| Discography of Joe Fonda | 1997 |
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Lineup
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Recorded live at Yoshi's on August 20, 1997.
Released November 2003 by Leo Records [LR 382/383]
q.v. Vol. 1, Vol. 3, and Vol. 4
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Liner Notes [→ CD Reviews] |
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A LISTENING DIARY: NINETET (YOSHI'S) 1997, VOL. 2 Tuesday, 20th May 2003: Today I have been listening to "Ninetet (Yoshi's) 1997, Vol. 1" (Leo Records, CD LR 343/344). It is just a little over a year since I first heard those particular zigzag slices of West Coast wisdom. They come cut out from the Ghost Trance Music (GTM) of Anthony Braxton's Ninetet performing live over six nights at Yoshi's Club, California in August 1997. To get an earful is like listening to energy surfacing above boiling water. Why did I go back to Volume 1? Last night Leo Feigin telephoned. Our conversation covered a variety of topics including the old standard, "Out of Nowhere". A young Miles Davis smoking the tune; improvising out, through, and beyond the melody way back in 1947 when he was still playing butler to Bird. "Nowhere" was also an early chord change pattern used by Ornette Coleman to blueprint his own tune "Jayne", dedicated to his then wife, Jayne Cortez. Strange but true. Yesterday, as if from out of nowhere, Mr Feigin tells me that he intends to put out Anthony Braxton's "Yoshi's, Vol. 2". "Steve, "he says, "Do you think this is a good idea?" When Leo Records released the first "Yoshi's" set last year, it self generated the inevitable need to bring out Volume 2. The on-going length of the continuous GTM line means that once you start to play it there are only two options, either listen to it or remove yourself immediately from its implications. By getting caught up in the spiral of the parallel dimensions of this music there is a predisposition to go all the way. We talk about it. Leo Feigin promises to post me a draft-disk by the first week of next month. So, here I am, catching up again on Volume 1 while waiting for Volume 2. Wednesday, 4th June 2003: I arrive back at home and Volume 2 has been delivered neatly packed straight off the master tape. For me it has been a busy day. I'm tired and hungry; I want to lay down in the dark. Before I do I listen straight through Disc 1 (Composition 209) with the sound turned way, way up. The Ninetet are riding out through the night and Yoshi's Club has taken up residency in my living room.
Thursday, 5th June 2003: Raining. During the day I play Disc 2 (Composition 210) twice. The first time loud, the second time louder. It feels as if there is an acute need to hear everything all at the same time. Friday, 6th June 2003: "What on earth is that?!" Today I am conducting a workshop on Social Care Policy. I decide to play "Composition 210" as a prelude to starting the session. Something for the participants to listen to before we get going. "Are you serious? I didn't come to hear this. Do you call that harmony?" "Well, it is certainly a harmony," I reply. Looking around the room, some people are smiling, another guy has that wrinkly look around the bridge of his nose, and yes, some people seem to be concentrating, listening hard. Anthony Braxton always was and has to be a hard listen, especially when you are not expecting to hear him. Monday, 9th June 2003: In 1997 Anthony Braxton took a nine piece ensemble to Yoshi's Club in Oakland, California. They stayed for six nights, played two sets per night. The gigs went out under the banner of the Ghost Trance Festival. Ostensibly Professor Braxton, from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, was on the West Coast presenting twelve new compositions neatly numbered 207 to 218. Each time the ensemble stepped up onto the bandstand, they brought a new composition out into the open. The paradox in Anthony Braxton's music is that while the description, 'composition' is correct, it also gradually becomes beside the point. To try to understand and interpret the Braxtonia Ghost Trance Music series in terms of formal composition is to start off down a twisting, turning cul-de-sac which will confusingly lead to a dead end. Such a journey would be a pity, because the whole raison d'être of this music is that there is no end. Sure, this is six nights at Yoshi's, but it could equally be six months, six years, a lifetime, six thousand lifetimes. Yoshi's could be eternity. Book this band forever! During the Oakland sojourn each set was absolutely compositionally new, because the component parts were never, could never be, played the same way twice. The irony in the eight note repetition pattern of GTM is that seemingly, from out of nowhere, it allows for the non specific introduction of a huge emporium of thematic material to enter the Trance. For decades, such collaging techniques have been present in most of Anthony Braxton's performances. That is why his titles often include brackets detailing additional material to the core text (for example "Composition N. 169 + (186+206+214)" - Leo Records, CD LR 320/321). The fact that the Yoshi's set does not come with a bracket is because the content would be a lifetime's history of innovation long. In a way becomes the way. What is what; the who-plays-which-lick trip is now redundant; recognition of Cole Porter, the Quartet 40 series or Composition 96, all becomes superfluous mind games. Enter the Trance. The important thing is to hear 209 and 210 as a whole. Sure, there is new thematic material present but Anthony Braxton is both a composer and improviser, and to forget the latter is to lose at least half of the Trance. Like a game of chess. (Remember The Professor once hustled the game to earn some money.) Wednesday, 11th June 2003: I have been listening to these two sets for a week. Driving with them, making quiet moments give up their silence, soundtracking these sets to whatever I am doing. On 209 Kevin Norton for the most part, closes down on drums in favour of marimba, vibraphone and percussion; gliding beaten cymbals into bells. 210 is back to sticks and kit. It seems to me that there is something about this 210 performance that marks it very different to 207 and 208 on Volume 1, and even 209. Listen to the nine-man-morris leap; this is more than drums dividing up the air space. The second set of the evening cracks open as if all frontiers have been dispersed; the eight note rundown is a getaway beyond intention. Nowhere has become somewhere specific. That first flute solo is The Professor in flight, the air across the hole almost changes colour. Later Kevin O'Neil's guitar becomes the catalyst for the six horns to rear up in a huge arc of call and response. Underneath the drums are spreading out the beat as if time has melted in the heat. Now the Ninetet are not an ensemble, they are a bedded-in regular band. The structure of the Ninetet is to switch the pitch into trios. It is relatively easy to hear this process going on, but on 210, nine signs the sound - here is a collectivism rising to the grand occasion. Friday, 13th June 2003: Friday the 13th, unlucky for some. Thelonious Monk and Keith Tippett have both written tunes celebrating the fact. Tonight sounds like a different day to Wednesday; 209 is truly a new frontier. Around the half way mark the two Kevin's begin sonic waving electric guitar and vibes into an elongated sound stream that rings almost like fusion. Now there's a thought, fusion has become a badly burnt word. I switch back to 210. Kevin Norton's tight compressed roll reverberates like an activated five finger exercise. Art Blakey without the beat. The name check is no accident, Mr Norton can scene shift the horns from behind a drum kit with that same kind of physical presence inherent in Buhaina's percussion probe. Mr Norton is a mover and shaker whose role and roll shape the fate of the music. If his stir pot of gymnastics with the Ninetet wet your appetite to hear more of his playing in a different context, I recommend listening to the recordings that Anthony Braxton made in May 2000 detailing the music of the pianist, Andrew Hill. These are on the CIMP label. Apart from The Professor, Kevin Norton and Mr O'Neil are the only musicians from the Ninetet involved. In this very different context the drummer can be heard re-scheduling rhythm in a way that is closer to orthodoxy yet, still maintains his trademark angular, off-centre approach to time and motion. In recent years the Norton name has become an important element in Anthony Braxton's music. On the couple of occasions when other percussionists have been used the difference is much greater than merely using alternative personnel. This music does not come from nowhere, always it is out of somewhere, and it is crucial to recognise which 'where' is 'there'. Mr Norton is doing live dates in Canada this summer with Paul Dunmall (saxophones, bagpipes) and Paul Rogers (five string bass), both of whom play in the English improvising ensemble, Mujician. Shame I cannot be there. Sunday, 15th June 2003: There is a Diamond Clef moment in the final third of 209 where the whole Ninetet are circling invisible notation having taken themselves out of sight of any written thematic material. (Spot it after Mr Norton's rattle interlude.) The bass reeds are in no mood for orthodoxy and leave the top register to contemplate a counterpoint with eight beats. Landing gently is not an option, and not required. This is a transformation of the trance, where air, breath, space, technique, time, ideas and personal histories all coagulate, and then seem to fall away. Out of this collapse of the cradle of dissonance comes an adjusted re-entry of 209's pulse track; the Braxton alto sax and James Fei's bass clarinet vying for the main-frame place in the mix. The way this 'play' is handled is a spontaneous attempt at the impossible; eventually the moment breaks apart leaving failure to feel like a renewable energy resource. At the very end of the 209 performance Anthony Braxton serenades his own instrumental song, the alto horn explicit and elegiac in its eloquence. Monday, 16th June 2003: I am fascinated by failure. The concept that the pursuit of any kind of perfection eventually results in the attempt crumbling, not necessarily into chaos, but certainly into something less than that which was reached for. Failure becomes a beautiful implosion in the creative act of stretching out to touch beyond the present. Failure is to be cherished, embraced; the inevitability of its presence should be recognised as personal rich pickings. This is not even simply about improvisation, rather a specific act of courage. By definition, it is not possible to complete a continuum, the consequence is that those who set out down that path will fail to find its end. Personal endings will probably be many and varied but, in the scheme of things, never final. Such journey's are the challenge of discovery and why in great art there is always going to be a sacrificial element. Once a shooting star begins soaring across the night sky, casting fire and brimstone into the dark desert of the Earth's atmosphere, it cannot help but burn out. Heat will change into ice. Failure is the whole world. In the end, the ying and the yang of failure and success will finally complete us all.
Tuesday, 17th June 2003: A sunny warm, day. The window of my car is open, I pull up at traffic lights. A guy on a motorbike draws up alongside me. He says, "Who are you listening to?", I tell him, "Anthony Braxton". "Never heard of him, where does he live, Mars?" The idea amuses me. Perhaps The Professor could swap Middletown for the Red Planet. "No," I reply, "Not enough air, he couldn't blow saxophone." I think the guy on the bike must be grinning under his helmet, "Oh, is that what he's doing!" We get the green light, we go our separate ways. It is ear re-tuning time. Not really surprising because people these days rarely get to be exposed to a contrabass clarinet solo played against pointalistic soprano and alto reeds. I built my listening on Anthony Braxton's contrabass sax designing real time new music in duets with the deep-end of George Lewis' trombone. Today such genuine dark divide and dance strategies are not common place. Murdock, Marsalis, MTV, and media-ocrity rule, okay. The perceived difficulty with 209 and 210 is to do with the fact that the language has been marginalised, not spoken, not heard, not understood. The problem is not with the language itself but the limited exposure people have to it. The range of music peddled by the corporate airwaves is a very short tatty list; safe bets under bright lights. The iconic rebellion of rock n' roll is now a parody of its own past; the contemporary new music scene, so often reduced to a squeak with a bleeper; worse of all, "jazz" has become throttled by a bow tie tied way too tight. How do you know the Himalayas are beautiful if you never move beyond your own borders? Wednesday, 18th June 2003: One of Anthony Braxton's more recent Ghost Trance Music projects has involved him sharing horns with yet another multi-reeds specialist, Richard A. McGhee III, using poly-rhythm drumming as a soundboard. The result is a music significantly different to the Yoshi's series. The point of GTM is that it is a process, yet it is not processing. The Trance takes deliberation out of the equation and allows Anthony Braxton to explore all possible routes. 209 and 210 are the definitive article; not because they are perfected pieces of composition, instead they represent specific moments in time given gravitas by nine musicians acting together to sift through the fixtures of music, then re-positioning the component parts so they can no longer be fixed. In my view these Yoshi's gigs are unique. An opportunity to hear one of the great inventors in a context which allows him to flourish during an extended residency. Guys like Joe Fonda, James Fei, Brandon Evans and Jackson Moore are not just pick-up players out for the crack. Here are musicians who have given a commitment to The Professor. I am tempted to say he owes them, but in truth they owe him more. That is how it is when it gets to this level. Thursday, 19th June 2003: No one writes about Miles Davis and Anthony Braxton together. I will. That "Out of Nowhere" business has been bothering me. This year Leo Records will be releasing, Anthony Braxton, "Solo (Milano) 1979, Vol.1" (Leo/Golden Years GY 20). It features a stripped down version of "Nowhere"; but that is a small part of another story. This Miles file is a deep pile of music. The Professor was at the Knitting Factory, New York in 1994, challenging his own keyboard skills to give up the ghost in his Piano/Quartet. Back then, the leader had Marty Erhlich's alto romping through the original "Milestones", the one by John Lewis that Mr Davis had recorded in 1947, the same year as "Out of Nowhere". The way the Press reported it, this was some Braxton fit of fantasy, out of character, a quirky move. Professor Braxton had played it straight too. Critics do not want to make the association - Miles Davis, the hip Prince of Darkness, alongside the bespeckled avant garde, free form, number crunching composer who came a long way from Chicago. It is true these two musicians did not play together, but history should still recognise a connection. When Dave Holland and Chick Corea left Miles Davis in the early 1970's they promptly formed Circle with Anthony Braxton (the group's name taken from the title of a Miles Davis tune) and continued to play "Nefertiti" and "No Greater Love" on their one and only European tour, material straight out of the Davis canon. A weird time, Chick Corea could not cope with Mr Braxton any more than he could cope with Miles Davis, or himself for that matter. For Mr Corea one of the problems was this: the Birth of the Cool trumpeter and the Chicago multi-instrumentalist were both contemplating the same long spectrum. The German avant garde composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen resides at one end and the implications of African-American studies at the other. How Miles Davis and Anthony Braxton managed to deal with that big equation manifested itself in very different ways. Yet even in the great divorce between those who plugged in to the funk and those who remained acoustic but went "out", it is possible to hear echoes. The Professor has also periodically returned to the early Miles Davis bandbook, tunes like "Airegin" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come". In 1981 Anthony Braxton could be heard at the Woodstock Jazz Festival jamming on "All Blues" with Pat Metheny and Jack DeJohnette. The evidence piles up. Wayne Shorter, the mainstay of mid-period Miles Davis, has written a whole batch of tunes which at different times Anthony Braxton has used as either complete pieces, or quoted from. Boxing up the Braxton radical experimental agenda without hearing it within the context of the shifting sample of other musics is to deny the ears their due. Saturday, 21st June 2003: Today I decide to listen again to the 1970 recording of the Miles Davis Band, "Live at The Fillmore West/Black Beauty". Chick Corea and Mr Holland were both present, but it is the then nineteen year old Steve Grossman, exclusively blowing soprano saxophone in-between the crowded cracks, who gets my attention. All of a sudden it strikes me that there is probably a strong Braxton influence. The same pure, thick density, a kind of dry danger which breathes right though the Braxton straight horn. It is not such a strange idea, Mr Grossman was hanging out with Dave Holland and Mr Corea at the time. Anthony Braxton's soprano sax was there to be heard. I do not think it is a coincidence and I wonder why it has taken me thirty years to hear it. Perhaps because Mr Grossman's current tenor sax does not sound anything like The Professor. So, I ask a red wine-late night question. Does not that famous Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" title, "Miles Runs The Voodoo Down", contain a meaning not very far away from, "Ghost Trance Music"? Listen closely to "Ninetet (Yoshi's) 1997, Vol. 2", you might hear answers. Here's to voodoo, ghost trance your ears. Steve Day (1) extract from "The Secret Sound of Shawm" - Steve Day (2) extract from letter by dramatist Henrik Ibsen to Frederik Hegel (23rd November 1881) |
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April 12, 2004 by Ken Waxman for Jazzword Ever get one of those melodies inside your head that you keep hearing over and over again and that you can't get out of your memory, no matter how hard you try? Well, Anthony Braxton seems to be trying to create a similar situation with his Ghost Trance Music (GTM). A preoccupation of the composer/reedman since at least the mid-1990s, GTM compositions are usually played by larger bands and include a repetitive — and nearly identical theme — leavened by improvised solos. Like the unique soundworlds created by other distinctive improvisers such as AMM or The Necks, to truly appreciate GTM you have to accept Braxton's compositions on their own terms. Each time you have to simultaneously focus on the leitmotif that controls the piece's shape as well as listen to the instrumental work around it. That's certainly true with these two long — around 58 minutes each — pieces recorded on a California foray by Wesleyan professor Braxton and his cohorts, all of whom except reedist J.D. Parran, percussionist Kevin Norton and bassist Joe Fonda, were at one point Braxton students. Because of this great influence — and the band room full of saxes and clarinets the reedmen play — it's difficult to pinpoint individual solos. One is tempted to ascribe most of the solo work to either Braxton, who variously plays alto, F alto, soprano, and C-melody saxophones and flute plus Bb, bass and contrabass clarinets; or to Parran, another Free Jazz veteran who plays soprano and bass saxophones and flute. On "Composition No. 209", for instance, several themes, variations and solos seem to appear at the same time as the music propels the ensemble from percussion-reed textures that resemble the sound of busy manual typewriters to a merry go round of high, wiggling vibrations. Peeping through this dense curtain of notes are false register growls, clarinet glissandos, tongue slaps and bass saxophone snorts. With the massed horn section polyphonically repeating the initial theme every few minutes or so, other solos are sometimes clocked within the reed fanfare. Someone does, however, produce foghorn-like contrabass clarinet noises, a pastoral flute passage and some shrill New Thing-like alto sax overblowing. Meanwhile Norton marshals his hocketing vibe impulses into a veil of shimmering tones, guitarist Kevin O'Neil reverberates flat-picked lines and Fonda's well modulated bass line appears and then vanishes again. Thanks to the scraped guiro-like tones, descending guitar licks and bass continuum, the piece has enough of a foot-tapping beat to not descend into mesmerizing trance music. But with the horns usually operating in slurred unison, no one, except for Braxton as a composer really makes a standout impression. Slightly longer, "Composition No. 210" is more of the same, though the ululating tones do sway at a slighter faster tempo. Early on one of the saxists — Braxton? — comes out with a snaky, double-tongued reed abrasion. Considering the appreciative applause that greets this departure from the other strained, whistling horn timbres, the audience at this 1997 club gig may have yearned for more committed soling as well. Later on, however, the few other demonstrations of extended reed techniques including nasal alto honks, an oomph pah pah ostinato from the bass saxophone and a weedy tone that could come from an oboe don't call forth the same reception. That could mean that the crowd was finally committed to the ins-and-outs of the composition or had inured itself against further outbursts. Here again, among the accordion tone suggestions that come from the combined horns and the odd, curt reed peeps and beeps, Norton is a stand out. Besides outlining a standard repertoire of ruffs, rolls and flams from his kit, he produces shattering electronic-like cymbal resonation and puts pressure on the hard wood of his marimba's keys to give a steadying rhythmic direction to the concluding section of the performance. O'Neil too acquits himself with stuttering flailing on the portion of his strings below the bridge. In conclusion, before exiting with whole note chirping that's almost mainstream mellow, an alto saxophonist — Braxton again? — honks out more New Thing-like glossolalia after a whining clarinet has gathered all the horns into tone-passing circles like a sheep dog rounding up his flock. Braxton followers will no doubt welcome this newly revealed chapter in his oeuvre, while neophytes may look for a smoother entry point to his massive catalogue. It's a credit to his vision that both pieces are never less than improvisationally exciting. Still, with its overriding tonal similarity, a little GTM goes a long way, and no one except the Braxtonphile should attempt to listen to both CDs here in one sitting. Reprinted with kind permission of the author. Copyright © 2006 Jazzword and Ken Waxman. All reviews written by Ken Waxman:
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Stefano Merighi for All About Jazz Italia La produzione discografica di Anthony Braxton non cessa di scorrere, come un impetuoso torrente cui nessun ostacolo si frappone. I due CD di questa edizione Leo, che documentano un vecchio concerto di Oakland (? del '97, ma pubblicato solo nel 2003) sono il seguito di un precedente doppio volume [per leggerne la recensione clicca qui] e contengono una lunga traccia per ciascun dischetto. Dunque un'ora circa per esecuzione, buona a sfiancare anche il braxtoniano pi? stretto. La musica del compositore chicagoano non ? pi? avvincente come quella di un tempo (opinione strettamente personale), pur offrendo un'impressionante quantit? di materiale su cui riflettere e perseguendo un nobile obiettivo di totalit?, estranea a qualsiasi estetica del frammento. Ciascuna composizione pu? a piacimento combinarsi con un'altra e gli esecutori possono essere stimolati a saltare qua e l? seguendo schemi che possono essere preventivati o improvvisati al momento. Gli spazi interpretativi sono importanti tanto quanto quelli fedeli alla scrittura e si affermano in un'inesausta pratica dialogica o corale, mirante ad una "trance" quasi a far scomparire il "soggetto" musicista.
Braxton chiama "rituale e cerimoniale" la sua musica, almeno quella ideata dagli anni '80 ad oggi. La "Composition N. 209" si fonda su una classica linea di ossessione ritmica, cos? usuale in Braxton, che puntualmente ritorna a chiudere le varie sequenze di approfondimento. La "N. 210" introduce invece una tensione pi? "jazzistica", con basso e batteria molto presenti e mobili. Il tema ? per? un marziale "staccato", da collegare ad altri episodi braxtoniani, presenti ad esempio nel materiale della Creative Music Orchestra degli anni 70. Valutazione: * * * ½ Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2006 All About Jazz Italia and Stefano Merighi. All reviews written by Stefano Merighi:
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April 7, 2004 by Christian Carey for Splendid Like Braxton's recent Leo release Two Compositions (Trio) 1998, this double CD presents a pair of hour-long Braxton pieces, this time N. 209 and N. 210 for Ninetet. This is vigorous and challenging music, performed by a hand-picked collection of excellent avant-jazz performers. The sax section includes Braxton, Brandon Evans, Jason Fei, Jackson Moore, Andre Vida and J.D. Parran, all of whom play multiple instruments during the course of the recordings. The rhythm section is comprised of electric guitarist Kevin O'Neill, bassist Joe Fonda and percussionist Kevin Norton. Another similarity that the Ninetet pieces share with the 1998 Trio compositions is the focus on ostinato figures. Aggressively motoric quarter note riffs announce the beginning of N. 209 and punctuate sectional divisions within its formal design. While you can always feel the chugging quarter-note pulse bubbling under the surface, even in places where it is less vigorously articulated, it never becomes a rhythmic straight jacket. Rather, Braxton and company find ingenious ways to work syncopations against the pulse in increasingly flexible permutations as the piece progresses. Particularly striking is the use of swirling flute arpeggios about eighteen minutes in; for a moment you are transported out of an avant jazz context into an Impressionist style of concert music. This environment is ably abetted by Kevin Norton's shimmering vibraphone textures. As entrancing as it is, this floating suspension of pulse is soon abandoned as the inexorable ostinato returns. Composition N. 210 is no less impressive. It, too, starts off with the entire ensemble playing those angry quarter notes in rhythmic unison. The dissonant texture is dominated by a particularly feisty flute. Once again, the ostinato dissolves and is replaced by a greater emphasis on swing; it is destined to reappear at structurally significant moments as an integral part of the structure. Over the course of N. 210's hour-long journey, each member of the ensemble is given a chance to solo and many fractals of the larger group break off into discursive musical dialogues. While Braxton's compositional voice looms large in the proceedings, he wisely leaves plenty of open room in the structure. This allows his collaborators the opportunity to make creative contributions to the work as well, in the form of engaging improvisational interplay. Having a big band that plays modern jazz repertoire is an expensive proposition in today's artistic/economic climate, even more so if the group is playing experimental pieces like the ones found here. With these persuasive and powerful performances, Braxton and his cohorts demonstrate that large ensemble jazz, particularly material of the forward-looking variety, deserves more support and cultivation. Would that there were more records made, and more gigs played, by such formidable ninetets! Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2006 Splendid and Christian Carey. All reviews written by Christian Carey:
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