Listening Post: Anthony Braxton New Haven Quartets
In 2020, to honor his 75th birthday, the first academic conference dedicated to the work of Anthony Braxton will take place. It's long overdue. There's no getting around the fact that Braxton's music is as diverse as his discography is daunting, and yet, that vast body of recordings, stretching back more than fifty years, constitutes only one facet of his contributions to what the AACM, such an important influence on his early work and education, calls creative music. He is as as comfortable in the world of opera as he is in casting new light on forgotten and somewhat dusty corners of improvised music, such as the more obscure compositions of Lenny Tristano. Long-time listeners will be aware that his half-century journey has led him to re-imagine standards, both musical and cultural, to confront the manufactured compositional and improvisational dualities, tropes presumably and superficially associated with "jazz" and "Western European Art Music", to redefine ensemble interaction and the role of a leader and even to incorporate his own discography into the unified framework resulting from the intersection of these ever-blurring lines and eroding boundaries. The conference will address Braxton's work as composer, music theorist and instrumentalist. It's the latter that will concern us here, as this new four-disc set finds him in improvising mode. The 2014 recordings include Nels Cline, Greg Saunier and Taylor Ho Bynum, the only Braxton alum along for the ride.
Marc Medwin
Quartet (New Haven) 2014 by Anthony Braxton
Mark Medwin: I maintain that reference, however defined, is key to Braxton's aesthetic. To the devotees, I would ask: How does this set of improvisations fit into that large body of reference and sub-reference that is the Braxton corpus? For those newer to the Braxton fold, where do these four long sets fit into the admittedly vast and ever-diversifying field of improvisation, if we can really still place such a limiting term on this quartet's MO?
Justin Cober-Lake: This might be an oblique way to approach Marc's questions, but my own thoughts about the album seem to be connected. In thinking about reference as essential to Braxton's aesthetic, I have to wonder about the explicit references here, with each hour-long track dedicated to a well-known musician. The improvised performances seem to have little to do with the honorees. There are some superficial connections to Hendrix -- the experimental tones, the wildness, and -- from what I've dug up -- some quotes from his own tunes. The James Brown track remains notably unfunky. None of these musicians are people I associate with funk, but they're all rhythmically flexible enough that it's odd to me that they'd record a track nominally to JB and then do little to connect it to him. Haggard stands an obviously tough connection, so I'm not sure if the thicker sound here is meant to reflect personally or not.
Given that these performances weren't meant to be avant garde versions of, say, "Piece of My Heart," what are we to do with the ostensible conceit of the set? Are to read it as a joke? A loose reference? In reading Marc's opening paragraph as I listen to the recordings again, I'm trying to pinpoint what sort of statement Braxton makes with these sessions. What are we to re-think as we hear this music?
Bill Meyer: Four hours of Braxton (or anyone, really) gives you plenty of opportunity to think about what it's all about while it's unfolding. I pretty much abandoned the idea that any of these tracks were about their dedicatees within the first five minutes of each track. I can see Hendrix a little in terms of Cline being able to get a bit of his tone, but that is about it. Maybe there's a bit more attitudinal inspiration; Haggard and Brown were tough nuts, and the music has its own brand of toughness. Hendrix flared up and out quickly, but a lot of his impact had to do with changing people's ideas about what his instrument could do and what music could be like. I haven't gone back yet to look for evidence of the metaphor being expressed in the music, but that's where I'll go next. I do want to listen to all four tracks again, which is saying something. It's fun to hear Braxton and Cline together. Braxton hasn't used guitar much, Halvorson aside, and picking a chops-abundant, stylistically flexible guy like Cline leaves the music's options open. I was curious that Braxton wanted to say anything about pop music icons at all. In a way it seems kind of earthbound compared to some of his other aspirations, why spend this much time on them? I don't have any answers to that.
Marc Medwin: Well, as for changing attitudes about instruments and their roles, Cline likes his motors, doesn't he? If anyone's providing anything approaching steady rhythm on that first improv, it's Cline, often in unlikely registers!
Devin King: I’m lightly familiar with Braxton’s work and have a quote above my desk by him:
“…all the musics that are close to the community and allow for individual presence bring out this dichotomy between the rational system and the three dimensional system.”
For me that begins to answer the pop music question Bill brought up — it seems to me these four (Hendrix, Joplin, Brown, Haggard), even though working in pop, are about fostering individual presence above the song. Whether their specific presence actually makes it onto the tracks though…
For me, Cline is really the attraction on this record. There’s something about an electric rock guitar working within creative music without falling too far into noise that really excites me. He shares this with noisier Halvorson, I think — they both are partly thinking about their instrument in a totally shredded-out rock context.
But that said, I wouldn’t call myself a Braxton-head — I am so daunted by his catalogue that I feel like it’ll take years to wrap my head around it, and so I just turn away from it. So, a super basic question for the rest of you: besides the electric guitar, is there anything else that’s sticking out to any of y’all about this recording in particular that marks it as new or unexplored territory? And if I like this record (which I do, a ton), what are the dustier parts of his catalogue that I should be checking out?
Marc Medwin: Just for comparison's sake, the duets with Joe Morris on Clean Feed might be a second and related port of call. Yes, I do find myself gravitating toward Cline, and, speaking of crossing lines of individuality, doesn't some of his playing sound like it's fusing the warble of Mike Ratledge's organ with Robert Fripp's glassy sustains? :)
And great quotation BTW, never saw that one, these posts are making me want to go back and listen again!!
Michael Rosenstein: A few quick thoughts. I wouldn't read too much stylistically into Braxton's dedications. He's dedicated pieces to everyone from John Cage to Philip Glass to Liza Minnelli to Johnny Cash and none of those pieces drew in the least from those dedicatees. In an interview from last spring in Rolling Stone (never thought I'd see an interview with Braxton there!), he says “The dedications for my compositions are a clumsy attempt to say ‘Hooray for [these] men and women,'” he says. “I sit on the shoulders of the men and women who have worked so hard to advance us to this point.”
I'll weigh in a bit more on Nels Cline but just wanted to note that I'm certainly amongst the minority who've never really heard him in a rock context. (Yep. I've never heard Wilco.) But I've heard him plenty as an improviser, starting back in the early 1980s in groups with Vinny Golia, Tim Berne, his brother Alex, and Julius Hemphill. I wasn't wild about his version of "interstellar Space" with Greg Bendian, but really liked New Monastery, the project he put together as an homage to Andrew Hill. I wonder if Braxton and Cline talked at all about Andrew Hill. I hear his playing on this session as coming much more from those deep roots.
Marc Medwin: Braxton in Rolling Stone, gotta check that one out!
Bill Meyer: Yeah, New Monastery’s a great record.
Cline is first and foremost a guitarist. He likes to play, and he likes to do it all, which has been a problem for me on some of his projects. Some Nels Cline Singers tracks are too fusion for me.
Jason Bivins: Great thoughts so far, indeed. I need more time to digest the actual music, but I thought I'd pipe up as a serious Brax freak (although nobody can *actually* keep up with the output).
My own earliest engagements with Braxton — through some of the 1970s quartets and the Drespellingway quartet simultaneously, now 25 years ago — was inseparable from my devouring Forces in Motion and John Corbett's Extended Play. I was so intrigued to know that the guy making this completely singular music un-ironically LOVED Frank Sinatra and Captain Beefheart alike. Part of what's so engaging about Braxton is that his multiple platforms of creative expression do point sometimes to the idea that while not every musician ever should be able to touch down into, say, the language series or pick up the piano solo from Composition 96, the whole unitary planet music thing that drives a lot of his thinking is genuinely inspired by the "restructuralists" in all human activity. He'll riff on the importance of the Founding Fathers or Octavia Butler or Warne Marsh or Stockhausen. It's cosmos-defining stuff.
Justin Cober-Lake: I'm surprised the conversation so quickly turned to Cline. He's a favorite of mine, but I feel like this is much more a horn album, and it's Bynum that I keep listening to. I don't know why. Usually I'm most drawn to guitarists in just about anything, so maybe my reaction is more just the unexpected sense that I'm not doing it. Am I the only one having this experience with the record?
Bill Meyer: Justin, you may be picking up on Bynum’s empathy with Braxton’s ideas. He has been a student and sideman for years and he gets Braxton, deeply.
Marc Medwin: OK, I have to do this, just because Biv brought up initiations into Braxtonia. In 1985, at the ripe old age of twelve, I bought what I thought was a Chick Corea album. It was Circle's Paris Concert. Yup, there was Chick making the opening announcement, never heard Nefertiti though I had some idea of who Miles was, I even knew what sets were, and then, Chick gets to a composition they'd be playing later called ... pause ... and then, from a distance, "73-506-kelvin 8." Seventy what? Who the hell? Five O which?!! Chick repeats the name, and he sounds so serious, like he's introducing a symphony or some crap like that, and what are these numbers supposed to add up to?!! Nope, not particularly enlightened at 12, but something stuck, resonated. Maybe it was that voice, so seriously intoning syllables that made almost no sense, or did they access some part of my brain where the sense lived, through which some kind of clarity would dawn? There are moments of personal evolution, how to describe? There are moments after which something changes irrevocably, not necessarily cataclysm but a quietly permanent shift, the place where bewildered and amazed converge; they certainly put Forces in Motion. BTW, that last is the title of a Graham Locke book on Braxton, well worth reading, as I think he has a wonderful way of capturing the voices of the artists he studies.
For the sake of context, I should say that Circle also included Corea, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Barry Altschul. Somebody please check my spelling? (Ed.: spelling looks fine.) Also, the composition was introduced by Corea as being by Anthony Braxton, and I only assumed, at the time, that it was his voice titling it I heard off microphone, which it turned out to be.
Marc Medwin: And maybe it's because I'm so used to hearing Braxton with one particular guitarist, especially of late, that I'm drawn to this guitar experience! THB's playing is superb, no question, and I do hear a lot of group interaction, especially sudden dynamic shifts and synchronous sustains on the same pitch, which always get me!
Justin Cober-Lake: Yes, that's what I'm keying in on. Bynum and Braxton are really in sync, to the point that you could believe one musician had fit their two parts together. Some of it's from those sustains Marc talks about, but some of it is simply the way they find each other's phrasing and can pick up one idea between the two of them. Not that Cline and Saunier don't fit in — just that it's the horns that stand out to me.
Michael Rosenstein: I wonder whether the way they CDs/improvisations are sequenced are in the order they were recorded. I find "Improvisation One" a bit dense and overly active. The four seem to all be throwing out lots of ideas to see what sticks and resonates. That's certainly not so uncommon in first-time meetings like this. Braxton, seems to be hanging back a bit throughout this first one, while sagely and subtly steering things from underneath. As Justin points out, Bynum has extensive background navigating these settings with Braxton and meets Cline and Saunier head-on which works in places, but often nudges them in to overplaying. By the second, and particularly the third improvisation, the four have settled in far more. "Improvisation Three" holds together the best overall with each of the musicians leaving more space for each other and honing in on collective listening.
That said, Saunier seems the wrong drummer here. I have no idea what he's like in a rock context (never having heard Deerhoof) but he's just too busy and restless which tends to wear over the long run. Cline settles in far more as things progress. I'm not a huge fan of overdriven guitar effects so, for me, his playing works better when he minimizes the effects. Though there's a section on "Improvisation Three" where his use of effects evokes a synthesizer and is a bit reminiscent of some of the ways that Richard Teitelbaum interacted with Braxton.
Another thing that stands out for me is Braxton's extensive utilization of bass and contrabass saxophones. They prove a particularly effective foil for Cline's playing. Bynum also brings in bass trumpets, trumpbone (a trombone played with a trumpet mouthpiece) to fill out the bottom end. Both Braxton and Bynum are great at having a broad range of horns at their disposal but switching between them seamlessly rather than simply jumping from one to the other. Braxton has fully synthesized this into his playing, treating the array as a single expansive instrument rather than a collection of discrete horns as is far more often the case.
Four hours is a lot in general (though Braxton is never one for holding back on releases) and even as a hard core Braxton fanatic, it's hard to say how often I'll go back to this one. As Braxton approaches 75, he is showing no indication of even slightly slowing down. And it's intriguing to hear him dive into various one-off experiments like this. He's always earnest, and musically curious enough to pick things and give them his all. One does wonder whether he'll find another classic ensemble like his quartets of the 1970s (Wheeler, Holland, Altschul) or 1980s (Crispell, Dresser, Hemingway) or, even his sextet and 12+1 tet of the 2000s. But Braxton is always full of surprises and its great he's still pulling things like this out.
Marc Medwin: I'm glad you brought up the Teitelbaum collab, an early demonstration of the sonic territories Braxton was always intrepid about entering. Yes, there is something about the drums, maybe restless is the appropriate word, that doesn't seem to fit. I'll go so far as to suggest a bit too much pulse, ironic as pulse has been so important in Braxton's work! Here though, especially in the fourth improvisation, I hear the pulse as sometimes going against the grain of whatever else is occurring. I'm not suggesting that such polarities should be taken or prescribed as absolutes, but in the groups you rightly cite as classic Braxton working groups, the binaries come off more as continua. As for improvised sets, I think of the seamless collaboration Braxton and Hemingway put out on Mode as Old Dogs a while back, where they seemed to navigate such issues more smoothly. I wonder if anyone less bogged down by Braxton's past than I hears any of this differently? Saunier's drumming is really great, no pejorative intended, but in this context?
