festival in 2007, where 18 AIMToronto members played the music of the American improv guru Anthony Braxton with the composer on soprano saxophone. The result was Creative Orchestra (Guelph). It showcases 18 AIMToronto members following the ever-shifting tonal centres in five Braxton compositions.

Throughout these sequences and intervals it’s evident that overtones and undertones are as audible as the melodies, so the aural coloration takes on a 3-D-like effect. Germane to these tracks are the bravura contributions of vocalist Christine Duncan, who personifies the program not only with guttural or bel canto warbling plus inflated or truncated syllables, but also with parlando declarations. Another connecting thread is percussive – with strokes, vibrations and rattles apparent in varied pitches and pressures from Nick Fraser’s and Joe Sorbara’s drums and Brandon Valdivia’s clattering xylophone. Most characteristic of the pieces is Composition 307, a variation of sprechstimme, with Duncan’s falsetto dramatics sharing space with antiphonal vamps from the horns or gong-ringing and rim shots from the percussion. As the resonance arranges itself architecturally, slurs, syllables and sequences peep from the layering, with particularly noteworthy contributions from tenor saxophonist Colin Fisher, growls from Ronda Rindone’s clarinet and Scott Thomson’s shaggy trombone triplets.

The Orchestra’s artistic director, saxophonist Kyle Brenders, studied with Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan University and his recording Flows and Intensities suggests one of Braxton’s solo outings. Each of the eight compositions – all but two by Brenders – is oriented around a specific theme or motif played on soprano or tenor saxophone. Working with extended reed techniques and circular breathing, the results are alternately pretty or gritty. Not conventionally “pretty” however, since the modus operandi involves chunky air blown through the horns’ body tubes, echoing ghost notes, adagio pitch-sliding plus extended meditative and undulating textures where audible air intake alternates with flutter tonguing. Repetition of selected clusters or tones are part of the strategy as are times where Brenders seems to be playing two parallel reed lines – one consisting of puffing notes, the other ornamenting them with ghost tones.

Another alumnus of the orchestra’s Guelph foray is guitarist Ken Aldcroft, whose solo guitar lexicon on VoCaBuLaRy is as varied as Brenders’ is for saxophone. Using diverse tuning, the guitarist’s distinctive flattish tone makes full use of flanging and reverb. Some tracks become exercises in controlled feedback, others are built around metallic micro tones and snapping flat picking. Sometimes his spiky runs reference Monkish licks; other times, loops, claw-hammer banjo tones or serrated rock-music extensions are present. Like Brenders he creates a call-and-response pattern as if a guitar duo is present. However his repeated phrases often fade into silences or transform themselves into patterns that form a combination of slack-key and microtonal slurs. These spidery, interlaced textures reverberating back onto one another are most accessible on Sterling Road Blues, which matches a non-showy blues progression that emphasizes the bass, with hesitant string-clumping, finally downshifting into ringing, but not reverberating timbres.

Bringing this game plan to group improv, Trolleys finds Aldcroft’s Convergence Ensemble meandering between group and solo work. Trombonist Thomson, alto saxophonist Evan Shaw, drummer Sorbara and bassist Wes Neal join Aldcroft here for an outing where pauses are as much a part of the sound as polyphony, though there are points at which disconnect is evident between soloists and band. Individually each player impresses, especially Sorbara with drum stick nerve beats, thick ruffs and distinct hi-hat bops; Shaw, who undulates accentuated lines with a wide vibrato and snorting obbligatos; plus Thomson’s tongue-blurring plunger work and staccato grace notes. At points the trombonist’s blustery braying corrals the others into a bluesy stop-time amble which moves forward for a period until all the players disperse on individual paths. A rubato near-ballad, Apples showcases the most co-operation, involving multilayered counterpoint from each player. Shaw’s irregularly shaped reed osculation makes common cause with Aldcroft’s rhythmically sophisticated echoing fills, while walking bass propels the intersection of burbling trombone runs and ringing guitar licks. Before the climax, Sorbara gooses the tempo as the piece speedily double then triples in time, adding discursive riffs from Thomson and Shaw.

Impressive as part of an orchestra, AIMToronto members are just as estimable individually.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #5

February 1, 2009

A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music

By George E. Lewis
University of Chicago Press

Home from his studies at Yale University in 1971, trombonist George Lewis was walking to his parents’ home on Chicago’s South Side when he heard unusual sounds coming from a nearby brick building. Peering inside he saw a group practicing what he calls “fascinating” music. Asking if he could attend future rehearsals, Lewis was grudgingly welcomed into what he soon found out was the disciplined but inventive milieu of the Association of the Advancement Musicians (AACM).

Shortly afterwards he became a member, and subsequently an official of the organization, founded by a group of Chicago’s most accomplished, jazz-directed improvisers in 1965. Forty-three years later the AACM – which one European critic describes as “a guarantee of quality” for improvised music – is recognized world-wide as “the first [successful] avant-garde co-operative in the United States”. A music professor at New York’s Columbia University, Lewis uses his insider’s perspective to write this comprehensive history of the organization. Knitting together 92 interviews and extensive research, A Power Stronger Than Itself stands out as exemplary jazz scholarship that also appeals to the non-academic.

Basically, the reason why the AACM has managed to survive into its fifth decade, while similar organizations have disappeared, is because as Lewis writes, “the collective conception that dominated the AACM both institutionally and artistically challenged the commodification of individuality itself – the ‘star system’ with its sharp division between ‘leader’ and ‘sideman’ that has been authoratively written into the discursive cannon of jazz”.

That doesn’t mean that some AACM members aren’t internationally renowned – reedists Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell and pianist Muhal Richard Abrams come to mind. It’s just that the association’s growth has always been predicated on its collegial connection with the working class Black community of Chicago’s south side where it spawned. AACM members still promote its original nine-point program from 1965 that promises to stimulate cultural tradition, increase employment opportunities for creative musicians, provide composers’ workshops, like the one that impressed Lewis, and operate a school for aspiring musicians. AACM bands such as reedist Ed Wilkerson’s 8 Bold Souls and flautist Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble are still a constant Chicago presence.

However Lewis also notes that as significant for the ACCM’s survival, and its influence – which has gone past jazz’s boundaries to affect what he calls “whiteness-based” musics such as rock and so-called classical – is the decision from the beginning to emphasis the primacy of original music and the composer. Many first-generation AACMers – including, Lewis, Abrams, Braxton, violinist Leroy Jenkins, reedists Henry Threadgill, Joseph Jarman and others who left Chicago and formed a New York chapter in 1982 – deal with idioms that move across genres. Involved with theatre, poetry, sound collage and multi-media, the post-modern art music composed by these individuals is as likely to include references to minimalism and neo-classicism as the jazz tradition. As Lewis writes: “AACM musicians felt that experimentation in music need not be bound to particular ideologies, methods or slogans.” Musically, the AACM’s paramount contribution to experimental improvised music is a sense of dynamics. Unlike the New York-based New Thing of the 1960s, “the Chicago people got intense, but they also got soft and they were also incorporating other sounds into their music,” Lewis quotes Mitchell saying.

Describing the parallel development between the self-described “more conservative” Chicago-based AACM and the experimental New York wing is another way in which this volume supersedes earlier studies of the association. Lewis does situate the AACM in relation to other avant-garde collectives such as New York’s Jazz Composers Guild, St. Louis’ Black Artists Group and Los Angeles’ Underground Musicians Association (see Musicworks #96). He outlines how a supportive group of writers, music presenters and record labels allowed the collective to become better know. Braxton, Jenkins and the Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEOC) – which included Jarman and Mitchell – gained greater recognition during a two-year, late-1960s relocation to France.

However the French romanticizing a link between the association and radical Black Nationalism was discursive. These players’ intra-musical experiences plus resentment from Chicagoans, who felt that the AEOC was monopolizing the AACM, necessitated a separate New York chapter.

A Power Stronger Than Itself is also universal enough to deal with topics usually ignored by others. Lewis’ penultimate chapter itemizes how the ACCM has finally evolved from being a literal “old boy’s club” into addressing its gender imbalance. From first-hand accounts, he doesn’t sugar-coat the situation that initially any female musician had a hard time being accepted into the AACM, and that it wasn’t until 1992 that Samia, become the association’s first all-woman band. Even today female AACM members are more the exception than the rule, although Nicole Mitchell is the association’s co-chair

Recalling his experience and those of his AACM peers such as Braxton he also exposes the barriers that Black composers like themselves face when they write music outside the codified jazz tradition. Neither fish nor fowl, their creations are rejected by jazz purists for not swinging or being blues based, and by the classical establishment for being African-American, even he says, in the so-called downtown New music world. Such aids to experimental composers as university professorships, endowed chairs, performance ensembles and electronic music studios are monopolized by musicians hostile to improvisation and African American music.

Although he was only one of three African American composers affiliated with important experimental efforts such as 1992’s New Music, New York, since then the subsidy situation has improved, with several AACM composers are beneficiaries of major fellowships. Slightly beyond this volume’s purview, grant politics should be examined in the context of post-modern music in 21st Century. However readers of A Power Stronger Than Itself discover how the AACM, a grass roots association, evolved to participate in these discussions.

Considering that an AACM-organized, 50-member ensemble was available to play Abrams’ orchestral composition as part of the association’s 40th anniversary celebrations in Chicago, composers and performers from the ACCM will sure to be involved in whatever constitutes modern music for decades to come.

-- Ken Waxman

In MusicWorks Issue #101

July 2, 2008

ANDRE VIDA

Child Real Eyes
Vidatone 5

ANTHONY BRAXTON
Quintet (London) 2004
Leo Records CD LR 449

Novelist Christopher Isherwood titled one of his autobiographical volumes “My Guru and his Disciple” and it appears that the majority of musicians who have come into the orbit of multi-reedist Anthony Braxton have the same sentiments.

As one of Free Jazz’s most influential players, composers, orchestrators and, for more than two decades, an educator, guru Braxton has affected two or three generations of improvisers, most of whom take something unique from his teaching. Arguably the most important non-mainstream jazz pedagogue since pianist Lennie Tristano, Braxton’s disciples often play in his ensembles. Furthermore, in contrast to Tristanto, Braxton loves to record, to such an extent, that he can usually be called upon to second his former students on disc. So far he’s lent his talents to CDs featuring among others trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum, accordion player Ted Reichmann, saxophonist Scott Rosenberg and Andre Vida, the reedist who leads CHILD REAL EYES.

Released around the same time, QUNITET (LONDON) 2004, is a memorable CD featuring the guru and a group of his former students performing one lengthy –

almost 49½ minute – composition and its encore. An evolution from his repetitive and microtonal Ghost Trance Music, the exhilaration in “Composition 343” is palpable, with the reedist and his four sidefolk recalling the prickly and incisive experimentation of Braxton’s earliest Free Jazz outings.

More mixed is the collaboration with Vida. Not only do both play six reeds each, leading to often similar sounding textures, but when cellist Loren Dempster and drummer Tyshawn Sorey join them, the backing is so obtuse on certain pieces that the words fussy and sombre come to mind before legato.

Vida, who was part of reed section for Braxton’s ninetet and tentet gigs in the late 1990s, makes his best statements by staying away from woodwinds such as alto and sopranino saxophones on which the older musician have evolved his own sound. That said, another drawback is the curiously unfinished quality of some tracks. Like some “Saturday Night Live” skits, you get the feeling that the two decided on what they wanted to say – singly and together – but never worked out a precise sketch ending.

Breaking free of too many horizontal lines, the most memorable tracks such as “Rising”" and “Child Real Eyes II” make their points by completing thoughts and definitively delineating each part. For example, the former is a melodious mix of musette-like Bb soprano saxophone lines from Braxton that trill and vibrate, while Vida’s tenor saxophone holds the bottom firm. By the time Braxton heads into peeping and squealing territory, false fingering and split tones seem as accepted as arpeggios.

On the later track, the two reedists polytonally play off one another’s timbres, with one tongue-slapping and the other squeaking and spewing pointy tones. Then in the middle section, double counterpoint takes on mellow modulations until the theme reappears with Vida playing it straight and the older saxist adding double-tongued roughness.

Similarly, the quartet tunes range from notable to almost-ran. Sadly, because it lacks a true ending, “Tentz ” is one of the later, since the rolls and bounces from Tyshawn Sorey, who now works regularly with pianist Vijay Iyer, balance the cellist’s broken octave line and Vida rugged baritone saxophone color. It’s an instrument he should investigate further, since he manages to create a full, moderato sound without ever resorting to the big horn’s tricks of the trade – bottom scrapping or bass note overemphasis.

Dempster’s effortless bow pressure on “Opening” – strangely placed ninth in the program – uses almost bel canto portamento that meshes perfectly with the harmonic convergence between Vida’s tenor saxophone and Braxton’s alto. The climax features a groundswell of extended slides, slurs and tongue spits from the two saxes, played rubato, but without every one breaking the solid motion of the tune.

QUNITET (LONDON) 2004 features a completely different cast: trumpeter Bynum, who has done notable work with his own bands; guitarist Mary Halvorson, who often works in a duo with another Braxton sideperson, violinist Mary Pavone; bassist Chris Dahlgren, who has recorded in the co-op 3D band; and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, who works with cellist Erik Friedlander. Categorically, it provides conclusive evidence of the composer’s mature talents.

Constructed with a recurring thematic motif, “Composition 343” isn’t controlled by it as some of Braxton’s Ghost Trance compositions were. Showing his faith in the performers, the reedist gives everyone solo space, while dividing the band into smaller groups. When Bynum and Dahlgren improvise together for example, Braxton bounces lines off Halvorson’s guitar runs.

As unobtrusive, but more upfront than Sorey is on the other disc, Takeishi concentrates on rhythmic off-beats, cross handed bounces and cymbals flicks. Meanwhile, the only time the bassist really asserts himself is at the composition’s midpoint when he intermingles dissonant tones with the guitarist to encircle the percussionist’s pummeling that could come from a conga or a log drum.

On their own Halvorson and Bynum are spectacular soloists. At times she fingers multi-effects from her instrument, while the trumpeter slurs buzzy, spittle-encrusted elevated notes from his. During most of the performance, recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall, Bynum warbles muted timbres, though at one point he answers a section of Braxton’s fleet, reed-biting sopranino trills with whinnying plunger work. Plus he’s not adverse to unleashing a flurry of triplets or undulating grace notes if occasion arises.

Alternately strumming and finger-picking, the guitarist confirms her status as a plectrumist to hear as she showcases tremolo lines behind Braxton’s irregular vibrations, or downstrokes cascading notes in unison with Braxton’s raw shrieks. When Bynum wah-wahs and Braxton outputs a more legato line, she counters with staccato phrasing or with expressions that seem to take their pulsations from the properties of the effects pedals and the amp rather than the guitar’s strings or body.

Compositionally, Braxton combines with one or the other front liners to recapitulate the main theme at interval through the piece. This seems almost conventionally jazz-like. Furthermore, any naysayer hearing his brawny, multi-faceted solos would be hard pressed to explain how the reedist can be characterized as anti-jazz or as a non-swinger. In the piece’s penultimate minutes in fact, he vibrates the sort of pinched split tones that used to characterize Archie Shepp’s work of the 1960s.

Earlier with corrosive cross blowing and a powerful vibrato, he cries and growls simultaneously through his horn, continuously forcing out multiphonic breaths. Then, just before the conclusion, after the final theme variation, his staccatissimo flutter tonguing reaches such a tempo that Bynum’s plunger decorations and Halvorson’s speedy chromatic flanges move from decoration to polyphonic crescendo.

A must-have for those Braxton followers and others looking for a memorable keeper, QUINTET (LONDON) 2004 provides a marker to which Vida can aspire. Nonetheless there’s enough promise on CHILD REAL EYES to make it open to investigation as well.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Child: 1. Purrls 2. Child Real Eyes I 3. Till 4.Gypsy Star 5. Child Real Eyes II 6. Tentz 7. Rising 8. Tentz 9. Opening 10. Gypsy Star 11. Teruglio

Personnel: Child: Andre Vida (tenor saxophone on 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9; Eb baritone saxophone on 6, 8, Bb soprano saxophone on 10; C-melody saxophone on 4 and taragato, tenor saxophone and Bb clarinet on 11); Anthony Braxton (alto saxophone on 1, 2 5, 8, 9, 10, Bb clarinet on 3, Eb sopranino sax on 6, Bb soprano sax on 7, Eb contra-alto clarinet on 11, F-mezzo soprano on 4; Loren Dempster (cello); Tyshawn Sorey (drums)

Track Listing: London: 1. Composition 343 Part 1 2. Composition 343 Part 2

Personnel: London: Taylor Ho Bynum (trumpet); Anthony Braxton (F, alto, B flat soprano saxophones and E flat sopranino); Mary Halvorson (guitar); Chris Dahlgren (bass); Satoshi Takeishi (percussion)

March 13, 2006

BRAXTON/SZABADOS/TARASOV

Trio Tone
Leo Records CD LR 416

Perhaps Anthony Braxton’s most uncommon yet satisfying CD of the past decade, TRIO TONE is memorable because the American saxophonist functions as part of an improvising trio rather than promulgating his own ideas.

Recorded on a busman’s holiday to Serbia-Montenegro in 2003, the disc features Braxton operating as one-third of a cooperative trio convened to play two compositions by Hungarian pianist György Szabados, which led to three subsequent encore/improvisations. Braxton, who is always up for unique collaborations, played and recorded with Szabados, in the early 1980s. Adding lustre to the match up is the presence of former Ganelin Trio percussionist Vladimir Tarasov, who is based in Vilnius, Lithuania. Outside of the trio, Tarasov’s associations have included Braxton’s colleague, American drummer Andrew Cyrille, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet and the Vilnius State Philharmonic.

A medical doctor as well as a composer/pianist, Szabados, 65, often mixes ethnic Hungarian sounds, improvisation and contemporary composed music in his works. His unique style has been recognized abroad since the early 1970s, a position that didn’t endear him to the ideologically restricted rulers of Communist Hungary for many years. The pianist, who has also worked with other improv explorers like Britain’s Even Parker

and the late German bassist Peter Kowald, also composed music for chamber orchestra and modern dance troupes.

“Trioton”, the almost 32½-minute showpiece of the CD, reflects those compositional smarts. Organized in a theatrical fashion, with each musician expressing his delineated role, there are times when the piece could be a radio drama with the instruments taking the place of the actors’ voices. Zestful and refreshing, the 30-plus minutes flash by with the speed of a three-minute pop song.

Set up by gentle clinks on Tarasov’s cymbals, claves and bells, interspersed with silences, the initial statement arises from the flutter and buzz of Braxton’s sax plus single low-frequency piano chords from the composer. Soon Szabados’ wiggling arpeggios have been dynamically transformed into a two-handed prelude, reminiscent of some of Cecil Taylor’s orchestral work.

With taps, rattles and shakes from the percussionist operating as a bed on which the disciplined close voicing of the piano keys lie to extend the theme, Braxton moves to the forefront, working out oblique double-tongued variations. Behind him, Szabados’ contributions reflect his dual background, at times as straightforward as Wynton Kelley, often this side of florid, as per a romantic, recital pattern. Rumbled snares and toms mid-way through causes the saxman to reed bites as his higher overtones vibrate out a secondary, complementary theme.

Right after that, the pianist’s slipping and sliding arpeggio-rich counterpoint to Braxton’s irregular pitches turns to a double-time fantasia of substitute chords and theme variations as he leans harder onto the keys. Now on sopranino, the reedist introduces squeaking multiphonics with Szabados’ fingering almost staccatissimo. Cutting into the duet first with the single slaps of triangle, then tweaking of different percussive elements, Tarasov weighs in with his only extended solo of the date, moving from direct bass drum hits to snare ratamacues. Generic within the compositional framework, his versatility presages dissonant, chordal runs from the keyboard and slithering reed fills. Braxton and Szabados, now quieter and more restrained, sound out cumulative chords as the finale, with Tarasov dotting the final “i” with a drum roll of the proper length.

Szabados’ status as a Magyar (Thelonious ) Monk finds its expression in “Black Toots”, which resonates with powerful, broken chords. Meanwhile Braxton, on soprano, sideslips irregular vibrated coloratura and trills choruses in false registers that almost squirm to atonality. At mid-point, the pianist’s solo turn suggests Monkish scurrying over the keys, but without ever quoting a Monkish lick. Theme recapitulation in concert with the saxist then brings in a cymbal splash prelude until three end in unison.

More examples of Tarasov’s command of silences as well as sound and split-second reflexes, the improvisations serve as a steam-respiring respite. Szabados uses pedal pressure to display the keys from a bouncy, tinkling top line to a resonating bottom quadrant and Braxton spits out unrefined, reed-bitten subtones as often as he trills glossily in the highest registers.

A reminder of Tarasov’s little-heard dexterity, Braxton’s teamwork as an instrumentalist and the scope of Szabados’ compositional power almost unknown in the West, TRIO TONE is an archetypal achievement.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Trioton 2. Black Toots 3. Improvisation 1 4. Improvisation 2 5. Improvisation 3

Personnel: Anthony Braxton (sopranino, soprano and alto saxophones); György Szabados (piano); Vladimir Tarasov (drums and percussion)

March 28, 2005

Free Jazz and Free Improvisation

An Encyclopedia by Todd S. Jenkins
Greenwood Press Volume One A-J; Volume Two K-Z

By Ken Waxman

January 31, 2005

Reviewing a stand-alone project like Free Jazz and Free Improvisation presents a unique set of challenges, since you must deal with what isn’t covered in the 500-odd oversized pages of these two volumes as much as what is.

From the downbeat author Todd Jenkins has to be commended for his Herculean task, collecting from various sources essential information about Free Music and putting it into approachable form for the student, the researcher as well as the improvisational newbie.

Further props in his favor include the introductory essay, “The Path to Freedom”. In around 40, well-measured, pages, he manages to touch nearly every major current in so-called outside music from the late 1940s all the way up to the present. Subtantially, in the body of the book, his list of individual entries ranges from the irrefutable pioneers -- such as John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor -- all the way up to many newcomers including Bay area saxophonist Rent Romus and Boston-based trumpeter Greg Kelley.

Jenkins is knowledgeable enough about the scene in general to include listings of such little celebrated entities as Muhal Richard Abrams’ influential Experimental Band and the pan-European Quintet Moderne, to cite two entries. Cognizant of Free Music’s universality, he also has a good percentage of entries on non-American performers -- European and Japanese in the main -- as well as separate slots for important nightclubs and record labels. As stand-alone entries, his extensive dissections of the careers and recorded work of important stylists such as Taylor, Anthony Braxton and Evan Parker are exemplary.

That said, Free Jazz and Free Improvisation also encompasses several egregious flaws that compromise the volumes’ status as a reference source. Emphasis is put on certain trends, musicians and record labels to the expense of others that in the future could prove to be as momentous. Furthermore, for a hard-cover publication destined for library shelves and as a long-term reference, an appalling number of omissions, typos, proof reading, editing and even factual mistakes appear.

In many instances also, Jenkins writing is gauche and graceless, relying on such cliched expressions as “avoid like the plague”, “like it or lump it”, “welcome with open arms” and “packed to the rafters”. This may be OK for a rush job destined for next day newspaper publication, but a book, especially an encyclopedia, is a monumental undertaking that should avoid cringe-worthy prose since it will be consulted for years to come.

Briefly, Jenkins is on the most solid ground with his shorter entries, since they pithily state the basic facts and locate the data in the improv continuum. In some of these however, and many of the longer entries, a form of omnipotence weakens the strength of he information. Endless detailing of individual LP and CD tracks and sessions is something best left to record reviewing. Plus, following the lead of Leonard Feather’s pioneering, yet not wholly successful, efforts in his Encyclopedia of Jazz, opinions of others conversant with the works discussed should have been added to Jenkins’ own. To use an obvious cliché, disagreements and preferences are what make horse races.

Although the selection of entries is catholic, too often additional information is missing. Jenkins includes the full birth date, place and year of birth for many musicians, for instance, while other listings lack one, the other or all three. Communications via the Internet has made such lapses dubious. A Web page search or e-mail to the person involved could have yielded the missing date. In 1956 and thereafter, Feather sent out a questionnaire to those musicians he wanted to include in his encyclopedia; 21st Century transmission makes this task that much simpler.

Certainly every reader will have a list of who or what should or shouldn’t have been in the volumes, but a couple of omissions seem more than inexplicable.

The most glaring oversight is lack of a separate listing or even an index references for CODA, the Canadian jazz magazine with a worldwide circulation. Cadence -- founded in 1975 -- and its affiliated record labels rate an entry, while that publication and Signal to Noise, which began in the very late 1990s, are cited as “periodicals specifically oriented towards new music” in the end notes.

CODA has had its ups and down over the years, but as a journal “published continuously since May 1958” as its masthead states, it has been a constant champion for Free Music almost from its beginning. During the late 1970s in fact, the magazine’s affiliated Sackville and Onari label released some now-classic Free Jazz/Free Improv sessions, a role which Cadence’s labels admirably fills today.

Another puzzling omission is that of New York trombonist Steve Swell, especially since many of the players with whom he associates rate their own listing. A few others musicians who could be included are, from Europe: pianist Michiel Braam and reedist Ab Baars of the Netherlands, Spanish pianist Augustí Fernández and British drummer Paul Hession. Then from the United States: Mississippi drummer Alvin Fielder, Texas trumpeter Dennis González, New Yorkers, saxist Michael Marcus and pianist Uri Caine, plus drummer Gino Robair and saxist Francis Wong from the Bay area. And that’s only thinking of 10 at random.

Where would the publishers have found room for these entries? Removal of quasi-improvisers who come from the rock music world such as Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke and Fennez [!] could provide some space. Plus a 17-page, year-by-year Chronology of Events from 1949 through 2003 at the beginning of the volume that lists births, deaths and record releases already included in the text, could have been excised.

Adding or removing entries may be merely an exercise in different priorities between this reviewer and the author. But mistakes and misstatements aren’t open to discussion.

To list a few, again at random:

 Barre Phillips is described as a British bassist in the entry on Peter Brötzman, but correctly as an American in his own

 Big Nick Nicholas was a tenor saxophonist, not a blues singer

 Violinist Billy Bang didn’t “found” the String Trio of New York, it was a cooperative effort between him, guitarist James Emery and bassist John Lindberg

 No effort is made to explain that the “Rev” in tenor saxophonist’s Frank Wright’s name was a nickname for his soulful playing, not a legitimate ecclesiastical title

 Sun Ra didn’t play in the big band of Erskine Caldwell, the author of Tobacco Road, but in the band of Erskine Hawkins, the popular trumpeter

 Ajay Heble isn’t the former Guelph Jazz Festival director, he still holds that post

 John Coltrane recorded Olé for Atlantic not Impulse and Ascension for Impulse not Atlantic; the reverse is stated in the introduction

 Poet/activist Amiri Baraka’s name change reflected his Pan-African revolutionary Marxism not a conversion to Islam as is misstated twice

 Novelist Jean Toomer, who is mentioned in the entry on altoist Marion Brown, is a “he” not a “she”

While this list may seem excessively nitpicky, precisely because Free Jazz and Free Improvisation is an encyclopedia, these missteps are particularly egregious. Even in the 21st Century anything printed between hard covers is given extraordinary respect, so these errors will be perpetuated for some time.

While Free Jazz and Free Improv followers can pick up these volumes, they should be very conscious of these faults before doing so. Perhaps one way around the conundrum, would be for the author to annually publish a yearbook that would bring things up to date. Another welcome gesture would be if buyers could be provided with an set of corrections should they purchase the volumes. The information could even be e-mailed after the publisher is contacted.

Despite Jenkins’ hard work, it appears that Free Jazz and Free Improvisation is still only another small step on the road to completeness for individuals and institutions that seek a permanent collection of facts about these genres.

January 31, 2005

ANTHONY BRAXTON

Ninetet (Yoshi’s) 1997, Vol.2
Leo CD LR 382/383

Ever get one of those melodies inside your head that you keep hearing over and over again and that you can’t get out of your memory, no matter how hard you try?

Well, Anthony Braxton seems to be trying to create a similar situation with his Ghost Trance Music (GTM). A preoccupation of the composer/reedman since at least the mid-1990s, GTM compositions are usually played by larger bands and include a repetitive -- and nearly identical theme -- leavened by improvised solos.

Like the unique soundworlds created by other distinctive improvisers such as AMM or The Necks, to truly appreciate GTM you have to accept Braxton’s compositions on their own terms. Each time you have to simultaneously focus on the leitmotif that controls the piece’s shape as well as listen to the instrumental work around it.

That’s certainly true with these two long -- around 58 minutes each -- pieces recorded on a California foray by Wesleyan professor Braxton and his cohorts, all of whom except reedist J.D. Parran, percussionist Kevin Norton and bassist Joe Fonda, were at one point Braxton students.

Because of this great influence --- and the band room full of saxes and clarinets the reedmen play -- it’s difficult to pinpoint individual solos. One is tempted to ascribe most of the solo work to either Braxton, who variously plays alto, F alto, soprano, and C-melody saxophones and flute plus Bb, bass and contrabass clarinets; or to Parran, another Free Jazz veteran who plays soprano and bass saxophones and flute.

On “Composition No. 209”, for instance, several themes, variations and solos seem to appear at the same time as the music propels the ensemble from percussion-reed textures that resemble the sound of busy manual typewriters to a merry go round of high, wiggling vibrations. Peeping through this dense curtain of notes are false register growls, clarinet glissandos, tongue slaps and bass saxophone snorts. With the massed horn section polyphonically repeating the initial theme every few minutes or so, other solos are sometimes clocked within the reed fanfare. Someone does, however, produce foghorn-like contrabass clarinet noises, a pastoral flute passage and some shrill New Thing-like alto sax overblowing.

Meanwhile Norton marshals his hocketing vibe impulses into a veil of shimmering tones, guitarist Kevin O’Neil reverberates flat-picked lines and Fonda’s well modulated bass line appears and then vanishes again. Thanks to the scraped guiro-like tones, descending guitar licks and bass continuum, the piece has enough of a foot-tapping beat to not descend into mesmerizing trance music. But with the horns usually operating in slurred unison, no one, except for Braxton as a composer really makes a standout impression.

Slightly longer, “Composition No. 210” is more of the same, though the ululating tones do sway at a slighter faster tempo. Early on one of the saxists -- Braxton? -- comes out with a snaky, double-tongued reed abrasion. Considering the appreciative applause that greets this departure from the other strained, whistling horn timbres, the audience at this 1997 club gig may have yearned for more committed soling as well.

Later on, however, the few other demonstrations of extended reed techniques including nasal alto honks, an oomph pah pah ostinato from the bass saxophone and a weedy tone that could come from an oboe don’t call forth the same reception. That could mean that the crowd was finally committed to the ins-and-outs of the composition or had inured itself against further outbursts.

Here again, among the accordion tone suggestions that come from the combined horns and the odd, curt reed peeps and beeps, Norton is a stand out. Besides outlining a standard repertoire of ruffs, rolls and flams from his kit, he produces shattering electronic-like cymbal resonation and puts pressure on the hard wood of his marimba’s keys to give a steadying rhythmic direction to the concluding section of the performance. O’Neil too acquits himself with stuttering flailing on the portion of his strings below the bridge.

In conclusion, before exiting with whole note chirping that’s almost mainstream mellow, an alto saxophonist -- Braxton again? -- honks out more New Thing-like glossolalia after a whining clarinet has gathered all the horns into tone-passing circles like a sheep dog rounding up his flock.

Braxton followers will no doubt welcome this newly revealed chapter in his oeuvre, while neophytes may look for a smoother entry point to his massive catalogue. It’s a credit to his vision that both pieces are never less than improvisationally exciting. Still, with its overriding tonal similarity, a little GTM goes a long way, and no one except the Braxtonphile should attempt to listen to both CDs here in one sitting.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. Composition No. 209 CD2: 1. Composition No. 210

Personnel: Anthony Braxton (alto, F alto, soprano, and C-melody saxophones, flute, Bb, bass and contrabass clarinets); Brandon Evans (tenor, C and sopranino saxophones, bass clarinet, flute); James Fei (soprano and alto saxophones, bass clarinet); Jackson Moore (alto saxophone, Bb clarinet); André Vida (tenor, alto, soprano and baritone saxophones); J. D. Parran (soprano and bass saxophones, flute); Kevin O’Neil (guitar); Joe Fonda (bass); Kevin Norton (drums, marimba, percussion, vibraphone)

April 12, 2004

JOHN BUTCHER

Invisible ear
Fringes 12

ANTHONY BRAXTON
Solo (Milano) 1979
Golden Years of New Jazz GY 20

When visionary Anthony Braxton ushered in the idea of solo saxophone sessions with FOR ALTO in 1969, he probably never released how many contemporary reedists would follow his lead.

Today it seems that nearly every modern horn player, excluding the so-called Smooth Jazz fraternity, has tried his or her hands -- or more rightly fingers -- at the concept with mixed results. Luckily the CDs here feature the work of two stylists who thrive on solo playing, because they’re internalized its inherent challenges, beyond novelty. Instructively, as well, the discs also show how unique applications have altered underlying concepts.

SOLO (MILANO) 1979, for instance, finds Braxton, playing only alto saxophone, still basing his improvisations on an extension of the jazz and standards tradition. In contrast, on INVISIBLE EAR, British soprano and tenor saxophonist John Butcher uses

close-miking, multi-tracking and amplified/feedback to abstract his already more experimental conceptions.

Not that the limited-edition CD is an unalloyed triumph. While “What remains” and “Atelier”, the two multi-tracked sax tracks, are the most pleasing to the ear, they also sound the most conventional. The later, especially, which piles soprano sax lines upon soprano sax lines to create impressionistic overlays of sound, makes you wonder how much different the end product would have been if the three lines had been played by three different, but coordinated saxists. The former features five tenor and three sopranos buzzing like hummingbirds from different parts of the sound spectrum.

“The importance of gossip”, which highlights amplified/feedback saxes and a Korg synthesizer, offers up more tones, timbres and hisses. With flattement and key percussion bubbling out from all the instruments simultaneously, alternate shrill and growling tones are smoothed out by rolling feedback.

Rolling out appears to be the key description here, for whether it’s double-tongued fast slurred tones or pure colored air going through the body tube to produce breath overtones and whistles, Butcher uses the same limber technique. On “A controversial fix for....” rolled air takes harsh growled, split tones and directs it so the sound doubles and takes on expansive accordion properties which reflect back on the primary timbres.

Meanwhile close-miked experiments result in tracks where reed squeals take on the persona of a drumstick scraped on a cymbal or key pops recreate what could only be termed the crumbling of tissue paper. The amplified soprano on “Sprinkler” gives more body to Butcher’s distinctive tongue-slapping and key popping tones as splayed fingering and flutter tonguing are partnered by percussive mouth sounds, key movement clicks and a few reed squeals. Then there’s the unvarying droned feedback on “Magnetic bottle”, where the shaking, doorbell-like buzzing distorts the reed output so that it appears that a second tenor saxophone or perhaps a bagpipe from outer space is present.

“Streamers” is most memorable track, not so much for the feedback, which only appears to be triggered at the end, but for the deliberate manipulation of the keys, isolating each note and producing vibrations of the vibrations of the vibrations. Sometimes, between key manipulation and breaths through body tube, some would be hard pressed to swear that the sound came from a tenor saxophone if it wasn’t noted on the sleeve.

There’s no question that Braxton is playing alto saxophone on his disc, though, and he even includes one jazz standard and Tin Pan Alley ballad to prove he was in the tradition, an expression that in 1979 hadn’t yet taken on retrogressive Marsalis-like overtones. His treatment of “Out of Nowhere” is fascinating, since he deconstructs the verse before he introduces the familiar chorus. Despite some double tonguing, his treatment of “I Remember Clifford” seems a little too respectful, however. Listen closely and you’ll hear a foot tapping beat and he makes sure to reprise the head after he concludes his variations.

“Composition No. 77b” and “Composition No. 106m” which begin and end this live concert are both taken pretty legato and with unthreatening timbres. Slides, slurs and repetitive passing tones don’t mask the references to half-forgotten bebop lines that poke through. You’d listen in vain for similar suggestions on Butcher’s disc.

Don’t forget, however, that this concert was taped more than 20 years before the other CD, so what may sound balladic in 2003, may have been almost as frighteningly unfamiliar to the audience as his methodology experiments. Many of those are on display as well. A couple of tunes have Braxton producing canon-like stair step cadenzas or pieces that begin with low-pitch growling honks that dissolve into higher-pitched multiphonics, complete with hearty tongue slaps.

As Butcher and others would do later on, “Composition No. 8h” finds Braxton dealing with circular flutter tonguing, repeated split tones and slurred lines so that the first lines are extended by the second ones and echoed with wavering multiphonics. “Composition No. 8g” features internal body tube squeaks and throat shouts, while flattement is used to advance and vibrate different note patterns.

“Composition No. 8h” may even be a textbook example of Braxton’s style at the time. Beginning in a straight line, but with glottal honks and repetitive overblowing, he soon cleaves the sound so that it appears he has two horns -- one high, smooth and legato, the other low, harsh and staccato --, that then change places for a time. High-intensity harsh honks, squeals and trills mean that the piece ends faster, more abstract and more dissonant than it began without every losing the audience’s concentration.

These sessions by a solo pioneer and a sonic explorer will likely interest more than just reed freaks.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Invisible: 1. Swan style 2. Cup anatomical 3. What remains 4. Streamers 5. A controversial fix for.... 6. ....shrilling reed freakout 7. The importance of gossip 8. Dark field 9. Bright field 10. Magnetic bottle 11. Sprinkler 12. Atelier

Personnel: Invisible: John Butcher (close-miked soprano saxophone [tracks 1, 2, 8, 9], multi-tracked saxophones [tracks 3, 12)], amplified/feedback tenor saxophone [tracks 4, 5, 6, 10)], amplified/feedback soprano saxophone [track 11], multi-tracked feedback saxophones and Korg synthesizer [track 7])

Track Listing: Solo: 1. Composition No. 77b 2. Composition No. 119a 3. Composition No. 8g 4. I Remember Clifford 5. Composition No. 99L 6. Composition No. 8h 7. Out of Nowhere 8. Composition No. 8i 9. Composition No. 99m 10. Composition No. 106m

Personnel: Solo: Anthony Braxton (alto saxophone)

December 1, 2003

ANTHONY BRAXTON/TAYLOR HO BYNUM

Duets (Wesleyan) 2002
Innova 576

ANTHONY BRAXTON Four Compositions (GTM) 2000
Delmark 544

Reedist Anthony Braxton is the true theoretician of abstract jazz notation. Throughout his more than 30-year compositional career, he has invented many terms and genre names for his music. Given his unique combinations of numbers and illustrations, some of them could probably unhinge information retrieval specialists familiar with the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal System and many search engines.

Although his present academic position -- Braxton’s now head of the music department at Wesleyan University -- seems to have convinced him to now rely solely on composition number, subsets still exist. For instance, FOUR COMPOSITIONS (GTM) 2000, is a quartet version of the Ghost Trance Music (GTM) he has been writing since the late 1980s; DUETS (WESLEYAN) 2002, is an example of post-Ghost Trance sounds.

DUETS is most noteworthy because it’s the first time Braxton, who is endlessly cooperative when playing in groups that range from duos to large orchestras, has recorded in duo with a trumpeter, despite long associations with Wadada Leo Smith and Kenny Wheeler. Also, unlike the three younger musicians on FOUR, who function more-or-less as a conventional (!) rhythm section, brassman Taylor Ho Bynum-- who actually plays cornet here -- is treated as Braxton’s full partner. Three of the six compositions are his as well.

This is pretty heady stuff for someone approximately 30 years younger than Braxton. Still, the cornetist is a gigging musician, who has earned kudos for his combo work with cellist Jeff Song and as part of the Fully Celebrated Orchestra -- which is actually a quartet -- plus his contributions to larger aggregations led by such luminaries as Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon.

Former Braxton students all, the sidemen on FOUR are fine players, but none has yet made as individual a mark as Bynum has. That will probably have to wait for the future, as they, like Lennie Tristano’s many acolytes, get enough distance -- both physical and musical -- from their guru to create individualistic sounds.

Another notable feature that characterizes the two CDs, is that by today’s standards at least, they don’t sound particularly far out. This will probably shock the legion of Braxton detractors -- including a certain highly praised New Orleans-born trumpeter -- but, in truth, Braxton’s performances have never been as overly intellectual and so-called difficult as they’ve been made out to be. Heck, the writing and playing on these two sessions sound as if they could easily fit in many folks’ idea of mainstream jazz.

For example “Composition 305”, the longest track on DUETS is sort of an out-of-tempo, pastoral gigue, built on intersecting horn lines. Initially Bynum produces silvery muted passages, that later turn to plunger fanfares as Braxton’s glossolalia on alto saxophone is succeeded by stomping, reverberating baritone saxophone lines. Soon, when he switches to a mellow, Swing-era clarinet tone, both musicians seem to be improvising in counterpoint, languidly playing almost the same notes octaves apart.

The baritone/trumpet combination gets another workout on “Composition 304”, with intonations again the aural mirror image of one another. Changing pitch, Braxton growls and Bynum soars, until the former’s clarinet comes out once again for some sprightly contralto messages.

This sprightly tone is also exhibited on the other disc’s “Composition 242”, where

Braxton plays lilting flute passages in unison with Baltimore-born pianist Kevin Uehlinger’s sharp timbres. This unity isn’t limited to the pianist either, for throughout the almost 69½-minute disc one or another of Braxton’s horn passages will unite with bassist Keith Witty, or be commented upon or critiqued in rhythm by Massachusetts-native Noam Schatz’s percussion arsenal.

GTM pieces combine improvisation plus written sections not only from that particular composition, but interjections from other Braxton compositions as well. None of the three sidemen on FOUR COMPOSITIONS saw their scored parts before they arrived in the studio, which makes the empathy they exhibit with the reedman all that more remarkable. Repetitive looping of the main theme may be the only part of GTM that upsets conservatives who complain about similar-sounding material. Yet in some ways, these are equivalent to the heads without which they would never start a tune.

Taking apart a pointillistic outpouring like “Composition 245” reveals what you could almost call its bebop underpinnings. Following the theme statement, and after Braxton has mixed gritty alto saxophone smears and triple tonguing with Schatz’s simple clip-clop percussion, the rhythm section morphs into a contemporary piano trio. Uehlinger chords with a carefully measured touch, the drummer turns out decorative rolls and Witty pursues a swinging bass tone. Meanwhile the reed man goes his own way, chirping out tones as he sees fit, until the rest of the band catches up to him. Sneakily, they all then reprise the theme. Isn’t that the essence of Braxton’s music -- and pedagogy -- finding complete freedom to be individualistic within pre-determined structures?

Establishing his individuality, the pianist provides a break from the hypnotic overtones by soloing through “Composition 244” on melodica. Polyphonically bending notes on the keyboard harmonica, he produces an accordion-like tone that commingles with booming, sonorous baritone snorts. Schatz counters by introducing resonating tones from vibraharp and all the sonic space cleared gives Witty sufficient room to stretch his bass strings. Considering sounds on the keyboard harmonica can only be produced by exhaling, not inhaling, Uehlinger speed on the plastic instrument is almost miraculous. Ending in unison with Braxton’s alto, this offers yet more proof that these GTM compositions provide enough space for individual expression.

Of course, Bynum’s distinctiveness is showcased even more on DUETS when the two play his compositions and an on-the-spot improvisation. That instant composition concerns itself most with extended, elongated flurries of notes from the cornetist and noodling alto sax trills, often in pure concert tone from Braxton. His execution may be louder and more diffuse than you’d get from a classical sax player like Paul Brodie, but his breathing and pausing for breath prove his investment in the creation.

Unsurprisingly, as a student and admirer, Bynum’s compositions have a tangible Braxtonian cast about them. But he’d never be characterized as a junior Braxton. On “All Roads Lead to Middletown”, (Connecticut home to Wesleyan), for instance, he offers up a mixture of high-pitched lines that intersect with the alto saxophone’s stuttering split tones. Much lighter and cleaner sounding than dense GTM, the tune finds the cornetist pushing out a mid-range, legato tone, with Braxton following his lead and making sure that a counterpoint unison exists between the two.

This is also clear on the near stasis of the appropriately-titled “To Wait”, that uses sea shore sounds created with Bynum’s manipulated shells, near inaudibility in certain passages and reverberating saxophone tones to paint its sound picture.

Finally there’s “Scrabble”, which rather than celebrating a passive word game, comes across as a very physical, sopranino and cornet blend in march tempo. Following an unaccompanied outing by Braxton, Bynum likely showcases his trumphone for plunger work as the sax man turns to edgy multiphonics, complete with high-pitched smears, whinnying and rhino horn snorts. As a final surprise, the two meld together at the penultimate point, sweetly echoing one another.

As is probably obvious, these two fine sessions should appeal to more than Braxton true believers. Not only do you get to sample a half dozen of his compositions, but you also get to trace the ascending trajectory of one brass man/performer/composer and get to catalogue three new names for further study.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Duets: 1. Composition 304 2. Scrabble 3. To Wait 4. All Roads Lead to Middletown 5. Improvisation 6. Composition 305

Personnel: Duets: Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, trumpbone, shell and mutes); Anthony Braxton (sopranino, soprano, F alto, Eb alto and baritone saxophones, Eb, Bb and contralto clarinets)

Track Listing: Four: 1. Composition 242 2. Composition 243 3. Composition 244 4. Composition 245

Personnel: Four: Anthony Braxton (Eb and Eb soprano, F alto, alto and baritone, bass and contra-bass saxophones,); Kevin Uehlinger (piano); Keith Witty (bass); Noam Schatz (percussion)

April 7, 2003

ANTHONY BRAXTON

News from the 70s
Felmay/Newtone FY 7005

With his MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” and his tenured position at Wesleyan University now part of his storied past, it would seem that Anthony Braxton has attained the respect he deserves as an academic and a serious American composer. However, a document like this CD -- or “text” as the academics would term it -- serves as a reminder of how he achieved what he did.

Organized by Italian jazz writer Francesco Martinelli and consisting of almost 75 minutes of tapes from Braxton’s private tape stash, the newest track dates from 1976 and the oldest from 1971. Braxton’s improvising and band leading is emphasized as much as his composing here, and hearing him in contexts ranging from solo to quartet you quickly pick up on the skill, technique and intensity that drew people to him in the first place. Hitherto-unknown compositions and new versions of older compositions are exposed, as are unique or under-recorded partnerships.

Case in point is “Composition-2”, which features Braxton on sopranino, clarinet, piccolo and alto saxophone, flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler and two French musicians better known for their New music leanings and film scores than for improvisations. Yet it was performances like this with pianist Antonine Duhamel and bassist François Mechali which helped make Braxton’s name in France. And it’s easy to see why.

Even without a percussionist, the four are able to formulate a lively theme stretched over a walking bass line and sharp piano overtones that almost sound like vibes. When he briefly gets the solo spotlight, in fact, Duhamel displays a tone that could easily have come from a player piano. Canadian-born, British-domiciled Wheeler, who since then has reverted to his persona as the cautious, colorist of shades of gray, which first got him noticed in mid-1960 Britain, surprises as well. When he’s not working in duple counterpoint with the reedman, he offers up some high-pitched Don Cherry-like note substitutions and explorations.

For his part Braxton, who jumps back-and-forth from one horn to another, takes solos that seem to be one-third Charlie Parker, one-third Eric Dolphy and one-third New Thing madman. It’s hard to link that energy to the comfortable, bespectacled pedagogue he now chooses to portray.

There’s no mistaking that a percussionist is on hand for “Composition 23E” and “Four Winds”, however, with New Yorker Barry Altschul behind the traps. A freebopper par excellence, he hits everything he can -- including what sound like bells and triangles -- when he gets a chance. Showiness and overwhelming aren’t part of his vocabulary, however. As a mater of fact adding his timekeeping on the cymbals plus the occasional press roll to Dave Holland’s low toned, steady bass lines throughout and you’d think you were listening to a bunch of beboppers.

Well, at least until you got to the front line. On the first tune Wheeler strains notes into the stratosphere, while on the second, trombonist George Lewis adds a brassy fillip to the proceedings when he’s not modulating in unison with Braxton. Lightly inflected, Braxton’s sopranino playing sounds very much of the 1970s here as well, with modulations that suggest Wayne Shorter or Dave Liebman more than John Coltrane.

Holland also exhibits his cello prowess on “Composition-1”, a track left off the recording of the reedist’s epochal 1972 concert at New York’s Town Hall. In a more than 14-minute duet with Braxton, who takes the black stick from a warm, low tone to squeaky upper register vibrations, Holland holds his own, both with bow and fingers. At times he produces sonorous passages of almost meltingly legitimate tones.

Completed by two examples of Braxton’s solo alto saxophone work, this CD, despite its definitely non-archival sound, is both musically and historically fascinating. Braxton apparently has more unreleased tapes. Perhaps it’s time for a second volume.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Composition 23E*#+ 2. Composition 8C 3. Composition -1# 4. Composition -2% 5. Composition 8G 6. Four Winds^#+

Personnel: Kenny Wheeler (flugelhorn)*; George Lewis (trombone)^; Anthony Braxton (sopranino, clarinet, piccolo, alto saxophone); Antonine Duhamel (piano)%; François Mechali%, Dave Holland# (bass); Barry Altschul (percussion)+

January 24, 2002

Turning Corners

The Life and Music of Leroy Jenkins
By Carl E. Baugher Cadence Jazz Books

King (queen?) of classical music, the violin has had a checked history in jazz. Saddled with the reputation of having a tone too quiet for raucous syncopating and demanding extensive study to play correctly, the number of improvising violinists has always been pretty limited. Joe Venuti, Eddie South, Stuff Smith, France's Stéphane Grapelli and Denmark's Svend Asmussen are the few cited in histories of Swing and Bop. Michael White, Jean-Luc Ponty and Michael Urbaniak -- the later two more-or-less lost to fusion -- took the fiddle into the 1960s and 1970s. Only with the rise of pure improvised music did strings finally come into their own. Today the improvisations of such violin and viola players as Billy Bang, Matt Maneri, Phil Wachsmann and Mark Feldman are as valued as other instrumentalists' contributions.

Surmounting this group, and the link between jazz's earlier and its modern traditions, is 69-year-old Leroy Jenkins, who pioneered a dominant role for four-string concert instruments in creative music. Carl Baugher's long-in-the-works biography offers the definitive portrait of this accomplished composer and improviser.

Written in simple, workman-like prose, Baugher takes both parts of his subhead very seriously. Moreover, once Jenkins starts to record -- at the shockingly late age of 36 -- the writer begins to offer a detailed assessment of all his work, whether it's commercially available or not.

The reasons for Jenkins late entry into the spotlight were a combination of racism and personal problems. Born and raised in Chicago, he seemed to have developed a Jones for serious music and hard drugs at about the same time. A checkered period as a scholarship music student at Florida's A&M, a long stretch teaching music in Mobile, Ala.'s segregated school system, the extravagant habits related to a steady income -- he also played R&B gigs as a saxophonist -- and too few jazz opportunities, didn't help matters much.

Sobriety relating to both his personal life and music came when he returned to the Windy City in the mid-1960s. Impressed by the work of such committed thinkers as multi-reedist Roscoe Mitchell and pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, he became a charter member of the infant Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), carving out a place for violin in that rapidly changing scene.

Soon he was lauded in Europe, where he first traveled in a band with fellow AACMers trumpeter Leo Smith and woodwind experimenter Anthony Braxton, and later still in Jazz's centre of the world: New York. Sidemen gigs with the likes of pianist Alice Coltrane and saxophonist Albert Ayler soon gave way to membership in the legendary cooperative, the Revolutionary Ensemble, with percussionist Jerome Cooper and bassist Sirone.

Finally Jenkins went out on his own, putting together his own bands, ranging in style from bluesy to experimental, and often featuring a chordal instrument such as a guitar or piano in the front line to counterbalance his violin and viola contributions. Most recently, he has jumped bow first into so-called "serious" music, giving solo recitals, accepting commissions to write for chamber ensembles and New music groups, as well as creating the score for an opera.

Baugher's comprehensive familiarity with Jenkins -- he has produced and recorded sessions for him, as well as extensively interviewed the violinist and other participants -- gives this volume the kind of authority more distanced observers lack. There's no sycophancy however, with the author explaining which Jenkins' recordings aren't worth investigating -- due to less than appropriate musicians or imprecise sound --and which are clearly essential.

However, the constant itemization and analysis of so many unreleased or "audience" tapes throughout sometimes give this volume an air of fanzine fetishism. We would hope that Baugher wouldn't want to be compared to those obsessives who insist that the only way to really appreciate the Rolling Stones, for instance, is to hear a bootleg tape of a warm up club performance recorded by a roadie in the weeks following Altamont. Often, the book appears to mention more unavailable music than accessible sessions. To take the most charitable view of his opinions on these numerous private sessions, perhaps they pinpoint the wealth of first rate material that could be released by committed record companies that would add to our appreciation of Jenkins' artistry.

Some of the most interesting parts of TURNING CORNERS come in those large sections when Baugher quotes extensively from Jenkins himself. Nonetheless, the volume does lose something as it progresses and narrowly concentrates on the man's musical career. Minute discussion of the music and recordings subsumes the man's personal story.

Granted, Jenkins expresses much of himself in his compositions and performances. Yet it would be interesting, for example, to explore the feelings of someone who, after a successful second marriage became a first time father at 46. Or to find out his take on a situation that suddenly dubs his art "serious" because of its new, Eurocentric concert hall association, after a lifetime working in the Black vernacular tradition.

Still, this is the essential volume for anyone drawn to either Jenkins' work or who appreciates the sound of the violin in jazz.

-- Ken Waxman

April 24, 2001

SCOTT ROSENBERG/ANTHONY BRAXTON

Compositions/Improvisations 2000
Barely Auditable bar 222

Appreciation of a first class session like this results when the listener can relate what appears to be a "difficult" saxophone duo to a cappella singing voices. What Anthony Braxton and Scott Rosenberg are doing with their massed woodwinds on the CD, after all, is approximating the different tones, textures and harmonies available to blended human voices.

Or take some time to mentally strip away the backing on popular songs like "Soul Man" from a duo like Sam & Dave. Note how the two voices compliment one another when harmonizing, take turns accompanying the other when someone sings lead, or produce counter melodies when each individual take off on vocal flights. That's what's going on here, but with saxophones and clarinets.

Chicago-based Rosenberg is particularly brave in his choice of partner on this disc. Composer/theorist/performer Braxton is an old hand at such combinations, and his cohorts in the past have been the loftiest sax experimenters: Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell.

Notwithstanding that, Rosenberg, who is also a composer and who has gigged on both coasts with the likes of Mario Eneidi and Glenn Spearman acquits himself more than admirably. Moreover, it may be another compliment to say that with the rapid switching among their horns that the two do on many tracks, it's sometimes difficult to realize which tone comes from which woodwind player.

The young Chicagoan also deserves kudos for dragging Braxton away from his highly-stylized Ghost Trance Music, back to exercising his lips on the sort of reed-rattling improvisation that he has excelled at since he burst on the jazz scene with the solo FOR ALTO in 1969. This program is made up of two Braxton compositions, three of Rosenberg's and three free improvisations, that honesty don't sound that much different from the written material.

At 17 minutes plus, Rosenberg's "Eerhre" is the disc tour de force, sort of an extended fantasia for saxophones. With the younger man probably sticking to tenor and Braxton pulling out his C-melody, the two work in lockstep at the beginning, then switch to alto saxophones and clarinets as Rosenberg probes the heavens and Braxton unrolls a cushiony ostinato. Harmonizing in another section, they slowly separate into counter melodies, embellishments and finally double timing solos, filled with reed squeaks and lip trills. Eventually they return to mimicking each other's exchanges, before ending simultaneously.

Every horn gets brought into play on one of the eight tracks or another with both men stretching their lungs on the monster contrabass clarinet, which is used as much for its distinctive accompaniment sound as for its solo capacity.

No one should fear this extended essay on sex, cries and audiotape any more than if it was a recital by two chordal instruments. Together the two men have produced a constantly interesting CD. Not only should it draw folks to more works by Braxton, but it also should make most of us curious to see what Roseneberg can do on his own or in a more conventional group setting.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Stark 2. #168 3. Improvisation 4. Llnlr 5. Improvisation 6. #65 7. Improvisation 8. Eerhre

Personnel: Anthony Braxton (soprano, alto and C melody saxophones, flute, Bb, Eb contra alto and contrabass clarinets); Scott Rosenberg (sopranino, alto and tenor saxophones, contrabass clarinet)

February 21, 2001

ANTHONY BRAXTON

For Alto
Delmark DE-420

Thirty-one years later it's hard to fathom the reception this landmark album received and Braxton's audacity in putting it out. Remember it was a time when not only New Thingers, but mainstreamers were struggling for work, jazz rock was ossifying into fusion and the only hope seemed to be coming from intricate compositions and orchestrations of writers like Muhal Richard Abrams.

Yet here was Braxton, all of 24 years old and with only one other LP under his belt, putting out what was a 2-LP set of the sort of solo improvisations only allowed pianists at that time.

Economics and experimentation means that seemingly every saxophonist short of Bill Clinton now records a solo CD, or at least a solo track. But in 1969, Coleman Hawkins' "Picasso" of 20 years before was the only widely acknowledged success. Singular to a fault, Braxton stood the jazz establishment on its ear here, adding a set of dedications and graphic titles to his audacious statement.

So how does the music stand up? Very well, thank you, though it's interesting to note that the then rail-thin Braxton was a long way from becoming the avuncular semi-classicist he is now.

What strikes you right off is the acerbity of some of the compositions and how in your face Braxton was then. On "John Cage" and "Leroy Jenkins, for example, he seems to be struggling to fit everything in as he balances harsh, stratospheric tones, banshee-like wails and cavernous horn blats to make his points. This isn't smooth, or even polite jazz, but a record of a man using every ounce of his being to explore each part of his saxophone -- and damn the consequences. "Kenny McKenny", with its altissimo squeaks and tugboat blats and growls is even more brutal, but its beauty must rest in the ear of the listener.

Not everything is that frenetic, however. The Chicago school's use of silence had influenced him, as on "Ann and Peter Allen", where the tiny, mournful notes fade into mere breaths. The quiet allows you to hear air circulating through the horn and the key pads opening and closing. There are even flute-like sections on "Murray De Pillars" where overblowing allows him to sound like he's duetting with himself.

In retrospect probably the most interesting tracks is "Cecil Taylor", which could be an "outside" twin to a Gene Ammons funky jazz solo. Despite his universal leanings Braxton never lost touch with the South Side blues and this proves it.

FOR ALTO isn't easy listening, candlelight-and-wine background music -- and jazz smoothies should stay away. But if you're interested in the beginnings of one of music's most fascinating minds, deep listening will give you insights.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Dedicated to multi-instrumentalist Jack Gell 2. To Composer John Cage 3. To artist Murray De Pillars 4. To pianist Cecil Taylor 5. Dedicated to Ann and Peter Allen 6. Dedicated to Susan Axelrod 7. To my friend Kenny McKenny 8. . Dedicated to multi-instrumentalist Leroy Jenkins

Personnel: Anthony Braxton (alto saxophone)

August 24, 2000