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AOTW - Aug 13-19


Nate Dorward

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I've been thinking hard for the past week about which album to select. I could have gone with a "safe" selection of an older mainstream album (my shortlist came down to Clifford Jordan's Spellbound, Sheila Jordan's Portrait of Sheila, the Armstrong/Ellington sessions & Sims/Rowles' If I'm Lucky) but given that the recent run of AOTW selections has been mostly in this vein I thought I'd pick something different. So the selection is an album I've wanted to revisit for a while, a notable encounter between one of the great American jazz conceptualists & a UK musician who insisted that what he played wasn't jazz at all. And of course with Bailey's passing last December I thought it was an appropriate time to have a Bailey pick for AOTW.

002_VICTO.gif

(Victo CD02)

Recorded live in Victoriaville, 2 Oct 1986.

Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey had encountered each other in the 1970s several times: apparently their first encounter required a lot of negotiation: Braxton brought lots of his compositions to the gig, whereas Bailey refused to play pre-written structures; in the end they organized the concert around set "territories" (loosely defined kinds of sound & style) as a compromise. Braxton also participated in the 1977 Company Week in an extraordinary transatlantic lineup that also included Leo Smith and Steve Lacy--a key event, I think, in bringing together US avant-garde jazz musicians with European free improvisers. -- I believe that Moment Précieux was Braxton and Bailey's last public performance together. It was released on Victo, the label's second release; as far as I know it remains in print (Cadence lists it as in-stock).

This is not the most "typical" encounter for either musician, & there are those who think that Braxton & Bailey just don't share enough common ground for it to work (the Cook/Morton guide cruelly called it "a dialogue of the deaf", though oddly enough gave it a relatively high rating anyway). I don't really fathom this skepticism: maybe if your head's full of opinions about transatlantic differences &c it gets in the way, but in terms of moment-to-moment surprise and interest and dialogue the disc is exemplary, IMO.

Anyway, I've started this thread a few days early so those who want to pull out their copy or get hold of one can do so. As one of the earliest North American releases of Bailey's work it should be relatively common--it was, for instance, the only Derek Bailey album in the LP stacks at the radio station where I briefly DJ'd in the 1990s.

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Great choice for Album of the Week. For some reason, this one rarely gets discussed.

I agree with Penguin about the earlier duos being a dialogue of the deaf (though in some circles the duo encounter on Emanem is highly regarded). The 1986 encounter is much different. I’ve always been curious what Braxton’s and Bailey’s “game plan” was entering this concert. They dovetail quite nicely over the first part of the concert; I love the way Braxton’s alto soars over Bailey’s jagged chords.

Besides Company 3, 5, 6 and 7, the two also recorded an Incus LP called Royal Volume 1, recorded a couple of days after the aforementioned duo on Emanem.

An interesting comparison is Braxton’s duo with Fred Frith, recorded 19 years later at the same festival.

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Been thinking about getting this one--hopefully we get some good discussion later in the week...

And yes, as long as this is up--It's nice to hear about the improv maps/game plan for this set (improv strategies are, of course, a whole other realm of study). Considering Braxton's aversion to totally free improvisation, as well as Bailey's taste for more spontaneous idea generation and improvisational momentum (even with the occasional structural foundation), they make for an interesting, if unlikely mix.

Edited by ep1str0phy
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Been thinking about getting this one--hopefully we get some good discussion later in the week...

And yes, as long as this is up--It's nice to hear about the improv maps/game plan for this set (improv strategies are, of course, a whole other realm of study). Considering Braxton's aversion to totally free improvisation, as well as Bailey's taste for more spontaneous idea generation and improvisational momentum (even with the occasional structural foundation), they make for an interesting, if unlikely mix.

I wonder Braxton's "aversion" to totally free improv may have been a phase at the time (1974), since he went to do many totally free projects (ie. Company). His susequent duo albums range from compositions to improvisations, with quite a few having a mix of both. Moment Precieux sounds like they may have agreed on a strategy beforehand. Mind you, they were very familiar with each other's playing by this point (1986).

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It would be nice to hear Braxton's (contemporary) viewpoint on free improvisation. Much of his writing--not to mention the available theory detailing his work--is fairly technical and, often, quite esoteric. I have no doubt that any misconception has much to do with the sparseness of Braxton literature (hardly surprising, though--it's as difficult to dissect as any modern improvisational ethos). There's no doubt, though, that Braxton is one of the great formalists of modern improv and, moreover (on a more limiting level) the so-called jazz 'avant-garde'; very much on the level of Cecil Taylor, Braxton's structurally complex, intellectual approach to liberated Western parameters and musical particulars represents as fully developed and individual an organizational conception as exists... well, anywhere. What's important to me, however, is that the conception never gets in the way of 'freedom'--and Braxton's is a liberated, free-wheeling music at heart. In finality, I'm most interested in how different approaches get different results--and precisely why Braxton might think a certain game plan could inhibit his (how you say?) 'free groove.'

Edited by ep1str0phy
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I actually wish Braxton would do more free-improv albums: a number of them are really special--aside from the one I've picked here, I also think the one with Evan Parker on Leo is remarkable (haven't heard the trio with Rutherford). And, more recently, the very "open" quartet album with Matt Bauder is remarkable stuff--it's compositions, but many of them so interdeterminate that it's essentially free improv, mostly in a quiet "lowercase" style. I think that people often overvalue Braxton's "standards" albums & contrarily undervalue his totally free outings. (Same might go for Bailey, in a way: he got far more press for Ballads than for just about anything else he recorded in his later years.)

Incidentally, two "rehearsal extracts" from 1974, the day before Braxton & Bailey played their first public concert together, were released on Bailey's Fairly Early with Postscripts.

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It would be nice to hear Braxton's (contemporary) viewpoint on free improvisation. Much of his writing--not to mention the available theory detailing his work--is fairly technical and, often, quite esoteric. I have no doubt that any misconception has much to do with the sparseness of Braxton literature (hardly surprising, though--it's as difficult to dissect as any modern improvisational ethos). There's no doubt, though, that Braxton is one of the great formalists of modern improv and, moreover (on a more limiting level) the so-called jazz 'avant-garde'; very much on the level of Cecil Taylor, Braxton's structurally complex, intellectual approach to liberated Western parameters and musical particulars represents as fully developed and individual an organizational conception as exists... well, anywhere. What's important to me, however, is that the conception never gets in the way of 'freedom'--and Braxton's is a liberated, free-wheeling music at heart. In finality, I'm most interested in how different approaches get different results--and precisely why Braxton might think a certain game plan could inhibit his (how you say?) 'free groove.'

I was reading Graham Lock's Forces in Motion , a book of interviews with Braxton and his quartet during the 1985 England tour and Braxton does address the topic of "total" improvisation. To paraphrase, Braxton said, post-1960s, he wasn't interested in only total improvisation. "Structure is part of how evolution is arrived at; but I don't mean any disrespect for collective improvisation. I am an improvisor." "It's like everybody wanted to use freedom as a context to freak out, and that was not what I was talking about." "For a great many people, so-called freedom music is more limiting than bebop, because in bebop you can play a ballad or change the tempo or the key." Of course, his views are far more complex than that, but there's a few sprinklings of thought to give you a rough idea where he's coming from. Basically, Braxton has developed several systems for improvising. Sometimes, they even incorporate open improvisation.

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I actually wish Braxton would do more free-improv albums: a number of them are really special--aside from the one I've picked here, I also think the one with Evan Parker on Leo is remarkable (haven't heard the trio with Rutherford). And, more recently, the very "open" quartet album with Matt Bauder is remarkable stuff--it's compositions, but many of them so interdeterminate that it's essentially free improv, mostly in a quiet "lowercase" style. I think that people often overvalue Braxton's "standards" albums & contrarily undervalue his totally free outings.

You want more Braxton albums? :D

I don't think Braxton's standards albums haven't necessarily been overvalued. Some of them have gotten quite a thumping, (see Lee Konitz' negative take on the Tristano album in The Wire a few years back, for example). The more recent "Standards Quartet" albums have generated a lot of discussion (probably as much to do with the fact they have been rather fully documented), but even there, the jury is mixed. But I agree his free outings tend to get overlooked, but since so much gets released, it's easy for this stuff to fall between the cracks.

While albums like the aforementioned Bauder may sound "essentially free", there is still a different process going on than "total" improv, even though the end results sound familiar. And speaking of totally free, the trio with Parker and Rutherford is as remarkable as the duo with Parker.

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Seconded--the Rutherford-Parker-Braxton album is pure gold--some of the finest, most tasteful, telepathic free improv I've heard on record.

-As for Forces In Motion--I haven't read more than excerpts. I'm modestly versed in several of Braxton's improvising mechanisms--enough to appreciate, I think, the formal beauty of much of his work. It's interesting that Braxton has succeeded in integrating free improvisation into his music in degrees (i.e., as a modular or perspectival complement to his other tools). It seems (nowadays, at least) that few artists can deal in freer settings without spiraling into idiomatic cliches (Bailey said so much in the Improvisation book, no? That free improv has become an idiom unto itself?).

Edited by ep1str0phy
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If BRAXTON is indeed a conceptualist, big part of his disco is made of "free improv" records.

Most of his meetings in duets with people like PARKER, ROACH (TWO IN ONE - ONE IN TWO, certainly), GRAEWE, ROBAIR (on three cuts at least) and the disc under review are freely improvised.

So, it seems to me that it's a bit difficult to speak about BRAXTON's "aversion to totally free improvisation" when you kown that he likes very much than to find himself in that context (i.e COMPANY) and as have prooved it in many meetings with many free european improvisers who has never been publish on record (like the one one with FRED VAN HOVE, among other, that I witness thirty years ago in Belgium).

Edited by P.L.M
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If BRAXTON is indeed a conceptualist, big part of his disco is made of "free improv" records.

Most of his meetings in duets with people like PARKER, ROACH (TWO IN ONE - ONE IN TWO, certainly), GRAEWE, ROBAIR (on three cuts at least) and the disc under review are freely improvised.

So, it seems to me that it's a bit difficult to speak about BRAXTON's "aversion to totally free improvisation" when you kown that he likes very much than to find himself in that context (i.e COMPANY) and as have prooved it in many meetings with many free european improvisers who has never been publish on record (like the one one with FRED VAN HOVE, among other, that I witness thirty years ago in Belgium).

Two in One - One in Two isn't freely improvised. It contains many of the tunes from the studio session.

While Braxton has made quite a few improv records, often in duets, they do not make up a big part of his discography.

Another memorable improv partner has been Richard Teitelbaum.

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For the sake of discussion (and as it seems to pertain to the disc at hand)--I think it's fair to say that Braxton's methodologies are difficult to find in isolation. His approach come across (to me) as more 'modular' (employing different mechanisms as the whimsy strikes him) with a few central tenets (e.g., the diagrams) constantly reappearing. It is, perhaps, a lot more difficult to get a handle on all the methods and ideas running through Braxton's head over the course of a performance than it is to categorize any particular excerpt as purely improvised or not--on that level, anyway, I'd be interested in knowing just how many recorded performances Braxton has cut full-on blind (that is, with zero preparation or preconditions). Even with Bailey, apparently--a master of pure improvisation--Braxton pre-arranged sound environments.

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Two in One - One in Two isn't freely improvised. It contains many of the tunes from the studio session.

It is. It contains NONE of the tunes from BIRTH AND REBIRTH but few quotes from the previous record.

While Braxton has made quite a few improv records' date=' often in duets, they do not make up a big part of his discography.[/quote']

I've under my nose the record he has done recently with GYÖRGY SZABADOS & VLADIMIR TARASOV (TRIOTONE on LEO).

On the five pieces feature here, two are written by SZABADOS and the rest is "freely improvised".

This happened often on records that BRAXTON didn't lead.

So, maybe not a big part but an IMPORTANT one.

Another memorable improv partner has been Richard Teitelbaum.

Very questionnable.

Maybe when BRAXTON was playing with MEV. Maybe in concerts (never seen personnally the two as a duet.)

Far to be true for the records they do together like OPEN ASPECTS (DUO) 1982 where all the pieces (called OPEN ASPECTS) are compositions from BRAXTON.

Edited by P.L.M
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