“We don’t want purity, but complexity, the relationship of cause and effect, means and end. Our model of the cosmos must be as inexhaustible as the cosmos. A complexity that includes not only duration but creation, not only being but becoming, not only geometry but ethics. It’s not the answer we are after, but only how to ask the question.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Dispossessed”.
This is a system of becoming, not a system of arriving.
Anthony Braxton, “System Notes”.
Considering the vast scale of Anthony Braxton’s compositorial output and his holistic, open ended philosophical intentions allowing for a wide variety of approaches on how to perform his work, the selection of written and artistic outcomes presented here are not to be seen as a comprehensive or standardized proposition of how to perform Braxton’s music. They are the result of a personal trajectory in exploring the possibilities and implications of his Tri-Centric Thought Unit Construct through my practice as a performer and researcher. In conclusion, I would like to revisit my initial research goals, which were twofold: first, to gain a deeper understanding of Anthony Braxton’s compositional work and integrate it into my practice as a performer; second, in doing so, to make a meaningful contribution towards broadening the canon of post-war Western art music. I will begin by emphasizing the importance of embracing Braxton’s visionary views and intricate theoretical concepts as fundamental to achieving the first goal. Following this, I will explore some of Braxton’s terminology from his Tri-Axium Writings, specifically focusing on his concepts of Affinity Insight, Affinity Dynamics, and Affinity Transfer. Through this framework, I will elucidate my personal trajectory as a performer in coming to grips with Braxton’s work and its intricate connections to the broader landscape of post-war Western art music and its evolving canon. The text is accompanied by testimonials from various actors in the field highlighting the broader impact and reception of this research.
Braxton as Visionary
Anthony Braxton’s systems and concepts are as inclusive and accessible as a musical system can be. They can be approached by any musician regardless of one’s level, background or knowledge as a performer. At the same time, taking a closer look at Braxton’s intricate theories and embracing his visionary concepts and ideas are essential for a deeper understanding of his overall musical philosophy. In other words, it is perfectly possible to pick out any score from his catalog of works and play it without any prior knowledge of the systems he developed. But, embracing his holistic concept of a Tri-Centric Thought Unit Construct will open up a vast musical mindset of possibilities, or a “giant toolkit”, that transcends any individual composition from his catalog. I have often found it helpful to draw parallels with sci-fi literature to grasp the elusive holistic philosophy of Braxton’s Tri-Centric Thought Unit Construct and more specifically to understand the aspect of time in Braxton’s work.1 For example, in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed, the protagonist Shevek, a brilliant physicist, develops the revolutionary "Principle of Simultaneity," which focuses on the nature of time. Shevek's “Principle of Simultaneity'' posits that time is not merely a linear progression of events, one following the other. Instead, it suggests that past, present, and future are all happening simultaneously, though human perception can only experience them sequentially.2 Similarly, Braxton has stated that the aesthetic fulfillment of his Tri-Centric Thought Unit Construct is to have every composition played simultaneously. He speaks of "trans-temporality" to bridge the past, present, and future of his compositional work. His compositional systems mirror Shevek’s "Principle of Simultaneity" by offering various ways to interact with his entire "organic sound world state”. For instance, the primary melody in Ghost Trance Music is a “trans-temporal” melody without a beginning or end. Although it can be performed as a linear sequence, its primary purpose is to serve as a navigational tool to highlight other parts of the broader music system, either sequentially or simultaneously. The three conductors in a Creative Orchestra performance fulfill a similar role. I created visual representations of the various Creative Orchestra performances to emphasize these holistic “Tri-Centric” implications. The system that most literally realizes Braxton’s aesthetic vision is Echo Echo Mirror House Music, which incorporates his entire recorded output into the performance as a sound collage. These are just a few examples of how Braxton applies his visionary ideas in his music and which I explored through several performances and recordings presented here. Further research into the performance practice of his many other systems is still required but was beyond the scope of this research: from the beautiful graphic scores of Falling River Music and Diamond Curtain Wall Music to the “gradient logics” of ZIM Music, and the most recent systems of Lorraine Music and Thunder Music, each offers a unique exploration of Braxton’s artistic ethos.
Shevek’s goal with his "Principle of Simultaneity” is to enable instant communication across distances, revolutionizing interstellar civilization by breaking down temporal and spatial barriers between disparate societies. Similarly, Braxton’s use of terms like "trans-temporality" and "trans-idiomatic" reflects his ongoing quest for synthesis, cosmic unification, and aesthetic universality. Braxton has cited Sun Ra as a primary influence when it comes to the visionary aspects of his work.3 Like Sun Ra, Braxton’s concepts and theories intertwine with spirituality. He often describes his musical systems as a “dream space”, a metaphorical area where the music unfolds, liberating both the artist and the audience from the confines of the physical and temporal world.4 This dream space is intrinsically linked to their social reality as African-American composers, echoing Sun Ra’s statement that “I’m interested in the impossible, because everything possible has been done and the world didn’t change.”5 For Braxton, such a dream space also enables him to think big, envisioning a “politics of scale” to communicate his compositional intentions, from pieces for multiple orchestras to an extensive opera cycle.6 Already in the 1980s, Braxton envisioned his music being performed by orchestras in different cities (“linked by satellite and TV systems”), on different planets, star systems and galaxies.7 As Graham Lock noted, “[it] makes the critics’ obsession with questions such as ‘But is it jazz’? and ‘Does it swing?’ seem grotesquely small minded.”8
Braxton’s imaginative writings and theory, employing his own idiosyncratic terminology and elaborate metaphors often intertwined with spirituality, are notoriously challenging to comprehend and have been prone to misunderstanding, which is one of the reasons they have largely been dismissed or ignored by the musicological community. This is certainly the case for the massive three volume Tri-Axium Writings which Braxton wrote early on in his career as a way to define his own philosophical terms by which his music is to be understood. Braxton’s writing, akin to his music, sometimes reads like a stream of consciousness, as if improvised, yet it is clearly structured within an elaborate system of connections and definitions, as evidenced by the system of diagrams and the detailed “glossary of terms” in the Tri-Axium Writings. These diagrams, like some kind of intricate web or 'assemblage,' are non-verbal and non-linear representations of the various connections between Braxton’s concepts and ideas.9 A detailed study of the Tri-Axium Writings and their implications is very much overdue but was beyond the scope of this research project.10 In what follows I will refer to some of Braxton’s terminology as defined in the Tri-Axium Writings to describe my personal trajectory into his music.
Thomas Schaeffer (Artistic Director Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt)
At the Darmstadt Summer Course 2023, the composer, multi-instrumentalist and musical thinker Anthony Braxton was the focus of the program — in several concerts, workshops, lectures and a two-day conference, the work of this extraordinary artist was honored in detail for the first time ever in Darmstadt. Kobe Van Cauwenberghe’s knowledge and expertise were of great value for this longtime planning. Kobe’s many years of involvement with Braxton’s music meant that the Darmstadt Summer Course was able to benefit from his knowledge in a very welcome way — especially with regard to the “Creative Orchestra” workshop conceived by Kobe and conducted in collaboration with Braxton himself, and the two-day conference on Braxton’s work organized together with Timo Hoyer, which provided such a comprehensive overview of Braxton’s work for the first time ever. We were particularly impressed by Kobe’s ability to combine theoretical discourse with instrumental and compositional issues. There is no doubt that Kobe’s various activities as part of the 2023 Summer Course have contributed to Braxton being perceived — by the younger generation in particular — as the personality he is: one of the central artists of contemporary music and a visionary for a new idea of collective practices.
Kate Molleson (music journalist BBC Radio 3, author of the book Sound Within Sound)
I am hugely grateful to Kobe Van Cauwenberghe for his work in making Anthony Braxton’s music more available to a global listenership. The holistic nature of Kobe’s approach is essential – his is a 360-degree perspective which combines the experience of performances and recordings with facilitating a wider understanding of Braxton’s complex ideas and ethos. I’ve been delighted to broadcast Kobe’s meticulously prepared interpretations of Ghost Trance Music on BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show – his performances (solo and group iterations) have allowed a very broad audience to encounter Braxton’s intricate thought processes for the first time. I was also privileged to witness the International Conference that Kobe co-curated in Darmstadt in 2023, which provided an important forum for considering Braxton’s practice, lineage and legacy from multiple angles. There is no doubt that the depth and commitment of Kobe’s research has been a significant factor in confirming Braxton’s rightful place in the Western art music repertoire and discourse – and in so doing, enriching the scope of the post-war canon.
Matthew Shlomowitz (Composer, Artistic Director Plus-Minus ensemble)
Plus Minus Ensemble invited Kobe Van Cauwenberghe to join Plus Minus to lead a project on Antony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music in 2022. We have now performed the work seven times, on two occasions joined by student musicians.11 It was an enormous pleasure for the ensemble to work with Kobe towards performing these compositions and likewise gratifying to see the highly positive reaction of audiences. I believe Kobe’s work on Braxton has made a major intervention in moving this work from the fringe to the center of the repertory. Beyond that, I believe that this new attention and regard for Braxton’s work is changing the way that the history of late twentieth century experimental music is being conceived of and told, with Braxton’s wonderful and unique approach, with its polystylism and capacity to combine prepared and spontaneous musical elements, given a far more important place in this narrative.
Timo Hoyer (Author of the book “Anthony Braxton: Creative Music”)
There is still a lot to learn from and about Anthony Braxton. For this reason alone, Kobe Van Cauwenberghe's thesis is extremely welcome. In research, teaching and as a musician, Braxton was never interested in the discovery of absolute truth, the complete rationalization of action or the transfer of canonized knowledge. Important to him is the individual approach, the creation of subjectively meaningful knowledge and the stimulation of practical creativity. This is demonstrated by the testimonies and careers of Braxton’s former students, his openly accessible "Research Papers" and all his other writings. Certain parallels can be recognised in Kobe Van Cauwenberghe's research approach. Remarkable in this thesis is the blending of theoretical analyses with practical realizations of Braxton's musical concepts and their reflection on different levels. The result is an illuminating aesthetic study that does justice to the subject of the investigation in terms of form, content and method. There are clear signs that the boundaries between the musical cultures of more or less improvised music and contemporary concert music are beginning to blur. Indications of this are, for example, the growing number of ensembles whose repertoire consists of works from both cultures and an increasing number of festivals and events that are open to composed and improvised music as well as to all conceivable hybrid forms. Braxton's notoriously cross-border work obviously benefits from this development. In this respect, Van Cauwenberghe's research comes at exactly the right time, as it sheds light on this outstanding post-war composer and music theorist who throughout his career refused to be categorized within a single musical discipline. Whether Braxton's aesthetic achievements will penetrate further into the circles of Western art music depends on numerous socio-cultural factors that are difficult to calculate and influence. Anyway, with this study, the creative musician, author and researcher Kobe Van Cauwenberghe has opened important gates of knowledge. That's all one person can do.
Self-Realization and Affinity Insights
Braxton describes the holistic entity of his Tri-Centric Thought Unit Construct as “a giant toolkit” and each of his compositional systems comes with instructions for using this “toolkit.” These guidelines are always open-ended and meant to aid performers in navigating the material; the actual musical realization is left entirely to the performers, who must creatively respond in their own unique voices. When I first started working on Braxton’s music my primary reference towards this kind of radical openness was John Cage’s notion of indeterminacy. In the context of post-war Western art music, it is easy to see parallels with the radically open works of composers like Cage, who has indeed been a significant influence on Braxton. However, it quickly became apparant to me that while Braxton certainly embraced Cage's definition of experimentalism - where the outcome of an act is unknown12 - Braxton insists this should not come at the expense of avoiding intentional musical choices, always maintaining agency. While Cage’s concept of indeterminacy necessitates a diminishing of the self, Braxton advocates for a form of self-realization:13
Self-Realization: (1) having to do with the individual becoming aware of who he or she really is—as made real through both physical universe particulars and spiritual insight; (2) spiritual discovery.14
Understanding Braxton’s musical systems as a performer and embracing his radical openness, then, requires a form of self-realization. For me, as a performer acquainted with the latest developments in post-war Western art music and with several years of experience, this meant shedding many of my preconceived notions about music, the nature of musical works, its performance practice, and my role as a performer-interpreter.15 Only by doing so could I fully engage my creativity and align with Braxton’s terms. Coming to a certain level of understanding through self-realization is what Braxton then terms affinity insight:
Affinity Insight (1): (1) the realization of spiritual and necessary information about the whole of a given route of participation or culture, or cultural group, by or through self-realization; (2) self-realization as a basis to understand the reality of a given phenomenon as that phenomenon pertains to the greater culture or space; (3) the uncovering of spiritual information as to the “composite state of things.” 16
My initial solo explorations into Ghost Trance Music laid the foundation for gaining early affinity insights into Braxton’s overall system of the Tri-Centric Thought Unit Construct and its relation to the music with which I was familiar. Using the GTM-toolkit and expanding this from solo to septet, I was able to explore and integrate a wide selection of Braxton’s repertoire, from the solo and quartet books to excerpts from his large ensemble works and even from the Trillium opera’s. A new level of affinity insights emerged as the profound social and communal implications of GTM became increasingly evident to me the more we played as a group. Practically, this meant relinquishing control over the ensemble and fostering a social environment that James Fei aptly described as a micro-society:
“In the case of GTM the ensemble is a microcosm; you're running a little society, it has its disagreements, it has different personalities, different inclinations, and you're working it out within a musical context. You form a community and you have to have enough trust with each other to jump into something that you're not sure about (...) You have the ability to disagree and find ways to play in disagreement. The ensemble becomes a microcosm of the larger community”17
Rehearsing the music is as much about creating a small community that facilitates this type of social interaction as it is about learning a set of scores. The vast diversity of musical outcomes and possibilities this generates is illustrated by the various interpretations of GTM presented here. It was incredibly inspiring to see how these affinity insights also translated effectively across disciplines into the world of dance and choreography in the collaboration with Ictus and Rosas. This micro-social element in the performance practice of Braxton’s music is further expanded in the context of his Creative Orchestra compositions. I was extremely fortunate to have had three different opportunities to explore this repertoire involving large groups of musicians. The affinity insights gained from these engagements provided a glimpse into the potential implications for orchestral performance practice, one that combines written scores with in-the-moment improvisational responses within a multi-hierarchical framework. From my perspective, these experiences have revealed a vast landscape of possibilities for further artistic inquiry and exploration, which I hope to continue pursuing.
Affinity Dynamics, Restructuralism and Affinity Transfer
Rather than viewing musical traditions in fixed terms as isolated phenomena, Braxton has consistently demonstrated an openness to a wide spectrum of musical cultures, traditions, and genres, in alignment with his holistic philosophy. This approach is encapsulated in Braxton’s concept of affinity dynamics:
Affinity Dynamics: (1) vibrational diversity or the spectrum of possibilities related to a given vibrational position; (2) the related vibrational spectrum of a given phenomenon—that being, areas that are related to the vibrational particulars of a given phenomenon; (3) the scope of a person’s life options, as related to vibrational attraction and what this phenomenon means with respect to that person’s vibrational make-up.18
Viewing musical traditions according to one’s affinity dynamics - or as a "spectrum of possibilities" - can lead to the redefinition or transformation of these traditions, styles, or genres—a process Braxton refers to as restructuralism:
Restructuralism: (1) the reality of realigning how a given system or structure works; (2) changing the surface particulars of a given structure but keeping the fundamentals that gave that structure its laws; (3) changing the particulars of a system as well as its dictates.19
As a self-described restructuralist, Braxton defined his own terms for understanding his music, consistently challenging any attempts to confine it within externally imposed boundaries of musical traditions and genres.20 Thus, Braxton’s musical vision presents a more complex picture than the restrictive gatekeeping functions of genre might suggest. This is evident in Braxton’s relationship with the jazz tradition which takes a very important place in his work. His restructuralist stance allowed him to honor and extend its traditions without being limited by it. Yet, despite this ambiguous relationship with the jazz-tradition and his early adoption of the AACM term "Creative Music" to avoid the racial biases associated with "jazz," this has not altered the general perception of him as primarily a jazz musician.21
While the relevance of such musical taxonomies seems to have diminished in recent years, with the blurring of roles between composer and performer or improvisation and composition becoming more common, the influence of categories, separations, and attached social hierarchies runs deeper than we sometimes allow ourselves to admit. In her book Rationalizing Culture Georgina Born utilizes the psychoanalytic concept of "splitting" to explain how the “splitted” cultural unconscious played an important part in fostering and maintaining an idealized notion of musical modernism, while simultaneously denigrating popular culture as the "other" in the context of an iconic post-war Western art music institution. Although Born’s example is very specific to a late 20th century institutional context, it has been my experience that the “splitted” cultural unconscious and its impact on the perception within Western art music of a composer like Braxton still persists in various forms, influencing programming decisions in concert seasons and festivals, the division of training in conservatory music departments, the representation of music in mainstream media, and the curation of playlists by streaming service algorithms.22 As George E. Lewis recently noted: "assumed genre actually affects what we are able to hear."23 In the same text Lewis seems to echo Braxton’s notion of affinity dynamics, advocating for “a new curatorial focus for contemporary music that actively assigns kinship, membership, and subjecthood, thereby forging a new, creolized, usable past for new music.” With these words as a general guideline to my own research, my role as an artistic researcher and performer has not been to adopt Braxton's restructuralist stance per se. Nor have I sought to simply include Braxton as a composer within the exclusive confines of a post-war Western art music canon. Instead, through my practice as a performer, I have aimed to facilitate what Braxton might describe as affinity transfer:
Affinity Transfer: (1) the phenomenon of changing vibrational continuum interpretations; (2) the refocus and interpretation of principle information with respect to its affinity nature—usually taking an extended time period to become solidified; (3) the natural exchange of principle information with respect to its focus particulars and vibrational dynamics.24
The process of affinity transfer, as I see it, then goes further than broadening a musical canon, it has the potential to alter the terms by which such canons are formed and change our perspective on how we look at the past, present and future of music.25
Aware of my personal and educational background, facilitating such a process of affinity transfer started first and foremost with myself and my own practice as a performer. Throughout this research I then aimed to extend this process through various performances, presentations, workshops, and recordings with diverse actors and institutions in the field. The impact can be assessed in part through different responses and testimonials linked to the artistic output presented here. There is the large collections of reviews in response to the two studio-albums, the reactions of participants and audience members, including composers Tyshawn Sorey, Alvin Singleton and George E. Lewis, after the Creative Orchestra performance in Darmstadt and the encouraging testimonials of members of the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra after their experience performing Braxton’s music. In addition to these testimonials, I asked several colleagues in the field—both those I collaborated with and close observers of specific aspects of this research—to provide a short statement addressing its impact.
Looking ahead, I was thrilled to see that conductor Ilan Volkov programmed another Creative Orchestra performance this time with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra as part of the prestigious Proms festival in London in the summer of 2024. I didn't take part in this performance, but will continue to be involved in several future performances of Braxton's music, including leading a performance of Ghost Trance Music with participants of the Lucerne Festival Academy as well as additional workshops and performances at the Norwegian Academy of Music and HCMF Huddersfield in the fall of 2024.26 In the long term I'm hoping that the research output presented here will serve as a source of inspiration for other curious musicians and friendly experiencers to pick up some scores and, as Braxton would say, kick it about and have some fun. I certainly did!
Ilan Volkov (conductor)
Over the last 20 years, I have worked with many different musicians from various genres, including Roscoe Mitchell, Roswell Rudd, George Lewis, and many more. Many of these collaborations led to new works and introduced innovative ideas on how orchestras can evolve, develop new techniques, and transform themselves. I first performed Braxton's music with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2016. We performed two works: Composition No.63 (with James Fei and Taylor Ho Bynum as soloists) and Composition No.27. Both works were performed without superimposing other pieces. It was a wonderful experience, but I did not fully understand how this music could be performed using Language Music, with three conductors and superimposing various pieces.
I met Kobe Van Cauwenberghe in anticipation of our performance of Braxton's music with Ictus Ensemble and the Brussels Philharmonic, which was planned for November 2023. We had 20 musicians from the orchestra plus 5 from Ictus. Kobe was instrumental in helping us decide which pieces to perform. We chose the primary work, Composition No. 151, and added several other works. We also had to determine the precise orchestration for several pieces. Kobe clearly explained Braxton’s concept of performing with three conductors and how we could prepare and rehearse. Braxton included signs in the score indicating where one could stop and move to another piece, but there are still quite a few signs and indications in the scores that required Kobe's explanations. In addition to this, Kobe also introduced me and the orchestra to Braxton's Language Music, another fascinating aspect of understanding this music that proved very effective in performance.
We had two performances in Belgium, both of which were different and felt like a wonderful journey for all the musicians. The fact that each player had so much responsibility and the way the music kept changing, leading us to a new, undiscovered place, was astounding. I felt all the musicians grew as a result of these five days of working together. After these performances, it was clear to me that I wanted to organize another performance, this time with larger forces. The plan is to perform with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Proms Festival this August in London. There will be three conductors: myself, James Fei, and Katherine Young. Anthony Braxton will also be performing. We will take Composition No.27 as a primary work and prepare many other pieces as well. Language Music will be used by all three conductors. I am eager to delve further into this music and am immensely grateful to Kobe for introducing me to it and guiding me in my first steps.
Tom Pauwels & Jean-Luc Plouvier (Ictus)
As director (Tom) and artistic coordinator (Jean-Luc) of the Ictus ensemble in Brussels, we are delighted to talk about the considerable importance that Kobe Van Cauwenberghe's research has had in our activities in recent years. It has been much more than an ordinary collaboration. It has been a veritable little "daimōn", a philosophical, aesthetic and ethical demon that has infiltrated our practices through Kobe. Dominant affect: a calm passion, a paradoxical blend of obstinacy and anti-authoritarianism. With Kobe teaching Braxton, we learned a method: to let each musician's creativity emerge, each according to their own tempo and style, without judgment or anxiety. We learned a multi-hierarchical working style, in which authority is not absent, but in which it constantly changes place. We have learned a new kind of artwork: an accumulative, potentially infinite, never-ending artwork, in which we can wander as in a garden, or lose ourselves as in a labyrinth. The great artists of Modernism had talked a lot about that, had theorized a lot about it... but it's really by diving into the AACM spirit that we reached a point never reached before. Finally, we learned a new relationship to the dialectic of success and failure. "Making mistakes doesn't matter - but arrange to make fresh mistakes", said Anthony Braxton during his great public lesson in Darmstadt. All Kobe's teaching is inspired by this spirit.
In concrete terms, this collaboration has had three major stages:
* In 2022, we organized a week of workshops with Ictus musicians + our students from the KASK/School of Arts Ghent + some guests from the Brussels Conservatorium (jazz section) + students from the PARTS dance school directed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. The preliminary musical sessions around Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music were the subject of two art videos filmed by Joachim Philippe, one of which is now permanently on our Youtube channel.
* In August 2023, we presented a first version of GHOST TRANCE MUSIC at the Darmstadt Festival, a real time improvised dance/music performance based on a conceptual matrix inspired by Anthony Braxton's eponymous corpus (for the music), and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's repertoire of all her writing techniques (for the dance). This show will remain part of our repertoire for years to come.
* Finally, end of 2023, we developed a very risky, and ultimately very successful (and full of "fresh mistakes"!) collaboration with the Brussels Philharmonic led by conductor Ilan Volkov. The concert revolved around Anthony Braxton's Creative Orchestra corpus. Kobe and Ilan's similar calm passions transformed this classical orchestra into a highly satisfying big band!
The adventure isn't over yet. We’re certain that the Braxton rhizome, that has passed through Kobe and crossed our way, will continue to germinate further afield, in places we don’t yet know.
Workshops:
- 04/12/2019 Language Music, with students Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (BE)
- 19-20/02/2020 Ghost Trance Music, with students Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (BE)
- 15/02/2022 Ghost Trance Music, with Plus Minus and students from Reid School of Music, Edinburgh (UK)
- 04/12/2022 Language Music, Muziekacademie, Grimbergen (BE)
- 27-29/06/2023 Ghost Trance Music, with Plus Minus and students from Guildhall School of Music, London (UK)
- 11-14/08/2023 Creative Orchestra, Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt (DE)
- 16/03/2024 Language Music, Muziekacademie, Wilrijk (BE)
- 12-15/11/2024 Ghost Trance Music, with students Lucerne Festival Academy (CH)
Lectures:
- 08/10/2019 Towards a Transidiomatic and Multihierarchic performance practice through the music of Anthony Braxton, Peabody Institute, Baltimore (US)
- 24/10/2019 Ghost Trance Music: The Open Works of Anthony Braxton, Articulate, Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (BE)
- 17/03/2021 Perform The Actor, Method/Art, Royal Conservatory Antwerp (BE)
- 18/03/2021 Ghost Trance Solos - lecture, EAC Eparm, London (UK)
- 22/03/2021 Ghost Trance Solos - lecture, 21st Century Guitar Conference, Online Event
- 30/09/2021 Ghost Trance Solos - lecture, Riverrun, GMEA, Toulouse (FR)
- 22/04/2022 Anthony Braxton's "Arista Years", Method/Art, University Antwerp (BE)
- 28/06/2023 The Music of Anthony Braxton, Guildhall School of Music, London (UK)
- 09/08/2023 The Possibilities of a Creative Orchestra, 50+ Years of Creative Music- Anthony Braxton Conference, Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt (DE)
- 13/12/2023 Performing Anthony Braxton's Creative Orchestra, The Experimental Orchestra Symposium, University of Exeter (UK)
- 25/03/2024 Ghost Trance Music meets Rosas Toolbox, Method/Art, Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (BE)
List of performances:
- 25/06/2019 Ghost Trance Solos Unerhörte Musik, Berlin (DE)
- 09/10/2019 Ghost Trance Solos, Red Room, Baltimore (US)
- 24/10/2019 Ghost Trance Solos, Articulate Research Days, Royal Conservatory Antwerp (BE)
- 01/02/2020 Ghost Trance Septet, Post X, Merelbeke (BE)
- 07/02/2020 Ghost Trance Septet, Het Kip & De Ei, Antwerp (BE)
- 08/02/2020 Ghost Trance Septet, Werkplaats Walter, Brussels (BE)
- 01/02/2021 Echo Echo Mirror House Music, with Carl Testa, Articulate Research Days, Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (BE)
- 06/03/2021 Ghost Trance Music with Ictus & Advanced Master students, Wild Gallery, Brussels (BE)
- 30/09/2021 Ghost Trance Solos, Riverrun, Toulouse (FR)
- 13/11/2021 Ghost Trance Septet, Rainy Days, Luxemburg (LU)
- 17/02/2022 Ghost Trance Music With Plus Minus ensemble [and students of University of Edinburgh], Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh (UK)
- 18/02/2022 Ghost Trance Music with Plus Minus ensemble, Café Oto, London (UK)
- 12/03/2022 Ghost Trance Solos, Time Canvas, DE SINGEL, Antwerpen (BE)
- 02/06/2022 Ghost Trance Solos, Citadelic, SMAK, Gent (BE)
- 02/06/2022 Ghost Trance Septet, Citadelic, SMAK, Gent (BE)
- 05/06/2022 Creative Orchestra Music with students Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, DE SINGEL, Antwerp (BE)
- 05/06/2022 Ghost Trance Septet, DE SINGEL, Antwerp (BE)
- 09/12/2022 Ghost Trance Septet, Visitations, Rataplan, Antwerp (BE)
- 10/12/2022 Ghost Trance Septet, Visitations, Rataplan, Antwerp (BE)
- 30/06/2023 Ghost Trance Music with Plus Minus ensemble [and students of Guildhall School of Music], Milton Court Concert Hall, London (UK)
- 15/08/2023 Creative Orchestra Music, with students from the Ferienkurse Für Neue Musik, Darmstadt (DE)
- 18/08/2023 Ghost Trance Music meets Rosas Toolbox, with Ictus, Ferienkurse Für Neue Musik, Darmstadt (DE) (two performances)
- 20/09/2023 Ghost Trance Music meets Rosas Toolbox, with Ictus, MACBA, Barcelona (ES) (two performances)
- 16/11/2023 “Forces in Motion”, Creative Orchestra Music with Ictus and Brussels Philharmonic, Concertgebouw, Bruges (BE)
- 17/11/2023 “Forces in Motion”, Creative Orchestra Music with Ictus and Brussels Philharmonic, DE SINGEL, Antwerp (BE)
- 02/11/2024 Ghost Trance Music meets Rosas Toolbox, with Ictus, nyMusikk, Oslo (NO)
- 16/11/2024 Ghost Trance Music, with Lucerne Academy, Forward Festival, Lucerne (CH)
- 23/11/2024 Ghost Trance Solos, HCMF, Huddersfield (UK)