Anthony Braxton - Lorraine Music [Part 3/3]

10 Comp (Lorraine) 2022 (Tri-Centric/New Braxton House, 2024)—Discs 7–10 

Sax QT (Lorraine) 2022 (i dischi di angelica, 2024) 

Duet (Other Minds) 2021 (Other Minds Records, 2022) 

By Lee Rice Epstein

After fall 2021’s European tour with the Santos Silva/Matlock trio, Braxton settled in for four focused days of Lorraine music practice and recording with long-time collaborators saxophonist James Fei and bassist Carl Testa, along with bassist Zach Rowden (making his recorded debut with Braxton). Unlike some other music system prototypes, this box demonstrates the malleability of Lorraine in its early development. Where the trio recordings lean into an expanded pallet, discs 7–10 uses doubled voices to emphasize the depth of Lorraine, in contrast to some of the better known and oft-recorded music, including quartet, solo, creative orchestra, marching band, Ghost Trance, and Falling River Music.

Roughly six months after the performance of “Composition No. 428,” the quartet opens “Composition No. 432” in a delicate, tentative unison—the slight tension and threadlike weaving of lines is somewhat reminiscent of Bill Dixon’s late period compositions, heard on 17 Musicians In Search of a Sound: Darfur , Tapestries for Small Orchestra, and Envoi; there may be something in that worth exploring further, for interested listeners, that’s related to Lorraine being a late-stage prototype, where synthesis of sound seems to take precedence over the literally breathtaking runs of earlier performances. There is, of course, plenty of dazzling saxophone artistry, as Braxton and Fei chase and taunt each other with the care of two old friends egging on one another, while, like panes of reflective glass rotating and sliding through the music, Diamond Curtain Wall electronics provide a contra-harmonic through-line. But something deeper and more emotionally raw seems to come to the surface throughout Composition Nos. 432–435; Testa and Rowden’s arco playing adds a spotlight-like intensity that emphasizes the gradations in each composition. In short, I haven’t been this deeply and personally moved by Braxton in quite a while. The ZIM set was a tour-de-force of ideas and instrumental artistry, but Lorraine feels more exposed, raw and tense in some areas, yearning and even sad in others.

If that’s the case on the final set of recordings on 10 Comp (Lorraine) 2022, then the four-volume set Sax QT (Lorraine) 2022 featuring two new saxophone quartets on tour in Europe really foregrounds a lot of emotion through the addition of Chris Jonas, Ingrid Laubrock, and André Vida, all three of whom who, along with Fei, have years of experience playing with Braxton. And so of course, there’s a huge personal component to the music—the quartet is Braxton, Jonas, and Fei on all four performances, with Vida joining on the first, and Laubrock on the other three. The compositions here continue on from 10 Compwith Composition Nos. 436–439, underlining the ongoing development of the Lorraine prototype and the continued use of Diamond Curtain Wall as its secondary partner. The saxophone quartet presents Lorraine music as something in a state of more continuous movement; there’s a restless, unsettled energy that pervades the first two thirds of each quartet performance, which resolves towards the latter part into a plaintive group meditation. (A quintet recording with Braxton, Fei, Jonas, Laubrock, and Vida all together would be incredible, as would a sextet or octet setting with Matlock, Santos Silva, Testa, Rowden, and any of the two sax quartets.)

What’s particularly fascinating is, we’ve got both of these large sets out now, but the music was first heard on a 2022 album, which I don’t think we covered here: Duet (Other Minds) 2021, a performance from the 2021 Other Minds Festival featuring Braxton and Fei in a duo, performing “Composition No. 429,” performed just after the first two European concerts with Matlock and Santos Silva. In San Francisco, Braxton and Fei debuted what was then a new prototype, a new system of approaching composing, using what Braxton referred to as “‘sonic winds’ of breath,” as Fei writes in his illuminating liner notes. There are also photos of the score, with its time signature shifting every measure and seemingly “traditional” notation. As always, looks are deceiving, as Fei explains here the notated music is not always played, per se, although it is always represented. There is something in that for listeners, as well as players (of course), with the notation like a ghost in each composition, not haunting exactly but lingering in a secondary space, while the players expand on the work to open a tertiary space, a quaternary space, and so on.

There’s a temptation among listeners and critics to try and discern, however much value it brings us, when something is pre-composed, through composed, improvised, or (more often now) machine generated. When taking the time to listen to Lorraine, especially with Sax QT or 10 Comp, I think that would be a huge mistake. For one thing, the pre-composed moments signal themselves, more or less, with a crispness that advances the music narratively; however, even that description will mislead one into thinking the performer improvisations and aspects of DCW are in any way diversions—instead you might think of both as a response to the primary composed material, as a continuation of the narrative flow of each composition. And in that ebb and flow is clearly emerging something quite new and exciting. Whether the future holds for us more compositions in the Lorraine prototype, or whether a new prototype emerges and further sharpens the already crisp ideas at work here, this feels like a very special moment in time. And really, no matter what comes next, aren’t we always lucky to witness when it happens?

 

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