One of the many amazing attributes of Anthony Braxton's music is that he shines in duet performances, as this listener personally witnessed at a concert performed with harpist Jacqueline Kerrod and held in the lobby of The Broad contemporary art museum in Los Angeles in 2019, and that he supported and encouraged students in recordings with him during his nearly quarter-century tenure teaching at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
The featured album for this post is just such an example of both aspects, a double-disc recording with Kyle Brenders in a session in Toronto that comprises two of Braxton's Ghost Trance Music, which he noted was influenced by his taking classes at Wesleyan on Native American music, including those dealing with the Ghost Dance rituals. The box set 9 Compositions (Iridium), which may someday be featured in this blog, included a quote from the composer about the influence that the music from these spiritual practices had on him as "various tribes came together and compiled whatever information they had left" before most of their culture was decimated—this included the perspective of tying our reality to communication with the spirit of ancestors.
As is often the case in Braxton's complex music, the performance of these numerically-assigned compositions, in this case, 199 and 356, allow for the transposition of elements from other pieces within the GTM system that could also involve the varying of tones, tempo and other aspects. Not surprisingly, his philosophy and systems can be very complicated and challenging for non-specialists (like this blogger) to comprehend.
What stands out in this recording is the use of themes that sound like military music and repeat before the players move into other melodic and tonal territory, some of it quite beautiful and reflective amid frequent use of repetition. Braxton, playing alto, soprano and sopranino saxophones, meshes so well with Brenders, on clarinet, soprano and tenor, that their playing almost seems telepathic, though this is clearly the result of the two of them fully utilizing the resources of the GTM model. Brief notes by Scott Thomson observe that the use of "dialogue" means a reference to "language," which is how Braxton often speaks of his approach to musical composition and Thomson rightfully calls this recording an expression of "a beautifully original dialect" spoken by the players.
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