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anthony braxton | part one

CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY (Muse MR 5071)

Leroy Jenkins / violin, viola, recorder, etc., Anthony Braxton / reeds, flute, chimes, Leo Smith / trumpet, horns, and percussion, Richard Abrams / piano, cello, clarinet; Richard Davis bass, Steve McCall / drums.
Recorded: May 19, 1970 in concert.

TOWN HALL 1972 (Japan Trio PA 3008-9)

Anthony Braxton / alto sax, various reeds and percussion, David Holland / bass, Phillip Wilson (Part 1 only) / percussion, John Stubblefield (Part 2 only) / tenor saxophone, flute, bass clarinet, percussion, Jeanne Lee (Part 2 only) / vocal; Barry Altschul (Part 2 only) / percussion. Recorded: May 22, 1972 in concert.

TRIO AND DUET (Sackville 3007)

Anthony Braxton / clarinets, alto sax, chimes, bass drum, Leo Smith (Side 1 only) / various brass and percussion, Richard Teitelbaum (Side 1 only) / synthesizer and percussion, David Holland (Side 2 only) / bass.

Recorded: Probably 1974.

NEW YORK, FALL 1974 (Arista AL 4032)

Anthony Braxton / alto saxophone, flute, various reeds, Kenny Wheeler / trumpet and flugelhom, Dave Holland / bass, Jerome Cooper / drums, Richard Teitelbaum (One track only) / synthesizer, Leroy Jenkins (One track only) / violin, Julius Hemphill (One track only) / alto sax, Oliver Lake (One track only) / tenor sax, Hamiet Bluiett (One track only) / baritone sax. Recorded: September 27 and October 16, 1974.

FIVE PIECES 1975 (Arista AL 4064)

Anthony Braxton / alto saxophone, clarinet, sopranino saxophone, flute, alto flute, contrabass clarinet, Kenny Wheeler / trumpet and flugelhorn, Dave Holland / bass, Barry Altschul / drums.

Recorded: July 1 and 2, 1975.

Anthony Braxton’s first musical contributions were as part of the group Creative Construction Company with Leroy Jenkins, Leo Smith, and Steve McCall. With them, he helped create a music that was every bit as advanced as that of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, considered by many to be the most advanced improvisational unit to emerge in the late Sixties. The group with Braxton employed a somewhat more “modern” vocabulary than the Art Ensemble and made fewer stylistic references to earlier forms. The references that were there were well integrated into the music as a whole, generally surfacing in the midst of free improvisation rather than being structured in beforehand. The group’s Delmark LP (Anthony Braxton, Three Compositions of New Jazz, minus McCall and with pianist Richard Abrams) and the first BYG album (Anthony Braxton, Actuel 15) were their most essential recordings, though the opening track on This Time… (BYG Actuel 47) was also quite good.

Now a record has been issued on Muse that features the group in concert some months later with the addition of Richard Davis and Richard Abrams. The LP’s two compositions (played consecutively without break) are by Leroy Jenkins, and it is Jenkins who is most prominently recorded. He and Braxton build layers of lyrical sound around which an array of counter lines and rhythmic figures occur. The lyricism, however, is frequently only momentary and may be left dangling while the more percussive sounds take over. Smith’s playing is closer to someone like Lester Bowie than to either Braxton or Jenkins, and while the latters’ creations consist of gracefully spiraling lines and motifs, Smith works more with spurts and fragments of sound. McCall, meanwhile, fades back from the music or else hovers over it, virtually defining its shape at any given moment. Davis and Abrams add a greater density to the group’s sound and also a greater textural elasticity. These are also the ways in which this recording is very different from the BYG material, though Jenkins’ playing seems looser in the “live” context and there is perhaps a greater edge to the music as a whole.

Braxton, of course, eventually began to pursue more of his aesthetic ends on his own, and the later LPs reviewed mark the emergence of Braxton as composer as well as improviser. (The first solo alto album For Alto, Delmark 420/421, might also be taken as indicating such a point of departure.) In a certain sense, Braxton’s compositional forays are not so different from the processes that improvising musicians have always employed. They are pre-determined structures that include improvisation. But whereas in the past jazz compositional thrusts have been mainly tied to stylistic trends or particular periods or schools of improvisation (bop, swing, etc.) Braxton utilizes various approaches, musical formats, and instrumentations, and these are tied integrally to what he means to convey in any particular piece. Also, whereas other players’ music changed at different periods of their careers, Braxton is one of the first musicians whose roots are in improvisation to attempt to work in so many contexts simultaneously. This is why Braxton as a composer is different from earlier jazz instrumentalists who composed and why it makes most sense to refer to him as a composer, or at least as a composer-instrumentalist. If there is a link connecting all of his work, it may be his insistence on working from various shapes and letting those shapes govern the improvisations they are meant to set up (different, say, from using the shapes to give rise to more forward-moving improvisational constructs). But the shapes differ from piece to piece, within pieces, or between groups of pieces.

Perhaps the most important work on these several LPs is “HM - - 421” (side one of Trio and Duets). Formally, Braxton appears to still be drawing on the fund of ideas gleaned from his association with the AACM, but he approaches them now from a more reductionist standpoint. The piece is largely fixed in its overall design - this observation is based on having also heard this piece performed live, March 1, 1975 - and is beautifully concise. A balance of compositional and improvisational elements is achieved, the difference between the two being frequently blurred. The piece moves in waves of electronic and acoustic sound, tending to draw you into its space, yet not to enclose you there. The incorporation of the synthesizer into the work is masterly, the electronic offerings serving as an extension of the instrumental ones and appearing neither self-conscious nor extraneous to the total composition. Based on this piece and the short duo track on Fall ’74, it would be interesting to hear more of Braxton’s work with Richard Teitelbaum.

The Fall ‘74 album and the newly released Five Pieces present a series of compositional miniatures. Short tunes with twisting, turning heads make up the bulk of the compositions, calling to mind certain early pieces of Lennie Tristano. (A portion of “BOR” on Five Pieces also recalls Parker’s “Donna Lee.”) The more intense of these pieces are on Fall ’74 (a fantastic alto solo is on the opening track) but on Five Pieces Braxton appears to be working more on expanding the tunes’ structural bounds. The main event on “G-647,” for example, is a percussion solo, while on “4038” and “489 M” contrasting shapes are set against each other. Fall ’74 also features a blustering saxophone quartet and a short track on which Leroy Jenkins is added. Of the two, Fall ‘74 is the more noteworthy album, but Five Pieces suggests other possibilities.

The opening track on Five Pieces and the second side of Trio and Duet features Braxton playing “standard” tunes with Dave Holland. These are relatively light, if pleasant, renditions that can seem alternately absorbing or else plodding and overlong, depending on one’s disposition. The best of these may be “Dream” on Five Pieces.

In retrospect, the Town Hall LP seems somewhat more transitional in nature than the definitive statement it appeared on first hearing. Certainly Jeanne Lee’s stunning song realization (on the second part of the program) is as vital as ever. But the piece is not yet the distilled essence of Braxton’s art that we hear on “HM - - 421.” The same might be said of the trio portion of the program. There’s nothing really “wrong” with it, but it lacks the intense inner necessity that is displayed on Braxton’s solo LP (Series F America 011 - 012) from this same period. Town Hall can thus be seen as an important documentation leading toward later, more concentrated musical expressions.

What, then, to make of Braxton’s music? His most far reaching contribution would seem to be his use of the structural contours of his pieces (their shapes) as the principal improvisational focus (different from working with a series of chord changes, “modal” changes or with a more forward-moving rhythmic base). This is an idea, certainly, that has long been implied - at least since Monk (and Parker too occasionally improvised in this way, as on “Donna Lee” or the first “Klactoveedsedstene“) - but Braxton is one of the first to make such an extensive and all-pervasive use of it. The flexibility of this approach is such that you can both have your cake and eat it. If the shape is very fragmented, it will open up a considerable amount of rhythmic/harmonic space (and this will be true, regardless of the shape’s density); if the shape is more linear, it will not exactly close the space off, but it will allow the figure to stand in very high definition. Braxton makes use of both of these possibilities, either by themselves (hear especially the solo albums), or by combining them within the same piece (”HM - - 421” or “489-M“).

The importance of Braxton’s music lies in its scope and in a certain tendency toward musical expansion through isolation of its elements. This is what his use of the various structural contours of his pieces implies. It’s a composer’s awareness, really, one never before wedded so thoroughly nor so closely to improvisation, and particularly to the feeling of improvisation associated with the history of jazz.

Henry Kuntz, 1975