2) "Zusammenkommen in der Musik: zu Ghost Trance Music"
Neue Zeitung für Musik
3) Ghost Trance Septet plays Anthony Braxton
Soundmaking Podcast Ep. 83
Calculating, distant, difficult. These are not the most flattering labels that have been attached to Anthony Braxton's music since the 1960s. Persistent prejudices have plagued the American composer throughout his entire career. During a Braxton conference at DE SINGEL in Antwerp, James Fei and Kobe Van Cauwenberghe advocate for the man’s extraordinary body of work.
Admittedly, confronting oneself with the Braxton universe without any preparation can be bewildering. The graphic scores, the hundreds of compositions ranging from operas and orchestral works to solo improvisations and pieces where only syllables are sung, the ambitious Sonic Genomes (six to eight-hour events in which dozens of musicians move through a space, playing multiple compositions simultaneously), and the connections to philosophy and spirituality woven throughout all of this create more than one hurdle for the unsuspecting listener.
Nevertheless, according to composer and saxophonist James Fei, it is a mistake to emphasize the 'understanding' of Braxton's music. Fei has been closely involved in everything his mentor undertakes for almost 30 years. First as a student and performer, and now as the president of the Tri-Centric Foundation, the organization responsible for managing and disseminating Braxton's work. We spoke to Fei at DESINGEL, where he would perform with Braxton's new saxophone quartet and also give a lecture. Joining the conversation is Belgian guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, a member of the guitar quartet Zwerm and Nadar Ensemble. He has been researching Braxton's music for several years and recently released a double album with a septet playing Braxton's so-called Ghost Trance Music. A solo album of his own with this music had been released earlier.
Braxton himself, who turned 77 the night before the conversation, no longer gives interviews on busy concert days but will seize the opportunity to playfully interact with his two apprentice wizards during our discussion.
Ghost Trance Music (GTM) is one of the renowned music systems that Braxton has developed since the 1990s, alongside Echo Echo Mirror House Music (EEMHM), Diamond Curtain Wall Music (DCWM), and Falling River Music (FRM), among others. Although there is a certain kinship, each of these systems forms its own universe with its musical language, specific compositions, and instructions for performers. Improvisation is the common thread in all this music, but the scores often encourage performers to make connections throughout the entire Braxton oeuvre. A few examples: in GTM, musicians are invited to integrate another Braxton composition into the played piece (the so-called 'tertiary material'). In EEMHM, musicians play their own parts alongside a playlist composed of the complete Braxton discography. The result is an ensemble playing a composition while a sound mass of other Braxton recordings circulates through the speakers.
That extensive body of work, the systems, the graphic scores – all of it can be intimidating at first encounter, right?
Kobe Van Cauwenberghe: 'Initially, yes. It is, of course, an enormous mountain you're facing. But once you actually play his music, the intimidating aspect quickly disappears. It is incredibly rewarding music to perform because you learn so much as a musician. The scores are, in fact, very liberating.'
James Fei: 'In a way, it's intimidating, but in an exciting way. It's a big misunderstanding that you have to understand everything about Braxton's music. There are elements that he himself doesn't understand. When he develops a new system, he creates something of which he will only gradually discover the implications. His music is extremely systematic, but it also contains many unknown and indefinite elements. Things you can only figure out by playing the music. I experienced that myself when I performed with him for the first time. It was at the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, my first concert as a professional musician. I had been playing the saxophone for barely two years, and I had to take the stage after the top players of the ICP Orchestra. Talk about intimidating… It felt like I was thrown to the lions, but I realized that it's all about doing: facing the music and giving it your all. Anthony is not at all interested in a perfect performance of his work; that's not what his music is about. But because it's such complex music, ironically, that's exactly what you try for.'
KVC: 'That's how I experience it too. It's in that tension that the most interesting things happen. You try, and sometimes wonderful things come out. It also explains why his scores contain various visual cues and not just notated music.'
In this context, cellist Tomeka Reid mentioned that sometimes the written music is impossible to perform, and it's about the choices you make.
JF: 'Braxton is difficult to categorize in that regard. Sometimes the music is entirely written out, as in certain GTM pieces. In such a piece, as a performer, you can choose to suddenly incorporate another Braxton composition into the played piece, such as a violin part from an orchestral work. You can play it from start to finish, faster, slower, or whatever you like. This turns the written music into improvisation. On the other hand, you can also fully notate graphic scores if you wish, playing them the same way each time. David Tudor did that with John Cage's indeterminacy music. Between these two extremes, there is room for many other choices.'
KVC: 'Cage is, of course, a reference that Braxton himself often mentions. I got to know Braxton's music when I already had a broad background in contemporary classical music. So, Cage is also important to me when it comes to freedom in music. But I believe Braxton places more responsibility on the musician to steer the music in the desired direction. It can be somewhat daunting, I must admit (laughs). With Cage, that freedom is more limited; you are more bound by certain factors. With my background in classical music, it was challenging to learn how to deal with that freedom. There’s a significant gap in conservatory education there.'
To what extent is Braxton's music known in that world?
KVC: 'Barely. It's a frustration I feel about our education as musicians. Why don't we talk about his music in music history classes when it comes to the second half of the twentieth century? Why does the discussion about Braxton have to be limited to the discourse of free jazz and improvised music?'
JF: 'He has had to fight against that his whole life. It seems to be shifting with younger generations of musicians. When I became interested in his music, it was perfectly normal for me to listen to solo music by Braxton and then a 'Sequenza' by Berio. I didn't think in terms of 'jazz' and 'classical music'; they were related to me. However, he has always been pinned to the jazz world and has consistently resisted that. For example, he played fully composed pieces early on at jazz festivals. He jokes about it sometimes: he's an African American playing the saxophone, so everything he does will be called jazz. If he writes an opera, it will be called a jazz opera.'
KVC: 'A change in mentality is needed. Through my research, I want to gain a better understanding of his work while also pushing his music into the institutions. That's why I'm very happy and grateful that a Braxton conference could take place at DESINGEL, and the conservatory agreed to perform the Creative Orchestra Music with students from both the classical music and jazz programs. Such things indicate that a turning point is happening. For my own development, George Lewis's writings have been crucial. The book he wrote about the AACM ('A Power Stronger Than Itself') reads like an alternative music history that should be mandatory reading in conservatories.'
Do you remember your first encounter with Anthony Braxton's music?
JF: 'It must have been the album '3 Compositions Of New Jazz' or maybe 'For Alto.' I then saw him perform solo at The Knitting Factory in New York, and that changed my life. I also read the book 'Forces In Motion' by Graham Lock, which was the ultimate gateway into the world of Anthony Braxton for my generation. You must never forget that when you go to one of his concerts, you only see a fraction of his musical universe. 'Forces In Motion' provided a much broader view of everything, including Braxton's personality. After that, I went to study with him, and a whole new world opened up for me. Now there's the Tri-Centric Foundation, but at that time, you couldn't get your hands on Braxton's scores. As a student, he let me into his office, and I could look at all the scores I wanted. I saw all those pieces I had read about in the 'Composition Notes' and had listened to on recordings.'
Kobe, you have explored several of his music systems. There was a streaming concert of Echo Echo Mirror House Music, but above all, you have released two albums with Ghost Trance Music. What specifically attracts you to that system?
KVC: 'In my view, it is the most developed system, and much has been written about it. There are also many recordings available with very diverse ensembles. So, it was a logical starting point in exploring Braxton's universe. Through the tertiary material in the GTM compositions, you also discover a lot of other music, and so you keep digging deeper. I don't know if I would have experienced all of this in the same way if I had started with the old quartet pieces.'
JF: 'When I started studying with Braxton, he had just begun with GTM, and I didn't understand it at that time. In the first GTM compositions, there was hardly any improvisation. They played the primary melody (the compositional basis of each GTM composition, JC) almost from start to finish. The improvisations were very short. It was the primal version of GTM, and it was bone-dry. In that sense, it was real trance music; there seemed to be no real beginning and end because that primary melody seemed endless. It seemed like a total reset of the music he had made up to that point. GTM evolved over the years and was completely opened up. Eventually, it became the context for everything that would come later. In GTM, he matured things that he did on a smaller scale in, for example, the quartet with Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser, and Gerry Hemingway. They also played solos made up of notated music from other compositions.'
And Echo Echo Mirror House Music?
KVC: 'I have only done one version of EEMHM, during the coronavirus pandemic. Carl Testa's article in Sound American piqued my interest. I contacted Testa because it was something we could do without having to meet physically. In the time of the pandemic, musicians were all looking for ways to make music without being in the same space. This turned out to be ideal. EEMHM is a very radical approach to the idea with which Braxton wants to connect all his work. The system throws everything into one pile. It is a profound experience: you hear saxophone solos, an aria from one of his operas, an orchestra, and all these things revolve around the musicians, through the arrangement of the speakers and the frequent use of panning in the software.'
Did the coronavirus provide opportunities? In the 1970s, Braxton composed music for orchestras in different cities connected via satellite. That is almost visionary given the many streaming concerts of recent years.
JF: 'Absolutely. Many things that are being realized today he had in his mind for decades. Long before the iPod, he talked about a computer that could play all his music and that people could take with them. The telematic ideas were interesting to explore further during the pandemic. So, we did a concert with the International Contemporary Ensemble from New York and the Skerpla Ensemble from Iceland. The two orchestras were thousands of kilometers apart, and I conducted from Oakland. It was an incredible challenge to synchronize everything. But that's exactly what he has always been interested in: the idea that things can happen in different places at the same time. The next step in that is the audience experience in different places at the same time. He has been completely convinced of that since the Sonic Genome performance in Berlin in 2019. Afterward, he said: next time, we'll do two simultaneous Sonic Genomes in different places, with an audience, somehow connected to each other. That is Braxton through and through.'
(Meanwhile, Braxton enters on his way to the soundcheck)
Anthony Braxton: 'Don't believe those guys. They don't like my music!'
JF: 'True, but I love the buckets of money I earn with it. By the way, you still owe me about two billion dollars. Where's my money?'
Braxton: 'The hip-hop guys stole all the money. But you're lucky because Kobe will pay you. Kobe! Pay the man!' (Laughter)
Back to GTM for a moment. Feel free to correct me, Kobe, but this system seems to revolve mainly around communication and interaction. Performers make choices that influence each other's playing; they give signals or form separate sections. Yet, you have played and recorded some GTM pieces solo. Were you the first to do that?
KVC: 'I know of a few others, including violinist Josh Modney. Originally, the intention was not to do it solo. When I started exploring GTM, I had some scores intended for an ensemble. But I was alone at that moment, and I had a loop station, so I tried some things. After a while, I got hopelessly lost in all the loops, but instead of trying to regain control, I added some more layers. As a result, the loops and electronics seemed to operate as an independent second musician.
You also recorded an album with your Ghost Trance Septet for El Negocito Records, a nice mix of musicians from jazz, improvisation, and contemporary classical music. That seems to be in the spirit of Braxton, I think.
KVC: 'He himself often refers to the 'transidiomatic' in this context, letting the music be performed by a group with different musical backgrounds. You often see this mix in his own ensembles as well. This recording project was an opportunity to do that myself. Especially with Steven Delannoye, Niels Van Heertum, and Teun Verbruggen, I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to play together otherwise.'
Something that strikes me in every interview with Braxton is his optimism about almost everything. Not only regarding music, but also about technology, the future... Even in the interviews that Graham Lock conducted decades ago, this shines through, although he often lived in extreme poverty around that time. Is that something you recognize, James?
JF: 'He always says he was fortunate to discover music at an early age. That gave his life meaning and direction, regardless of the circumstances. He still talks childishly enthusiastic about the music of, for example, Paul Desmond, Stockhausen, or Ayler. He loves it, and that keeps him going. You must not forget that, in addition to supporting his family and the ongoing financial struggles, he had to fight for decades to make the music he wanted to make and have it performed.'
Your occupation with the music of Anthony Braxton is part of a research project at Antwerp university. Please tell us more about this work!
I've been intrigued by Anthony Braxton's music for some years now, but it wasn't until 2016 when I read Nate Wooley's Braxton Issue from the online magazine "Sound American" that I really got a sense of the uniqueness and vastness of Braxton's musical universe. Reading about Braxton’s work and especially the more recent compositional systems such as Ghost Trance Music, really opend a new world for me. At the same time it also made me realise that engaging with this repertoire would challenge everthing I thought I new as a (new) music interpreter. Although it definitely is possible to approach Braxton's music intuitively without too much preparation, I wanted to get a deeper understanding of it from my position as a performer and that is basically what my research project is about. And so what started as a two-year research project where I focused on Braxton's Ghost Trance Music system, has now become extended to a Phd-project in order to cover more of Braxton's unique compositions and musical systems. It has also become my conviction that this incredible repertoire is just one of many metaphorical elephants in the room when it comes to broadening or diversifying a still very eurocentric canon of post-war western art music. With this research I also hope to contribute to broadening this canon.
Ghost Trance Music challenges the traditional roles of composer, performer and even listener in a unique way. How do you experience this within your concerts?
This could be said for most of Braxton’s music, but Ghost Trance Music (GTM) is probably the first system he developed that pushed his vision of a unified holistic body of works to new levels. For Braxton, all of his compositions are connected and he developed GTM as a kind of navigation system enabling the performer to make these connections in any given performance. All GTM compositions have in common a central or “primary melody”, which is the starting point and a central thread throughout any given GTM performance. But the performers can also decide individually or in subgroups to depart from this primary melody and integrate improvisation or any other composition or part from Braxton’s catalog into the performance. The challenging part for me when I first started working on this repertoire, was understanding the level of openness in these scores, with often very detailed and complexly notated parts. The notated material is never an end in itself in Braxton’s music, they can also be a jumping off point to other musical materials. The role of improvisation here is no less important than notation. Improvisation in Braxton’s music is linked to a system called Language Music, which consists of a list of 12 sound categories to guide improvisation. Navigating through a GTM performance means navigating through all of these elements and forces you as a performer to make a lot of decisions on the spot. I was lucky to find an incredible group of musicians who were willing to join me in this project, which then became the Ghost Trance Septet. Coming from different musical backgrounds we surprisingly easily found common ground in exploring and navigating Braxton's complex GTM system, which turned out to be incredibly rewarding and fun to do! Lastly, also as a listener you kind of have to make intuitive choices as it is impossible to "take it all in" so to speak, and to find your own way inside Braxton’s universe.
Braxton within Ghost Trance Music refers to a Native American ritual. How important is the knowledge about this for the reception?
Braxton often refers to listeners of his music as “friendly experiencers”. This also indicates how to best approach his music, with an intuitive attitude and an open mind, looking for a "friendly experience”. In that sense it is not necessary to know the background of his music systems. But if you take a deeper look into Braxton’s music and philosophy, you’ll see that the ritual and ceremonial are a very important element of his work. GTM was indeed inspired by a Native American ritual, the Ghost Dance, a ritual through which surviving native tribes sought to connect with their ancestors. With Ghost Trance Music Braxton found a way to lift the curtain of his own past work and connect it to the present. In an interview with Stuart Broomer he mentions that the Native American music also inspired him to look at other forms of “trance” music from all over the world, and how he looked at these larger extended time parameters as a basic element of the Ghost Trance Music compositions, instead of structural parameters like serialism or indeterminacy. Again, as a listener it is not necessary to know this information, but for me as a researcher and performer I find this very valuable as it gives insight into Braxton’s compositional process and way of thinking.
You are dealing with Braxton’s music within solo as well as ensemble projects. How do you experience the difference?
There’s a strong communal aspect at the core of Ghost Trance Music, it invites musicians to come together, regardless of their musical background, and finding a common language through performing these pieces. The music allows for a constant interplay between the musicians, giving them agency to push the music in different directions by making their own choices or giving handcues to the other players. This is what Braxton calls the transidiomatic and multihierarchic part of his music and it’s what emerges most clearly in a group performance. This pluralistic aspect is what makes this repertoire really unique and so with the Ghost Trance Septet I wanted to bring together a mixed group of musicians coming from both improvised/jazz and notated/classical scenes. Whether you’re more grounded in improvisation, or more familiar playing scores, Braxton pushes you out of your comfort zone and that’s where things get really interesting. And so it’s been really fascinating to see how everyone engaged with this music both as a collective and individually. We didn’t do much talking, we just played.
At first I didn’t intend to do a solo performance of GTM, but I sort of accidentally stumbled into it when I was working on a GTM score at home by myself using a looping device to create different layers. At some point I lost control of what I was looping, but the result was really interesting and so in stead of trying to regain control, I decided to add more layers, an additional looper, several samples and some randomising electronic sound effects. Much like a “non-human agent”, the loops and electronics then start adding to the different musical layers which are so typical for GTM. Although I still have a slight preference for performing GTM in a group, which has more to do with my general preference of playing in a group rather than solo, I found both versions to be equally challenging and rewarding for me as a performer. To me it shows the incredible interpretational possibilities of Braxton’s repertoire, I feel I’m really only scratching the surface of what is possible!
You have been playing Ghost Trance Music in several countries. How was it received by the audiences?
From the few experiences I had, which were limited to Europe and the US, I got the sense that Braxton as a composer is still perceived very differently in the US than in Europe. This hasn’t so much to do with GTM specifically, but there’s a strong community around Braxton’s work in the US where a younger generation of musicians coming from very different backgrounds, often former students of Braxton’s, approach his music regardless of any preconceived ideas about genre, about the role of improvisation, not being bothered about the question wether it's jazz or not, etc… This is reflected in the audiences reception as well as in the writings of a growing amount of critics and academics. This open attitude seems less present in the European music scene, not within the musicians themselves necessarily, but more within the institutions and festivals where the often artificial categories of improvised music or jazz versus composed music are still strongly represented in the programmation and writing, which is then also reflected in the audiences reception of the music. Braxton has obviously very often toured in Europe and still does, but it seems his music here is still very much associated with him performing it and I have the impression this is why in Europe he is mostly perceived as one of the great saxophone improvisers and less so as a composer. But you don’t need to look far to see the sheer scale of his compositional output, and then if you do look a little closer you’ll discover an incredibly original, unique and fascinating musical world of which Ghost Trance Music is just one aspect. In this context I should also mention the great work of the Tri-Centric Foundation, who’s mission is to help grow the community surrounding Braxton's work and it’s legacy. They have been and continue to be very valuable to my own involvement in his work and for those interested in finding out more about Braxton’s music, scores, recordings, writings or anything else, do check out their website!