The folks at Leo Records remind us that “new jazz”, “free-jazz” or “new music” is over 40 years old as they approach their 20th anniversary as a fine, cutting-edge label often featuring old and new talent. Here, on their newly launched “Golden Years of New Jazz” label, we celebrate the first of four new releases, with a live and “previously undocumented” recording by the Anthony Braxton Trio featuring trombonist Ray Anderson and guitarist James Emery. Recorded in Bologna, Italy in 1980, this recording is titled, Composition No.94 For Three Instrumentalists (1980). While the recording quality on this particular release is less than perfect we are dealing with a certain amount of “history” within the free or improvised-jazz realm. After all, we still listen to those old low-fi Charlie Parker records...........On this release, the music is first and foremost! Graham Lock contributes the insightful and comprehensive liners, complete with examples of Braxton’s often complex and unique music inscriptions and notations. Here we are treated to two sets, which clock in at 76 minutes.
On this recording, Braxton utilizes his customary arsenal of woodwind instruments while Ray Anderson performs on alto and tenor trombone, cornet and slide trumpet. Guitarist James Emery performs on acoustic and electric guitars while dabbling with some good old analog electronics which are put to good use and not overly exaggerated within this framework, especially considering the fascination with electronic gadgets during this timeframe in history. Emery provides color, while at times launching the themes or dialogue into linear concepts, which become expanded upon by the trio while remaining within the context of Braxton’s seemingly difficult to perform compositions. Much of the interplay is fascinating via multitonal instrumentation and imaginative improvisation. As usual, Braxton’s perspectives and deeply personal if not scholarly approach defies categorization as his bandmates also give it their all!
Anthony Braxton’s Composition No.94 For Three Instrumentalists (1980) is an important edition to a form of music which evolves yet beckons rediscovery. Leo Records has dutifully addressed that notion with the advent of this new record label! - Glenn Astarita
This is one of the four debut releases of Leo’s new offshoot, “Golden Years of New Jazz”, a somewhat ironically-titled label whose intention is to remind us that free jazz has been around for a rather long time, that it’s a well-established genre with famous figures, classic recordings and, yes, “golden years”.
Whether 1980 was a golden year for free jazz is a moot point, but what’s on this disc isn’t free jazz anyway. It’s a pair of performances of a semi-determinate score by Braxton which encourages musicians to improvise within a fairly flexible set of parameters. The pages of the score basically indicate densities and melodic materials of various sorts and leaves the performers to fill in the details.
Graham Lock’s hugely informative notes describe this music as “a magic carpet, a warp and woof of shape and symbol”. There is certainly a sense of individual musical entities being deployed here, moving in three layers, sometimes together, sometimes not. The score seems to emphasise this, with each part made up of discrete little shapes, lines and groups of notes which seem not to be closely connected together.
These highly detailed ensemble sections are heavily interspersed with duets and occasional solos. The overall effect is one found in many classical pieces of the 1980s; shifting veils of sound, sometimes dense, sometimes sparse, consisting of elements which seem to have their own inner logic. The decision to break up the trio in this way, whatever its structural reasoning — and with Braxton, we can be sure that was there somewhere — also makes this disc a lot more approachable than it might have been otherwise, being two unbroken performances of nearly forty minutes each.
The fact that the second performance plays the same pages of the score used in the first, but in reverse, shouldn’t lead one to believe that this palindromic structure can really be detected. For example, the first performance ends with an extended trio section followed by a duet of Anderson and Emery; the second begins with a short trio section followed by an extended trombone solo. These are in fact two quite different realisations of a score designed for improvisors, and the improvisatory element is obviously very strong indeed.
Braxton’s collaborators on this performance are, therefore, of great importance in ensuring its success. They certainly pull it off, with Anderson’s virtuosic trombone and Enery’s scribbly but always interesting guitar playing; both have a lot of tricks up their sleeves which they can bring to this ever-changing music, too. Emery’s electronics are, oddly, sometimes very sophisticated and sometimes of the ray-gun-noise variety, but both sorts work fine in context.
This is a compulsory purchase of Braxton fanatics, of course, but what makes it stand out is that, yet again, it appears the Professor has created something which is quite unlike anything else in the catalogue (at least as far as this writer knows). It owes a strong debt to classical approaches, but is resolutely improvised without ever getting very close to jazz. The dynamism of this music, its interest in real-time elaboration and development of structural ideas, is impressive to say the least. Those who still doubt the importance of Braxton as a composer are strongly encouraged to hear it. - Richard Cochrane
Tracks
1. First Set
2. Second Set
RAY ANDERSON alto trombone, tenor trombone, cornet, slide trumpet
JAMES EMERY guitar, electric guitar, electronics
ANTHONY BRAXTON soprano sax, sopranino sax, alto sax, tenor sax, contrabass clarinet
Music composed by Anthony Braxton
Recorded live at Palazzo dei Congressi, Bologna, 20.4.1980
Golden Years Of New Jazz – GY 3 (UK)