Braxton also mentions the renowned figure of Fletcher Henderson, known as the 'father of swing', who in 1947 led his big band at the De Lisa club in Chicago. It was there that he took under his wing a pianist named Herman 'Sonny' Blount, also known as Sun Ra. Sun Ra learned invaluable lessons from one of the greatest musicians of that time. However, he had distinct musical ambitions. In the 1950s, he formed his own ensemble called the Arkestra, which embraced a visionary Afro-futurist approach and a relentless desire to experiment, opening radical new paths for the creative orchestra. Sun Ra also held a deep admiration for Ellington, and interesting parallels can be drawn between the two composers. Both emerged from the swing music tradition but departed from the 'standard form' and ventured into longer compositions and full-length suites. Sun Ra pioneered the use of electronic instruments in his orchestra as early as the 1950s, which can be seen as a continuation of Ellington's radical sound experiments with growls and various mutes in the brass section.12 While the heyday of big bands had passed in the 1950s, Sun Ra, like Ellington, kept his own ensemble active for decades.13 Nevertheless, Sun Ra also encountered recurrent instances of ethnic stereotyping throughout his career, with his innovative musical endeavours often being misinterpreted and misunderstood.

In 1961, Sun Ra and his Arkestra moved from Chicago to New York, the same year Abrams started his Experimental Band, and there are clear similarities between the two projects as well. Both had roots in jazz and a pronounced inclination for experimentation. They shared Sun Ra's fascination with extended-form compositions, the use of electronics, and the integration of theatrical elements into their performances.14 Like Sun Ra, Abrams was also fascinated by spirituality, astrology, and mysticism. However, Abrams never assumed the role of a traditional band leader as Sun Ra did with his Arkestra. In his Experimental Band, Abrams encouraged everyone to develop their own voice as an antithesis to conventional orchestral hierarchy.15 This aspect is something that Braxton would also incorporate into his creative orchestra by experimenting with multi-hierarchical strategies. In addition to the profound impact of Abrams and the AACM, Sun Ra was undoubtedly an important catalyst for Braxton to realise his great musical ambitions: "Thanks to Sun Ra I would begin to understand different levels of responsibility, and not be afraid to move towards the visionary (...)."16

Composition No. 25

In Braxton's catalogue, we find some early works for creative orchestra that were created during his time with the AACM in Chicago, such as Composition No. 3 (dedicated to Morton Feldman) and No. 11, but these works never received a full performance or recording. It wasn't until 1972 when Braxton was approached by Kunle Mwanga to create a new work for a large ensemble for the French Chatellerault Festival. This resulted in Composition No. 25, a composition lasting over an hour written for a creative orchestra of at least 13 musicians (the score specifies parts for 4 woodwinds, 4 brass, tuba, piano, bass, and 2 percussionists).17 The concert on March 11, 1972, was recorded but not released until 1977 on the Ring Music label as a three-LP box set titled Creative Music Orchestra - RBN—--3°K12 (pour orchestre).

No. 25 is dedicated to the master composer/instrumentalist Ornette Coleman, and in his Composition Notes, Braxton emphasises that he wrote this work as "a context that would show the orchestral implication of post Ayler/AACM structural and vibrational dynamics."18 With these direct references to free jazz of the 1960s, Braxton makes it clear that recent developments in jazz and improvised music have a central place in No. 25. At the same time, he also incorporates ideas from post-war Western art music, such as the concept of the 'open work' and aleatoric techniques found in the works of composers like Cage, Stockhausen, and Boulez. Thus, No. 25 has a modular structure with 12 separate 'units’, labelled A to L, allowing the performers to determine the order, omit certain units, or repeat them. Within the individual 'units' of No. 25, Braxton uses traditional notation and/or verbal instructions that define clear compositional guidelines for the entire orchestra while also leaving a lot of freedom to the individual performers.

The post Ayler/AACM structural and vibrational dynamics are evident in parts of No. 25 where Braxton employs what he calls 'sound environments,' a kind of collective sonic texture based on his specific verbal instructions. For example, Unit A starts with 'airsounds’, where all performers are asked to blow air through their instruments. In Unit G, Braxton creates a 'sound environment' using 112 bells played by the musicians with the specific instruction to create a static texture without actively trying to control the music. Once these sonic textures are established, Braxton allows room for individual solos and improvisations. It is in this emphasis on texture and the use of small percussion instruments that the influence of the AACM becomes clearly audible.19 At the same time, these static sonic textures are also related to well-known works from the 1960s by European composers like Ligeti (Atmospheres) or Penderecki.20 Braxton's 'sound environments' do not rely on traditional music notation but rather stem from verbal instructions that are, on the one hand, linked to the jazz tradition where oral transmission of information was common, and on the other hand, Braxton documented detailed verbal instructions in his Composition Notes.

Units B, C, D, E, F, and G use traditional music notation. Similar to the approach in the 'sound environments,' Braxton often employs these notated sections to create an orchestral framework that serves as a basis for improvised solos. Particularly in units C and F, the score is traditionally orchestrated and developed. These units are clearly influenced by the big band tradition, with bebop figures for the brass players and a traditional rhythm section of drums, piano, and bass, as Braxton states: "Suddenly the music is swinging - it's really that simple."21 The only distinction from traditional big band music is the absence of tonal harmony. In other passages, conventionally notated sections are given a freer interpretation, where the orchestral result depends more on the individual choices of the musicians. For example, in Unit E, the musicians start from a monophonic melody that each of them must perform at their own tempo. Braxton describes this process as "a type of indeterminate structure which can also be found in John Cage, Duke Ellington, and some African musics."22 Unit E begins tutti and gradually diminishes as more and more musicians complete their parts. This transitions into a second part where Braxton reveals his most experimental side, transforming the orchestra into a kind of electronic sound installation: a 'sound environment' of 225 balloons played by performers rubbing them and later popping them. In an interview several years later, he explained, "Well, I didn't have enough money for the electronic equipment that could make those kinds of sounds. I'm interested in the expanded reality of sound opened up by the post-Webern continuum, but I'm restricted to using cheap materials."23

From traditional big band orchestrations to the 'sound environment' of 225 balloons, with the means at his disposal Braxton immediately set the tone of his creative orchestra as early as 1972. The experimental structure of the composition clearly shows how the microsocialities of performance (Born: level 1) had a major impact on the final course of the piece. By dealing uncompromisingly with experiment and musical traditions in No. 25, Braxton, following the AACM philosophy, pursued a "mobility of practice and reference" through which he subverted the often-imposed genre categorisations linked to his ethnic background as an African-American composer (Born: level 3).24 In Europe, Braxton was widely followed and the institutional support of European festivals like Chatellerault (and later Moers, Montreux, Berlin Jazz Days, ...) gave him the opportunity to realise larger works like No. 25. (Born: level 4) Yet these festivals were mainly ‘jazz’-oriented and classical institutions, ensembles, orchestras or electronic music studios (like IRCAM) remained out of Braxton's reach. After the creation of No. 25, Braxton remained in Paris, where although he had many opportunities to tour as a saxophonist, as a composer he did not get the opportunities he hoped for. "The jazz-yoke around my neck would limit my options," Braxton told Lock.25 A new chapter began when he was offered a contract with US major label Arista Records in 1974.

Creative Orchestra Music 1976

The Arista record deal gave Braxton the opportunity to realise his first studio recording of several new creative orchestra compositions in 1976, resulting in the album Creative Orchestra Music 1976. For the recording session, Braxton assembled an impressive group of musicians with diverse musical backgrounds. There was the AACM contingent (including Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, George E. Lewis, Leo Smith), the 'post-Cage' circle in New York with whom Braxton regularly collaborated (such as Richard Teitelbaum, Frederik Rzweski, Karl Berger), the musicians from his then-current quartet (Dave Holland, Kenny Wheeler, and Barry Altschul), and various studio musicians from the New York jazz scene. The rehearsal and recording time were very limited, and the musicians only saw Braxton's scores on the day of the session. The extremely challenging scores made the usual 'one take sessions' impossible, which posed difficulties, especially for the traditionally jazz-trained session musicians. But it was this unusual social mix of musicians that would greatly determine the record's outcome and ultimate success (Born: level 1). As George E. Lewis, who was collaborating with Braxton for the first time during this session, observed:

The hybridity evident in the Braxton session called for a new kind of musician, one whose mobility of reference encompassed many histories and perspectives. (...) [T]he AACM musicians had been exploring a similar strain of multiple musicality for years, one that incorporated compositional as well as improvisative practices. Braxton’s approach to composition, while perhaps anomalous to standard jazz practice of the period, was certainly no surprise to the AACM musicians, from whose milieu these approaches originally sprang. Their musical interests and backgrounds dovetailed neatly with those of the post-Cageians.26

Unlike the twelve autonomous but integrated sections of No. 25, Creative Orchestra Music 1976 contains six separate compositions. The A-side features compositions No. 51, 56, and 58, while the B-side includes compositions No. 57, 55, and 59.27 All compositions employ traditional notation with occasional graphic elements that indicate improvisation. The works are written for ensembles of 15 to 20 musicians and clearly align with the instrumentation of a traditional big band. Braxton explains his choice of the term Creative Orchestra in the liner notes of the record:

I feel the phrase Creative Orchestra Music best describes this medium. For to understand what has been raised in the progression of creative music as it has been defined through the work of the Ellingtons-Hendersons-Mingus’s-Colemans-etc., is to be aware of the most significant use of the orchestra medium in the past hundred years (and some).28

In other words, Braxton places his understanding of the creative orchestra in what we would call the jazz tradition, but, as in No. 25, Braxton also draws heavily on recent developments in Western art music for the six compositions on this record. By deliberately avoiding the term 'jazz’, he places himself and his predecessors outside the persistent jazz/classical binarity (Born: level 3) and seeks to connect with an audience or imaginary community that is sympathetic to this vision (Born: level 2).

Of the 6 compositions, No. 51 and 55 feature the most recognizable ‘big band sound’, with homophonic passages in the brass section, an integrated rhythm section, and defined solo sections. However, Braxton gives them an idiosyncratic twist by, for example, using extreme intervals in the homophonic wind melodies in No. 55 that are nearly unplayable at the given tempo—a deliberate strategy to achieve unpredictable results.29 Braxton combines this with his own interpretation of hard bop ‘vamps’, using repetition as a structural parameter to shape the composition.30 Similar to units C and F in No. 25, No. 51 and 55 represent Braxton's idiosyncratic confirmation of swing.31 On the other hand, No. 58, written for a "creative marching orchestra", stands out on the record. It is Braxton's playful homage to John Philip Sousa and the lively American tradition of the marching band, which he also links to Albert Ayler's free jazz: "This is every music you've ever heard at the high school basketball game. (...) The reality of this work is conceived as a time warp musical context that suddenly shifts into another gear (...) to establish fresh operatives for post-Ayler creative exploration."32

In the remaining three compositions, the traditional ‘big band sound’ is far from present. No. 56 and 57 are themeless slow pulse environments/structures.33 Inspired by the Second Viennese School, Braxton experimented with various orchestral timbres, colours, and textures, guided by a combination of notated and improvised passages. No. 59 is a double concerto for two improvising soloists that Braxton positions in the lineage of post-Webern/Stockhausen/AACM. The composition consists of three sections in an ABCBA form. The A section is fully written out and resembles a Webernian klangfarbenmelodie. The B section is composed of short accents alternating with sustained notes in the orchestra, over which the soloist improvises. The C section is a collective improvisation based on Language Type 1: long sounds.34 When the B section is recapitulated, it is the second soloist's turn to improvise, which leads into a coda.

Compared to No. 25, the compositions on Creative Orchestra Music 1976 exhibit a more sophisticated nature, confirming Braxton's reputation as a rising star in avant-garde jazz, a perception also played upon by Arista's marketing strategy. Creative Orchestra Music 1976 became a great success and was hailed as ‘album of the year’ by Downbeat Magazine. For Braxton, the collaboration with Arista was primarily an opportunity to realise his compositional ambitions. Without making artistic concessions and supported by his producers Michael Cuscuna and Steve Backer, Braxton applied his so-called ‘under the rug’ strategy by pushing the limits of what he could document with his newly acquired status as a jazz superstar with each release.35 In 1976, he created a second double concerto, Composition No. 63, at the Berlin Jazz Days, but this time for a chamber orchestra that had a more ‘classical’ instrumentation, including strings and an extensive harp part. The live recording of the premiere of No. 63 was subsequently released on the Arista live album The Montreux/Berlin Concerts, somewhat hidden behind several of Braxton's popular quartet compositions that had a more recognizable ‘jazz’ sound. Whereas the compositions on Creative Orchestra Music 1976 had a manageable average duration of 7 minutes, No. 63 had a duration of 23 minutes, unusually long for a jazz album.36 In the CD reissue 10 years later, No. 63 was omitted. After several other releases, Braxton ultimately encountered the limits of this "under the rug" strategy when he released Composition No. 82 in 1978, an immense composition for 160 musicians grouped into 4 orchestras, inspired by Stockhausen, Ives, Xenakis, as well as Sun Ra and the stories of famous big band battles Braxton heard as a child.37 Barely six months after its release, Arista removed this album from its catalogue, terminating its contract with Braxton. The collaboration with Arista and Braxton's ‘under the rug’ strategy were emblematic of the situation faced by an African-American composer whose "mobility of reference" found no place within existing structures (Born: level 3 & 4): "For an African American, you know, a young man . . . I was thirty, thirty-one, with visions of a piece for four orchestras, a three-record set: how many projects like that do you see released? (…) I wanted to use the platform while it was there, I knew it wouldn’t last."38

Composition No. 151

Faced with the constraints of jazz-oriented European festivals and the commercial logic of a major record label, Braxton found some stability in academia after a financially very difficult period in the mid-1980s, first as a visiting professor at Mills College (1985-1991) and then as a senior lecturer at Wesleyan University where he remained appointed until his retirement in 2015. This career shift in the academic sphere also marked an artistic transitional period for Braxton in the early 1990s, during which his Large Ensemble Musics once again occupied a significant place (Born: Level 4).39 A prime example of this is Composition No. 151, an ambitious work that Braxton composed at the initiative of German bassist and musicologist Peter Niklas Wilson and his Creative Music Ensemble Hamburg. No. 151 was premiered in Hamburg in February 1991 and released on CD a year later on the Swiss label Hat Hut, under the title 2 Compositions (Ensemble) 1989/1991, which also included a recording of Composition No. 147 performed by Ensemble Modern.

No. 151 is written for an orchestra of 25 musicians, but without specific instrumentation. For Braxton, this open instrumentation is, on one hand, a logical consequence of his creative orchestra philosophy, and on the other hand, a pragmatic choice to allow multiple ensembles to perform this work.40 Despite an extensive orchestral score comprising 143 pages of notated material, improvisation also plays a significant role in No. 151. Braxton himself refers to the combination of "stable logics" and "mutable logics." The improvised passages or mutable logics are integrated into the score and represented by geometric figures, expecting the performer to improvise based on the 12 musical parameters from Braxton's Language Music system.

The traditionally notated passages or stable logics in No. 151, like the majority of Braxton's compositions, are remarkably conventional. Braxton does not prescribe any ‘extended techniques’ (multiphonics, key noises, slap tongue, etc.), which are commonly used in post-war Western art music and characteristic of Braxton's own saxophone playing. For Braxton, this belongs to the performer's personal vocabulary, something that the composer doesn't need to specify. As Braxton stated, "Duke Ellington didn't write multiphonics - but his musicians played multiphonics. He didn't have to write them."41 The stable logics in No. 151 are constructed from short motifs or cells that Braxton transforms through repetition and rhythmic variation. He does not rely on traditional harmony but orchestrates the various motifs and cells into clusters. Similar to the typical chord voicings in the works of Morton Feldman, Braxton plays with density and openness in the orchestral sound by spreading the clusters across multiple octaves and then reducing them. Interwoven within this orchestral texture are the different open and improvised passages, blurring the distinction between stable and mutable logics.

However, the biggest difference from the aforementioned works is the underlying ‘story’ of No. 151. Braxton's fascination with storytelling is evident in his large-scale Trillium opera project, a 12-part opera cycle on which he has continuously worked since the 1980s, writing the librettos himself. But even in a number of works without libretto, he has used an underlying ‘story’ within which the composition unfolds. Braxton describes No. 151 as a city with a network of streets and lanes where the characters Jason and Harvey are being pursued by the police. Typical of Braxton, he intertwines this narrative, not without a necessary dose of humour, with a musical reflection that helps clarify the identity of the composition.

“They’ll never catch us now, Harvey! I know Composition No. 151 forward and backwards. I could drive these lanes with one hand,” he chuckles. “The race is on!” And with that remark, he pushes the gas pedal down to the floor. Now both cars are on the highway, traveling at 70 miles an hour. From the police car a megaphone appears as the unnamed second policeman yells from the window. “You’ll never get away with this one, guys! Composition No. 151 is not a monophonic structure that only addresses the needs of extended improvisation, as defined by post-Ayler, Cage or AACM (for that matter) structural prototypes, but rather, this is a tri-metric architectural reality that points to a breakthrough in form building and structural categories. This is a transparent Wterrain of sound beam constructions that define a way of thinking and reacting. Pull over or else!” 42

To perform No. 151, you have to navigate through the composition, so to speak. The repeating motifs in the score act as "repeating lights that guide the instrumentalist in the same way an airfield runway uses guiding lights." The graphic figures serve as signposts: "You are riding along a sound road that comes equipped with the new signpost devices - U-turns only at the ZZZ signs or 'right turns only' at the intersections."43 Furthermore, there are ‘junctions’ in No. 151 that allow the performer to travel to other cities/compositions. For example, from No. 151, you can journey to No. 55 or to Unit F from No. 25 and integrate (a part of) these compositions within the performance of No. 151. The graphic titles that Braxton assigns to his compositions represent a ‘still shot’ from the story:

Braxton's penchant for story-telling, imagery and world building, in which we also recognise the influence of Sun Ra, are a way of giving his holistic philosophy and ideas a metaphorical place within his music. They require a certain openness from his performers and audience, to whom Braxton refers as friendly experiencers. Braxton's musical universe can be seen as an invitation for this imagined community of friendly experiencers (Born: level 2) to expand their imaginations and let go of all preconceived ideas about music through which, as Lock observed, ‘questions such as ‘But is it jazz’? and ‘Does it swing?’ seem grotesquely small minded.’44

This holistic philosophy, in the above excerpt from No. 151 described as ‘a tri-metric architectural reality’, is what Braxton today calls his Tri-Centric model.45 Within this Tri-Centric model, mutable and stable logics are two important pillars, but there is also always a third pillar: synthesis logics46. This is what results from the combination of the first two, or from the connections and superimpositions of different compositions. For Braxton, the outcome of this is linked to the ritual and ceremonial side of his music and the fact that there must always be room for intuition and the unknown. We will now consider what this means for performance practice in the context of the creative orchestra.

In Braxton's creative orchestra, the mutable and stable logics constantly intertwine, turning the traditional hierarchical orchestra model on its head, as Bynum puts it: "You improvise in a compositional manner; you apply composed materials in an improvisational manner, at all times one's creativity is fully engaged."50 The combination of mutable and stable logics is linked to the third pillar in Braxton's Tri-Centric Model: synthesis logics. It is the most elusive of the three pillars, allowing room for intuition and highlighting Braxton's fascination with the unknown. This is where Braxton's application of freedom in his music can quickly be misunderstood or misused. For Braxton, freedom is never arbitrary and always stems from a form of discipline:

I'm not interested in transformation that hasn't been set within a discipline that allows for surprises, that allows for exploration and that accepts the unknown on the same level as the known.51

With freedom comes responsibility, even in the creative orchestra. This is something Braxton learned from Muhal Richard Abrams and the AACM. This fascination with a discipline that embraces ‘the unknown’ is also something Braxton shared with Sun Ra. Although Sun Ra was known as a bandleader with a strict hierarchy, his concept of discipline always stemmed from a kind of natural affinity with music, never from the impulse to suppress individuality. Sun Ra encouraged his musicians to seek out the unknown by, for example, suddenly playing a completely different set at a concert than what they had just rehearsed. Creative handling of such situations was part of the discipline he expected from his musicians. It was never about perfection: "If you can't play it perfectly right, then play it perfectly wrong," as Sun Ra put it.52 It is the same discipline that Braxton expects from his musicians. In his 'Introduction to Catalog of Works', he provides the following instructions:

• Don't misuse this material to have only “correct" performances without spirit or risk. (...) If the music is played too correctly it was probably played wrong.

• Each performance must have something unique. I say take a chance and have some fun. Try something different—be creative.53

Conclusion

With this article, I aimed to provide a broad overview of Braxton's creative orchestra. Rather than formulating a clearly delineated musicological analysis or description of this unique repertoire, my aim was to approach them as an assemblage or constellation of social mediations following Born's theory of social aesthetics. This allowed me to address several crucial (social) aspects that are too often overlooked within traditional analyses, while at the same time respecting Braxton's compositional intentions. Where throughout the text I already gave sporadic references to the four levels of social mediation postulated by Born, by way of conclusion we can now summarise Braxton's concept of the creative orchestra through these four levels.

The impact of the microsocial level in the creative orchestra is evident in the way the musicians and conductor(s) have to navigate within the mutable, stable and synthesis logics of Braxton’s compositions. Even in the modular structure of an early work like No. 25, we can hear how the seeds of his later holistic Tri-Centric model are already clearly present. In turn, the social mix of musicians in the 1976 Creative Orchestra Music recording session was decisive for the end result of this record, a trans-idiomatic approach that Braxton would continue to pursue in his later work. This combined with the multi-hierarchical performance practice makes the creative orchestra a kind of micro-society in which everyone can make choices at different levels and contribute to the collective result.54

The second level of social mediation makes itself felt in the way the creative orchestra manages to bring together an imagined community of listeners and performers that Braxton aptly calls friendly experiencers. These friendly experiencers approach Braxton's creative orchestra (and by extension his entire oeuvre) on its own terms and are not guided by external definitions of what orchestral music should or should not be. They experience no social hierarchy in the practice of improvisation versus composition, even, and especially, in an orchestral context. The friendly experiencers wander around Braxton's holistic universe of imaginary worlds and compositions-as-cities, accepting the known on the same level as the unknown.

The third level of social mediation is reflected in how the broader social hierarchy linked to ethnicity played a role in the development of Braxton's orchestral music. Like Ellington and Sun Ra each in their own way, and building on the AACM philosophy, Braxton pursued throughout his career a freedom to experiment with new forms as an African-American composer, free from the formal constraints of European music and from racial stereotyping, a "mobility of reference and practice" free from imposed genre categorisations, in an attempt to creolise the field of musical composition.55 In this regard, the orchestra is the medium of choice that allowed Braxton to express his ambitions as a composer. It is part of a ‘politics of scale’, a form of scaling that enabled Braxton to create not only more volume but also more "noise". 56

We can trace the impact of the fourth or institutional level back to Braxton's early days at the AACM where, through Abram's Experimental Band, he found an institutional context to perform his first orchestral experiments. But it is in Europe that Braxton received his first commission to realise a large-scale work for creative orchestra and where, throughout his career, he found fairly stable institutional support in a circuit of festivals that were admittedly invariably jazz oriented. Classical ensembles, orchestras, electronic music studios or festivals of classical (contemporary) music remained out of reach despite several attempts to get his work performed there too. In his homeland, Braxton received important opportunities thanks to a record deal with a major label. This gave him great visibility and catapulted him to star status in the jazz world, but when his idiosyncratic compositional intentions emerged, he soon bumped into the limits of a major company's commercial logic. Eventually, Braxton found in American academia an enduring institutional context within which he could further develop his creative orchestra. Finally, Braxton founded his own Tri-Centric Foundation, which to this day manages his self-published scores and recordings (through the record label New Braxton House) as well as organising performances and pedagogical activities.

Although described separately here, these four levels are inextricably intertwined. Braxton's creative orchestra as an assemblage is therefore not a neatly delineated musical object; like his holistic Tri-Centric Model, it is constantly in flux and contains multiple incongruities. But as a whole, it offers an interesting and enriching perspective on what orchestral practice can be today. It calls into question the reputation, upheld by classical music education, orchestras, canon, concert halls, and many patrons and governments, of the symphony orchestra and its associated practices as a quasi-universal institution. The ongoing struggle for diversity within traditional orchestras rarely goes beyond mere representation and fails to explore the possibilities of a diversity of practices57. Composition and improvisation remain stubborn opposites within the context of classical orchestral practice, an attitude that, according to George E. Lewis, needs to be discarded if we want to renew and diversify the orchestra, not only for performers but for the entire network that sustains the culture of orchestral performance – composers, theorists, and the economic and technical support infrastructure that is crucial for orchestral music performance.58 In that respect, Braxton's creative orchestra repertoire is one example in a wide pool of repertoire that offers a unique and extensive palette of possibilities to do so.