By Don Phipps
“Music for me is part of spirituality. Music for me is part of science.
Music for me is part of trying to understand myself.”
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton continues to amaze. After 55 years of music-making,
composing, and teaching, one might think he would call it a lifetime and
enjoy his emeritus status as the dean of avant-garde free music. But NO.
Braxton, now 79, continues to pursue excellence, and this 4-CD masterpiece
should be considered a capstone of sorts, built on several fundamental
schools (he calls them “structures”) of musical thought, each structure a
foundation for his next advancement. One might expect this from an alum of
the 1960’s ground-breaking Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians (AACM). Creativity flows through his being like water cascading
down a waterfall.
On Sax Qt (Lorraine) 2022, Braxton uses
electronics as a mood-setting backdrop in four live saxophone quartet
concerts. The performances, held in the cities of Vilnius, Antwerp, Rome,
and Bologna, feature Braxton (alto, soprano, and sopranino saxophones,
electronics), James Fei (sopranino and alto saxophones), and Chris Jonas
(alto and tenor saxophones). The fourth sax alternates. Ingrid Laubrock
(soprano and tenor saxophones) plays the Antwerp, Rome, and Bologna dates
while André Vida (baritone, tenor, soprano saxophones) performs on the
Vilnius date .
Sax Qt (Lorraine) 2022 might be considered a sequel to Braxton’s
10-disc box set 10 Comp (Lorriane) 2022 (Tri-Centric/New Braxton
House, 2024), which was recorded in various live settings in 2021. Those
10 discs are possibly the first recordings of Braxton’s new “Lorraine”
syntax.
Braxton has dabbled with electronics in the past – most notably with the
late avant-garde composer and electronic music pioneer Richard Teitelbaum.
The duo recorded Trio and Duet (Sackville, 1974) and collaborated on one
number (“Side 2, Composition 1”) from the classic album “New York, Fall
1974” (Arista 1975). They also recorded a complete 1994 concert “Duet:
Live at Merkin Hall” (Music And Arts Programs Of America, Inc. 1996).
Teitelbaum was an early practitioner of electronic music, and these
intriguing collaborations not only reveal Braxton’s interest in electronic
music, but his willingness to embrace new ideas and technologies on his
climb towards, for lack of a better expression, his destiny.
The music of Sax Qt (Lorraine) 2022 is not for the faint of heart
or mind. But it is not menacing or aggressive. Instead, it voyages forth
like the astronaut hurled into space to greet the unknown in Stanley
Kubrick’s Star Gate Sequence from his sci-fi movie “2001, A Space
Odyssey.” In fact, these quartets could easily be the soundtrack for
that part of the movie – with the listener as the astronaut propelled into
the beyond.
What is fascinating across the four compositions is the degree of formalism
applied. All the numbers have structure and yet the musicians are given
freedom at times to pursue alternative paths to the same destination.
Listening to them come together in single note phrases and split apart into
runs that hop from one player to the next with amazing dexterity and timing
is, in a word, spellbinding. Then you have Braxton’s compositions inverting
the structure of improvisation, with a saxophonist playing a hot and heavy
array of notes behind saxophones playing a single sustained note
(whereas traditionally, one would expect the hot saxophone to be in front
of the other instruments). This is the breakthrough of Braxton’s Lorraine
structure –to quote Jim Morrison, a “break on through to the other side.”
This new musical vocabulary – a language of the future – is buttressed by
the amazing talents of the saxophonists Braxton performs with – each of the
musicians play multiple saxophones (requiring adjusting to different and
multiple embouchures on the fly), and this variety of saxophones create a
riveting mix of texture and color. Behind their efforts, Braxton offers
transfixing electronic sounds – sounds that achieve an almost superposition
within the music. Like physics, where the superposition in quantum
mechanics, to quote physicist Paul Dirac, “is of an essentially different
nature from any occurring in the classical theory,” so likewise is
Braxton’s Lorraine – an essentially different nature of music and sound.
Momentum, sound wave properties, the sound wavefunction, the sound matrix
mechanics – all contribute to Braxton’s breakthrough structure. It is as if
Jackson Pollock was dripping sound on canvas – so radical a separation it
is from “classical (music) theory.”
Braxton has been building up to this is whole life. From the interview (see
the Lino Greco video link beneath this review), he describes his model of
“Tri-centric” music as a ground level structure that consists of geometric
shapes – a circle, a rectangle, and a triangle. These three shapes are
based on what he says is the ancient music model: “Every region of the
planet (European, Arabic, Chinese, Egyptian, Persian, etc.) has contributed
to bringing us to where we are in the modern era…. All of it comes together
and we learn from everything we experience.”
He expands on this: “I see my work as an attempt to build a model that is
similar to what we have in actual reality,” and says that before Lorraine,
his Tri-centric music was concerned with erecting ground floor-based
musical structures. However, the Lorraine music takes flight above the
Tri-centric structures “in the same way as clouds are separate from the
earth… (Lorraine) was conceived as breath, breath and wind… the act of
breathing….” As such, Braxton says the Lorraine music portrays an ethereal
world.
That word, ethereal, is a great description of the music found on
Sax Qt (Lorraine) 2022
. Unique might be another word. There is an unsettling, subtle nervousness
to the music – a quality that is as much cerebral as it is provocative and
challenging. Take the opening of Composition 436, with its eerie
electronics and saxophone lines that leapfrog about and roll around in
robust and driving multi-note expressions. The musical texture shifts in
odd ways – from single notes to multi notes, one solo shifting to all four
musicians playing simultaneous controlled improvisations. Or later,
in the fourth movement, where the saxophones sound like birds flocking
together – the patterns repetitive and yet unique. Then suddenly, there is
silence – arcs of sound abruptly interrupted.
And to demonstrate the flexibility of his Lorraine system, you can hear
bluesy slides in the second movement of Composition 437 and even a hint of
kazoo! Listen to how the abstractions flow as it concludes. The third
movement is even more wild. Braxton uses the electronics to erect strange
and evocative soundscapes that resemble surfaces that expand limitlessly
outward. On Composition 438’s second movement, listen at the end to the way
the musicians engage in conversation using their instruments. Disparate
parts that somehow make a whole. And in the third movement, he follows the
syncopated sax lines with Stravinsky-like flutters.
Then there is the opening of the fourth movement of Composition 439, where
all hell breaks loose – free(dom) form at its finest. The music flows into
piercing abstract note configurations, and then – suddenly – one lonely
saxophone blowing a long note that stretches like a rubber band. And on the
fifth and final movement, Braxton demonstrates what he calls genetic
identity, where a composer can take two or three measures from one piece
and put it in another piece. In the movement, he inserts lines that recall
music from his late 70s period with his excellent Performance quartet [which
featured Ray Anderson on trombone, John Lindberg on bass, and Thurman Barker
on percussion – Performance 9/1/79 – hat Hut NINETEEN (2R19)] and
his excellent Basel quintet [(which featured George Lewis on trombone,
Muhal Richard Abrams on piano, Mark Helias on double bass, and Charles
“Bobo” Shaw on drums – Quintet (Basel) 1977, hatOLOGY – hatOLOGY
676)].
After listening to these ethereal masterpieces, one wonders where Braxton
will go next. In the Greco video, he says he wants to develop music beneath
the Tri-centric model (e.g., sound tunnels or sound caves). And he wants to
continue his work on operas and sonic genomes. “I’m trying with my system
to make a replica of everything that exists,” he says. But, too, he
realizes time is limited. “Time is running out. Just because I am poor, it
does not mean that I don’t have great dreams! …I’m grateful to be alive. I
have work to do for the rest of my life! I want to do the best that I can
do…. I want to evolve myself. I want to evolve my work.”
Would that Braxton could have all the time in the world to realize his
visions, and that we had all the time in the world to follow them into the
deep canyons, towering mountains, and vast space of sound. Even so, we can
make the music of his imagination our imagination. Highly recommended.
Video of Braxton explaining the Lorraine system:
Video of excerpt of Bologna performance