SFCMP Concludes Season with a Pair of Pairs

Last night in Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) concluded its 2022–2023 season with a program entitled Power Duos, Power Dynamics. Of the five works on the program, four involved two family pairings of composers. The remaining work on the program was the world premiere performance of “Unwound for Solo Cello” by Aiyana Braun, one of the winners of SFCMP’s 2022 Search for Scores Commissioning Prize. The soloist was Douglas Machiz, probably best known as the Friction Quartet cellist.

This made for a program that was richly endowed with abundant content. Several aspects of that content were explored in the pre-performance discussion that Artistic Director Eric Dudley engaged with Machiz and soprano Tonia D’Amelio, the only vocalist of the evening. Nevertheless, the full scope of content deserved at least a few paragraphs in the program book (at least one for each composition); and it was a pity that the attentive listener was deprived of even a brief verbal context for all that content that was presented.

Fortunately, Machiz did a relatively good job of compensating for the absence of printed text. He explained that he had to retune his instrument to perform Braun’s composition and prepared the attentive listener for some of the sonorities, as well as the technical challenges he had encountered. D’Amelio took a similar approach to the unconventional performance techniques required by “Anthem,” composed by George Lewis, half of the first “power duo” of composers.

In the performance itself, she was accompanied by six instruments, one of which involved electronic sampling. The music itself was a joyously raucous affair that suggested the theatrics cultivated by many (most?) rock groups without ever lapsing into any standard beats or progressions. Lewis was “paired” with his wife, Miya Masaoka, whose “The Dust and the Noise” opened the program. This involved a more modest quartet consisting of violin (Hrabba Atladottir) cello (Machiz), piano (Kate Campbell), and percussion (Loren Mach). This appeared to be a fully-scored composition, but the performance dazzled with an engaging rhetoric of jamming.

The second half of the program was devoted to the second “power duo,” the father-and-son coupling of Anthony and Tyondai Braxton. The former was represented by his “Composition No. 152,” completed in 1991. This was one of the more intimate of Anthony’s “Composition” creations, since it was scored for only flute (Tod Brody) and bass (Richard Worn). The music itself involved a series of engaging duo passages, but each of the instruments was also allotted an extended solo. Most likely the score allowed affordances for improvisation.

Tyondai’s “Fly by Wire,” composed in 2014 and being given its Bay Area premiere, was the largest ensemble work on the program. “Large” meant sixteen performers, along with the conductor. This is the sort of music that deserves to allow the ear to adjust through several listening encounters. On “first contact,” one could appreciate the energetic rhetoric; but, in the midst of all that energy, it was often difficult to follow which instruments were doing what. The only alternative was to sit back and make of all the sonorous diversity whatever mind was capable of organizing. Where my own listening was concerned, I came away hoping that, one way or another, I would have another encounter with the music in the not-too-distant future.

SFCMP to Conclude Season with “Family Pairs”

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) will conclude its 2022–2023 season with a program entitled Power Duos, Power Dynamics. The title refers to the fact that the program will present two family pairings of composers. The first of these will couple Anthony Braxton with his son Tyondai, and the second will couple George Lewis with his wife Miya Masaoka. The remaining composer will be Aiyana Braun, one of the winners of SFCMP’s 2022 Search for Scores Commissioning Prize.

The title of Braun’s composition is “Unwound,” scored for solo cello. It will be performed during the first half of the program between the works composed by wife and husband. The program will begin with Masaoka’s “The Dust and the Noise;” and the first half of the program will conclude with Lewis’ “Anthem.” The second half will begin with Anthony Braxton’s “Composition No. 152,” scored for flute and bass. It will be coupled with Tyondai’s “Fly by Wire,” which will conclude the program.

This program will be presented in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Thursday, May 11. Doors will open early for the How Music is Made pre-concert talk, which will begin at 7 p.m. General admission will be $35 with a $15 rate for students. Tickets may be purchased through a City Box Office Web page.

Other Minds to Release Braxton-Fei Recording

One week from today Other Minds will release its latest new album. Duet (Other Minds) 2021 is a recording of a duo performance by saxophonists Anthony Braxton and James Fei. This was the final offering in the Other Minds Festival 25 programs, which took place in October of 2021. As of this writing, it appears that there is only one Web site processing preorders; and that is Soundohm.

This is a European site, meaning that the price is given in Euros. Soundohm itself is a membership organization, meaning that members get the benefit of not only discounted prices but also free shipping worldwide. It is also worth noting that the Web page for this new Other Minds release includes three lists of albums likely to appeal to those visiting the site. One of those lists offers an impressive account of past Other Minds releases, and another gives similar treatment to past recordings by both Braxton and Fei.

My interest in Braxton reaches back far earlier than my commitment to writing about the creation and performance of music. Most of my work with computers was concerned with the manipulation of symbols and symbolic structures, rather than either numbers or databases. It was therefore inevitable that Braxton would seize my attention by using diagrams or symbols of numbers and letters as titles for his compositions. The Duet album presents a performance of Braxton’s “Composition 429;” and the album cover shows that he is still identifying his works with diagrams:

courtesy of Other Minds

Braxton himself refers to his scores as products of different “writing methods.” “Composition 429” was the product of a new such writing method, which Braxton called “Lorraine.” This is a name he has also assigned to some of his combos. The album includes an essay by Fei, who describes the method as using a combination of traditional notation and color-coded symbols (of Braxton’s own design) to indicate “specific sound types or performance techniques.” The performance itself emerges first from the efforts of the performers to interpret the symbols and then by “an extrapolative section where players improvise with the material following an additional layer of more abstract notation.”

During the Festival performance, Braxton and Fei were accompanied by “Diamond Curtain Wall Music,” a system of electronic devices that continuously derived pitch information from the sounds of the two saxophones. The “Wall Music” then applied the result of this ongoing audio analysis to add a multitude of sonic layers to the mix, creating an ever-changing kaleidoscope of sound. The entire performance lasted for about 40 minutes.

This makes for a generous amount of content. Fortunately, the mastering of all the content acquired during the performance itself has been mixed in such a way that the attentive listener will consistently be able to distinguish the two saxophone lines, even if (s)he/they cannot associate which line with which performer! The mixing then balances the “Wall Music” to establish the environment which provides not only a setting for the instrumentalists but also cues for their respective performances. Thus, while there may be no substitute for having been present at the performance itself, recording technology has provided an account that is just as likely to seize and maintain listener attention.

Julia Den Boer’s Impressionist Abstractions

Yesterday evening the fifth annual season of the San Francisco International Piano Festival continued with the second of two concerts presented as part of the Piano Break series under the auspices of the Ross McKee Foundation. The pianist was French-American Julia Den Boer, who specializes in challenging modernist compositions, a far cry from the first Piano Break recital, which was devoted entirely to Charles Tomlinson Griffes. Considering Den Boer’s adventurism, it was a bit ironic that all of her selections were taken from the twentieth century. Nevertheless, each of them was decidedly adventurous in its own way.

Indeed, her most enigmatic offering is now over a century old. Leoš Janáček’s In the Mists is a cycle of four “misty” compositions that was composed in 1912. That “misty” trait is reflected by key signatures with five or six flats; but the enigmatic qualities are further enhanced by the almost fragmented approach that the composer took to phrasing. The Wikipedia page for this composition notes that Janáček wrote this music “while his operas were still being rejected by the Prague opera houses.” Those familiar with his operas will probably recognize many of their rhetorical devices in this piano cycle, possibly even reflecting on how they might be orchestrated. This left me wondering if those operatic influences may have guided Den Boer through her interpretation of the enigmas in this piece.

The early twentieth century was also represented by “Oiseaux tristes” (sad birds), the second of the five movements in Maurice Ravel’s Miroirs (mirrors) suite. This is also the shortest movement, and Den Boer’s reading seemed to endow it with the quality of a passing moment. The referential qualities of Ravel’s title situated the piece following a much later compositions, Rebecca Saunders’ “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” composed in 1994.

The other selection from the second half of the twentieth century was Anthony Braxton’s “Composition No. 5,” completed in 1969. This is a collection of three pieces, published along with a composer’s note and instructions. The instructions are meant to guide the performer through the more enigmatic aspects of Braxton’s approaches to notation:

I am more familiar with Braxton’s work in different genres of jazz. This composition clearly does not fit into any of those genres. Indeed, the “composer’s note” refers to the last of the three pieces as “a sound arrangement that I devised.” This does not give the performer very much guidance, leaving me wondering whether Den Boer interprets the ambiguity of the score pages the same way with every performance or allows herself to take a freer approach to “sound arrangement” from one occasion to the next.

Through my familiarity with Braxton’s recordings, I found I could establish a receptive frame of mind for Den Boer’s performance. Sadly, I could not say the same for the Saunders composition. One could appreciate her efforts to explore different approaches to piano sonorities, but there was an opacity in Den Boer’s interpretation that almost suggested that the mirror Saunders had in mind did not admit of clear reflection. To be fair, this was my first encounter with anything that Saunders had composed; and I suspect that adjusting to her mind-set is going to take some time.

Hat Hut Records Reissues Braxton at Dortmund

At the beginning of this month, Hat Hut Records released the third edition (remastered) of a historical performance by the Anthony Braxton Quartet playing at the Dortmund Jazz Festival in Germany on October 31, 1976. In spite of this relatively early date in the Braxton chronology, this live concert recording was not released for the first time until 1991, when Hat Hut released it on its hatART label. The label for the reissue is hatOLOGY, presumably created for significant archival content.

In this case the significance has much to do with the fact that the quartet Braxton was leading lasted for barely six months. As usual, Braxton himself was playing reed instruments of a wide variety of sizes. These included saxophones (sopranino, alto, and contrabass) and clarinets (E-flat and contrabass). Much of the front-line work involves exchanges with George Lewis on trombone. Rhythm is provided by Dave Holland on bass and Barry Altschul on percussion. The only other recordings of this quartet I have been able to track down to date come from the Arista album The Montreux/Berlin Concerts and consist of three pieces recorded at the Berliner Philharmonie on November 4, 1976.

I first became aware of Braxton’s work when RCA/BMG reissued Creative Orchestra Music 1976, recorded as studio sessions in New York on February of 1976. The other three members of the quartet were part of this project. Presumably, they began preparing for their visit to Germany after those sessions had concluded.

I confess that I was drawn to this album because the titles of all the tracks were visual. Here is an example:

Anthony Braxton’s “Composition No. 65” (from Wikipedia, fair use)

More often than not, Braxton identifies his work with a letter following a number. On the Arista releases, they are identified as “Opus,” rather than “Composition.” On the RCA/BMG reissue, each one is called simply “Piece” and given the same numbers as the track numbers. Any attempt to coordinate image to performance is left as an exercise for the listener.

Notation aside, the performances led by Braxton and Lewis involve a wide diversity of approaches to free-blowing expressiveness. The energy of these exchanges is far more significant than any relation to traditional forms (or, for that matter, rhetoric). Mind you, “Composition 6 C,” played at Dortmund, ventures into a rather eccentric march, which suggests that one should be ready for a sense of humor in the other selections. (I think I am prepared to make a good case for “Composition 40 (O)” in that regard.)

Ultimately, the best way to get used to listening to Braxton compositions is to get used to listening to them. I think it would be fair to say that there is a ludic quality to every piece that Braxton prepares for performance. The listener encountering the results for the first time has to be willing to play the game, even if the rules of that game have not been agreed upon in advance. (Remember the episode about learning to play chess in Gabriel Garcia Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude.) In that context I can provide neither guidance nor recommendations. All I can say is that, whenever I listen to Braxton, I always feel that I am having a good time!

Listening to Anthony Braxton

When Mosaic Records first announced their release of The Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton, my first reaction was my usual concern about space being at a premium in my condominium (the same reaction I had a year earlier when my wife received the Brilliant Classics Bach Edition as a gift). I figured that the few Braxton CDs I had accumulated would be sufficient. I certainly enjoyed those recordings, as I enjoyed the ways in which Braxton pushed the envelope of classification.

Organizing my personal collection has never been an easy matter. It took me a while to converge on a systematic approach that I could actually use when I was trying to find anything specific. I ultimately resorted to a technique I learned about 25 years ago from the librarian at KUSC. She hit on the idea of organizing everything according to the old (and now defunct) Schwann record catalog, saving back issues of the catalog to keep track of recordings that had gone out of print. (She delighted in being able to call her method "Schwann's Way.") I have pretty much picked up this method in spirit. Since Schwann is no longer with us, I have saved only one old issue each of Schwann Opus (for classical music) and Schwann Spectrum (for everything else), not for assistance in finding specific items but just as reminders of the basic categories.

Unless I am mistaken, Braxton is one of two composers whom "Schwann's Way" assigns to different categories, some recordings classified as classical and others as jazz. (The other composer is John Zorn.) Personally, I think the Schwann classifications had more to do with the publisher than with the content itself; but I have decided to honor their guidelines as best as I can.

What interests me more than his defiance of conventional categories is that Braxton is almost exactly a year and a month older than I am. Taking into account my having skipped a grade in elementary school, there are many ways in which we have probably shared listening experiences during our formative years. True, while I went straight from high school to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I then remained for my doctoral studies, Braxton entered the army after high school; and, as Mike Heffley documents in the Mosaic notes, it was during his service in Korea that "he discovered the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Albert Ayler's Bells, Coltrane's Ascension, then returned to Chicago." Barry Kernfeld's biographical entry for Grove Music Online has him spending two years at Roosevelt University "reading" philosophy and composition, meaning that he probably did not earn a degree; but, more importantly, he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and formed a trio with Leroy Jenkins and (now Wadada) Leo Smith, which recorded in New York as the Creative Construction Company and travelled to Paris in 1969. According to Heffley, the trio's nickname was "the slide rule boys." After returning from Europe, he spent "some quality time around the post–John Cage Wesleyan University" (Kernfeld's words), which probably put him in touch with Alvin Lucier, Richard Teitelbaum, and Frederick Rzewski. This would have been shortly before Lucier received his faculty appointment at Brandeis University, which is when I first became aware of his work and his colleagues in the Sonic Arts Group. Braxton was thus looking for a path that would lead to innovation through innovative thinking about structure, which is basically the same sort of path I had been trying to explore in my own approach to computer music in my doctoral research. My guess is that it is only through bad luck that I missed any opportunities to hear him perform around the same time that I was encountering other composers, such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich; but, as I said, what strikes me the most is the extent of overlap in our listening contexts.

The breadth of Braxton's listening context is more evident in the Mosaic collection than it can be in any of the individual recordings I had previously acquired. Only through a project like this one would Rzewski end up in my jazz collection by virtue of a performance of Braxton's "Opus 95 For Two Pianos" along with Ursula Oppens. There is a sense of Rzewski's presence in Braxton's listening context, but this composition is still very much a product of Braxton's own voice. Similarly, the "Opus 82," conceived for four 39-piece orchestras, reflects the influences of Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis but also points the way to Braxton's later "Composition No. 165" for eighteen instruments, recording almost fifteen years later by New Albion (and classified as "classical" by Schwann). The period covered by the Mosaic collection (1974–1980) also includes innovative (but decidedly jazzy) approaches to Scott Joplin, Lionel Hampton, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy. This is a collection that takes the ear in far more diverse directions than just about any other anthology in either the jazz or the classical category. Nevertheless, as the Discography in Braxton's Wikipedia entry indicates, the 8 CDs in the Mosaic collection are actually a rather modest sample of his work; and, as far as I can determine, he is still taking that work down new paths!

My Grove Press copy of Henry Miller's Topic of Cancer includes an essay about Miller by Karl Shapiro entitled, "The Greatest Living Author." I still remember this sentence about Miller's work from that essay:

Let's assemble a bible from his work, I said, and put one in every hotel room in America, after removing the Gideon Bibles and placing them in the laundry chutes.

In a similar vein I would like to envisage a world in which one may start one's day with Braxton's music in the company of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and John Coltrane. Sadly, even with my XM satellite service, I have yet to hear anything by Braxton through a broadcast medium. I suppose that means that I shall just have to fashion this world for myself, without the prospect of sharing it with others!