Photo copyright Chris Jonas
[Originally Published in 2012] At age 67 and with hundreds of recordings (as well as his Tri-Axiom compositional literature) documented, it’s pretty clear that composer-reedman Anthony Braxton is well beyond the point of being an established figure in creative music. And with certain “stature” (if I may use such a term) comes a great amount of responsibility to the music as a whole. Though I have not studied with him in the sense that many musicians who have worked with him at Wesleyan, Mills, and elsewhere have, it’s become obvious to me that one of the key principles in Braxton’s music and his person is a sense of generative-ness. Going beyond generosity (and he is generous), Braxton’s music gives to others so that they may do something with it.
As he said in an as-yet-unpublished interview (hopefully it will be available in early 2013), “the subject of students whom I work with is dynamic; it’s not so much the subject of my students (indeed, I’m lucky to know these people), but rather the subject is who are the people in the next time cycle that is coming up. If they’re talking about Braxton at 64, that means that Braxton isn’t the one – and I say that with love, a sense of humor, and a sense of urgency to complete my work.” In a sense it’s no longer about Braxton as a figure but contemporary travelers such as Mary Halvorson, Ingrid Laubrock, Katherine Young, Taylor Ho Bynum, Kyoko Kitamura, Anne Rhodes, and Josh Sinton. That’s not to say that Braxton isn’t a major shaper/contributor, but the focus is (or should be) on these young musicians and improvising composers who will be taking the music forward. Braxton may have opened the door, but he is not defining how the door looks or how musicians will proceed through it (or even what’s on the other side, to coin a favorite phrase of Steve Lacy’s).
This fact was patently obvious on September 13 when the Tri-Centric Foundation and the Brooklyn performance space Roulette celebrated one year of working together with a night of Braxton’s music. Curiously, the opening set was dedicated to a format we haven’t heard Braxton utilizing in a while (at least to my recollection), a piano-less quartet. The group recalled Braxton’s 1970s/1980s groups with trombonist George Lewis in terms of its layout, though the music was quite different on a number of levels. Braxton was joined here by bassist Ken Filiano and a young Philadelphia pair, trombonist Daniel Blacksberg and drummer Mike Szekely, who are not yet well known in creative music circles (though that’s only a matter of time). Szekely is a light, swinging and fluid percussionist and Blacksberg is an effusively slick player, both garrulous and economical. As with any young-leaning group, there was a bit of hesitancy at times and one did get the feeling that there was a bit of natural deference to the ‘master,’ but this was primarily a music of giving – Braxton patiently encouraging the next generation(s) of players to take the music and see what happens with it.
The pieces (including some of Braxton’s lush Falling River Music) were rooted in contrasts and colors rather than outright propulsion, Blacksberg’s bass trombone holding down the lower end while Braxton’s sopranino saxophone eked out breathy and shrill statements. In some particularly rousing passages, higher-register trombone played off the comically gruff, low-register contrabass saxophone, leading into a delightfully comic vocal (what, you thought it was all serious?) exchange of low reeds and Blacksberg’s brass. There were also some beautiful, classic Braxtonian alto lines, slowly unfolding and Konitz-like, with echoes of chestnuts like “You Go To My Head” peeking out from the shadows. But aside from comically rousing exchanges on the contrabass saxophone, the reedman was not the center of attention over the course of the first hour – instead, it was a spare jovial collectivity where most of the work was in passing the baton to improvisers who would put their own stamp on the music in years to come. Even if it didn’t come off seamlessly (Filiano spent a lot of time goofing around with electronics and pedals rather than his generally more intriguing bass improvising), the music proudly stated its open-ended and generative themes.
The second half of the concert was dedicated to the Diamond Curtain Wall music, employing the SuperCollider algorithmic composition program, along with a choir performing texts from the E section of Braxton’s Trillium operatic cycle. The composer’s role here was as conductor; the instrumentalists included reedman Josh Sinton, brass multi-instrumentalist Taylor Ho Bynum, harpist Maura Valenti and trumpeter Chris DiMeglio (also a chorus member). The choir consisted of Anne Rhodes, Kyoko Kitamura, Amy Crawford, and Michael Douglas Jones, who have been working with the choral and operatic music for some time. It’s a little bit harder to find words to discuss the text-based music because it’s so wrapped up in Braxton’s cosmology/philosophy. A lot of it has to do with concepts of space and how we interact with one another given different types of experiential loci – how we bond, how we make choices, and how events are understood in different iterations of space and time. Some of the things that I wrote down (ascertained from the choral parts) might give one an idea of the themes undertaken:
Paths
Speed limits
Stations
Directions
Strategies
Exits
Regulation
Navigation
Images
Policies
Local aspirations
Gates
Territories
Divides
Structures
Countries
Geography
Topography
Interference
Statements
Orders
Requests
Officials
Menus
If all this seems rarefied when divorced from the actual hearing/living of the work, well, that’s a natural response – it’s best experienced live. And in that sense the work came off beautifully – Braxton’s conducting of the ensemble cast the piece’s first bars into an auditory hall of mirrors, introductory long tones bent into a hyperbolic aural picture as he literally shaped the sound on stage. I can’t say I’ve ever heard or seen anything quite like it in the flesh (and I don’t have the speaker setup at home to truly hear things like Gruppen or some of Xenakis’ choral/orchestral works correctly). Instrumentally there were shades of Stockhausen and Berio, with Sinton’s flute bouncing off Valenti’s spiky and muted harp and the refractive electronic tones generated by SuperCollider. While the concepts borne out from the Trillium texts are themselves interesting and of importance, in practice they often blended together into a chattering polyphony that either reflected the complexities of the Tri-Axial system or subsumed the bearing of words and associated constructs to the overall sonic experience. To be sure, the composer’s hand was still quite evident in the work’s production, but there remained the feeling of warm-hearted unity that will see this music into the next time cycle.
It will be interesting to see how the Tri-Centric Foundation and Roulette continue to collaborate; even without the stamp of Braxton’s name, the space regularly presents diverse music by young improvisers and composers who are shaping our contemporary musical landscape. And while Braxton is certainly present in the scope of this broader enterprise, that is not to say there’s some sort of overarching “other figure” looming behind what someone like Halvorson or Bynum produces. Clearly it’s their own work, even as it might follow in the footsteps of those improvising composers and conceptualists who’ve come before. That’s what this music is built on, after all – but it’s fascinating to see the real time process of transference as it happens.