Anthony Braxton interviewed by Gerry Hemingway (2013)

okay okay 22 years ago in 1991 you I marked dresser garland Chris Bell recorded here in villas aisle first without an audience and then in performance for a production movie start records that was definitely one of the more significant deep love and respect many of them are they love and concern for creativity and creative music the organization treats the musicians in such a respectful way and after 39 years I have seen these people different points in my life and and now it's 68 years old looking at my life I feel especially grateful that I've had an opportunity to first to meet people of such high caliber and to have them as friends part of my extended family and so I remember that concert that the quartet and recording and for me those experiences are has helped me in so many different levels giving opportunities to actually perform as you know for the music that we play you have to actually go into the real world and play as opposed to academia which in many cases glorified theory because the professor's have never really picked themselves in the middle the music and so that will give us opportunities and so I think of it as part of the magical and wonderful experiences that I've been and I still listen to that so to have the opportunity to play with you again I just feel grateful to the cosmic forces if the subject is Jerry Hemingway my viewpoint is jerry Hemingway is one the great master key structural virtuoso instrumentalists composers and educators and scholars of this town career and so they have you back in my space and for me to be back in your space as far as I'm concerned this is part of the beauty of life we come together today in a place in place of another American master who also shares a special relationship to this festival and its history Cecil Taylor can you speak briefly to the musical dimensions and vision in Cecil Taylor's music brought to you particularly at your own formative stage of becoming a musician in essence how did Cecil's recordings and performances in the 50s and 60s affect your early musical thinking has music my consciousness upside down so when did you understand the state of towards the more abstract music Governor Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg and their work will become very important to me and later I would bring in the musical and Tom favoring and so to hear a jazz quartet with the pianist whose voices were so personal so different and in this context working within a traditional space still using tempos and this kind of thing in the incredible work of the recordings blew me away and after that I went out and actually this is a Coltrane and record work culture that can be the way he played on just friends and double-clutching it appealed to me on many levels harmonically it was extended harmonics leading into the open space I was also as a rhythmic counterpoint he proposed many interesting ways in which in terms of his copying yes anna says a role of copying the company the linear players and so his role as he as he would comp was so interesting because it also was rhythmically charged in a way that was very abstracted from the natural inclinations and cliches Swain up to that point he really had a way of proposing almost disturbing inside of a metric space a kind of a pulse rhythmic propulsion and in that metric space it was totally fresh to the state of the state in terms of the new action space that was trans harmonic and then later in the 60s with unit structures and the great work that he did in that time space he began to redefine synergies for the small ensemble he was a part of the movement along with John Coltrane that would begin this energy service that has never really been in my opinion fully examined or appreciated but in fact the pulse energy music's from Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane would be very unique and opened up fresh concept spaces that I'm still working through and so si Soto has had a profound effect on me it was the music of Cecil Taylor that that created Wardley so made clear the complexities I was having my family backed away from my music because I was moving in the direction of C so to an article I should also give credit to Dave Brubeck another great master who's harmonic music's whose rhythmic musics have never been looked at in a way that is respectful and insightful based on what he gets demonstrated and so I don't need to move away from the great contribution of Cecil Taylor but when I think about the early period of me growing up and listening to the music I think about Cecil children I think about Dave Brubeck I think about linear asano and I think about the great sound master whose work has never been appreciated meanwhile Cecil assumed to the time specks of the 60s and 70s I think about the first of the solo musics in a certain kind of way because he busts he does bring such a his background his the things that he brought into his music at an early stage to play out in this room in these early recordings and it relates in my way of thinking I noticed that his his his position or his his his entry point reflects in a way what you would go through later on which was the incorporation of elements a very broad set of elements that would inform your music and would get their music dimensions that that weren't the usual resource points and in Cecil it was it was it earlier maybe an earlier example of the same sort of way of thinking it is slightly related so-called third stream a large group of musicians who work for him from miles to shoulder issue to all the people who were involved with this the strain of activity Louis and so forth so he had a relationship to that and he had it's fascinating to me how the influences come together in and and how in the early stages I see you're drawn to this like I was drawn to it I was always drawn to the outsider the person who was a little bit out of the normal path my business of when I was a rock and roll guy Beefheart was the person who spoke to me the loudest and they're always at us that's the same thing it is like it grabbed my attention somehow and shook my tree yes it was fresh something personal it wasn't a commercial move I think about six of teller one of the things about season tell me that always impressed and influenced me was that he did his music he did not bow to selling out on any level he was religious in terms of stand with his work he practice he was totally dedicated he is totally as a young guy was not always supported in the way one would have hoped but Andrew for me was another piano something that was special and these are the guys and gals who turned me on to music as a nice pursuit as a spiritual pursuit whether or not I would make money 16 or 17 that I was moving in this direction and the gravity was just pulling me towards this direction and that there was going to be no real money attached to this decision in the end this would be the one of the primary barriers that we would have to all go through dedicating ourselves to hard work and evolution knowing at the same time when we do my best work but we made the decision to go forward because fresh terrains and so we come from that and in a way the children of Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane and Bill Dixon and all the men and women who took that extra step of separating themselves from their jazz industrial complex separating themselves from the popular music world separating themselves and fighting back and reacting to the myths criticism of the critical jazz community Cecil and John Coltrane especially but more so Cecil we're being hammered for decades about their music even even though everyone recognized whatever the music is is consistent in its evolving disguise so they're dedicated and they continue to have her in anyway and particles I feel the hard edge this hero would develop would be what was needed to protect himself from the barrage of criticism that he had to endure as part of that first generation that began to move out I would also say you saw Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Dufrene but Jimmy and because all of these people met the challenge of their generation just as we met the challenge of our generation they can't take that from us we didn't make any money our music is documented our dedication and I feel we are part of that special family of restructures and innovators we walk the walk we talk to talk and and now we're seeing you guys I'm 68 and I'm still excited about the music I still see my work as a professional as a offering from a professional student music because that's all I want to be let me ask you a related question in the culture of music if we compare the times we grew up in as we were just discussing to the current environments of which music is apart I think you and I and most of us can agree that there exists some major differences in the way music is experienced and created would you agree with that all right most certainly okay granted there are also some constants there are some things that are the same that remain true but to focus on what has changed or has been transformed since you became interested in music as a life my question is what is music now I feel that in the 3rd millennium we are most fortunate there are so many new and fresh possibilities let me say this first for the young men and women who are looking in the direction of creative music or creative anything my viewpoint years I do not agree with the notion that the best of anything has been done and that all we can look forward to is the apocalypse and that foreign motion every structuralism is over I do not agree with this idea at all now going back to your question the technology has continued to consistently evolve the music bring in iPods with all of the compositions from my systems which with all of the recordings that have done and the iPods along with a new mapping photography notation is an attempt to integrate some of the new toys into the music and so how do I see creative music in this period creative music in this period the possibilities are limited image logic possibilities new technologies and digital projectors we're moving towards a holography that will be coming into the music we're integrating instruments of all over the place for the performance today the great master percussionist Jerry Hemingway as a contrabass marimba and he's creating new instruments with water and metal bars or whatever and so for me this reflects on with the state of creativity and I feel the possibilities will only get greater going back to the first part of the question though I feel that the decision to bring Jasmine to the University was a logical decision in the sense that sessions and this kind of experience had come to an end and that the university would now start to take up the music but that transfer was also complex we grew up with a healthy respect for known unknown and intuition but academia has fashioned the music in the way were the unknown or intuition it's being pushed aside and they're looking at one plus one equals two and teaching the last two and three generations the element fundamentals of the fifth we structural cycle be my musics but they're not teaching the meta reality of the music I'll go even further I have come in the past 30 years to completely disagree with how we talk about the history of jazz as far as I'm concerned that history is a constructed history in the same way that the Harlem Renaissance was are constructed history what am I saying Oh in my classes I speak of continental experiences territorial experiences no one ethnic group owns creed of music no one the group D has determined the forward thrust of the music the forward thrust of the music has come about because men and women in different areas of the continent have come together and music has come out don't you think economics plays a huge role in how people found each other and found their musics for instance if you look at the axis of the south and Mississippi or so forth you see then a whole such a structure of where people met because of the circumstance of survival their economy was what brought them together it wasn't necessarily a racial dynamic it was more an economical and this in this situation suffering through whatever they dealt with and growing and living and surviving this whole situation born also an expression and in a way different pockets of this happened in different places for different reasons and economy I think also plays often a role how things agree that the economy economics would be one of the factors but I feel that factor has been pushed in a way to obscure the composite music and when the first Europeans arrived and met the Native Americans suddenly we have a fusion and that fusion was the genesis fusion for American music as a scholar I'm sure that you more than most are aware that for instance the rhythmic unit genesis of american music came about from africa and rittany logics we don't talk that much about the Irish over the big logics why because we've carved out of reality for african-americans responding to the tragedy of slavery and the complexity of American social reality so different zones have been carved out for so-called minorities or non-european peoples but in fact this perception this perspective in my opinion it's not the correct perspective because men and women from the beginning of time and documentation have vibrated to the same kind of vibrational dynamics of social dynamics you meet someone there's a vibration either it's positive or negative these kind of synergies have always been happen happening this is part of the human experience and that if we would separate ourselves from idiomatic propositions we can begin to look at how everything is connected and how fortunate we are as human beings to be on a planet where all these different things could happen Oh creativity in my opinion is like water or eating food creativity is part being healthy creativity is part of acknowledging the special experience that we've been having and creativity is one of the routes that can help the Phillie experience or move through life and so the history of jazz the history of classical music I have serious differences with how the music is talked now and I would also say and add to this that we're seeing a new generation of creative women great masses like Mary Hudson Ingrid LeBrock but in fact the great woman have always been there you just haven't been talked about the wonderful and now after 28 years of academia I see how it happens what am i referring to I'm referring to my disgust with the left and the right and how the boys club talks the talk but when it comes down to walk the walk I don't see as many classes that includes the contribution of the great woman in every time period and so I started teaching women in creative music for 15 years now moved away from it now because so much has been found it's become a subject for a specialist I think I was gonna bring up anyways but sorry I asked the question and then perhaps it brings up a few other details in this realm to do with education because it's because you're one semester away from from retiring from many many years but 28 years 28 years between Wesleyan and Mills College and it reflection how do you feel about your own personal role as an educator and RA and the other thing more generally the institutional role such as the ones you taught at what role do you think they play in the future of the music and whether you've already addressed this a little bit but perhaps you can add a little bit more to that point I feel that education has to be reconfigured in America Mills College and Wesleyan University are special in the sense that there's more flex options as compared to University for myself over the last 28 years has been beautiful in the sense of having the opportunities to meet and work with young people that for me has been special it has also been complex complex in the sense that being inside of the University I have no more illusions about the university I see how it works and I think the university needs to emphasize bringing in people who are not just technocratic I do not mean to exclude the tecnique rats I love the technocrats I only need to say that there needs to be a better balance between technical arts of professors and artistic creative professors I feel that the university needs to become trans idiomatic in the way of Wesleyan you know sue Marcin you know you begin to learn about world music I think especially we've come to a point where it won't be possible to transmit the real information if we're only thinking about America music is not about America music is about manifestation and we need for our educational institutions to open up and we need to help the next generation of educators understand that it's okay not to know everything to be able to admit that you don't know everything and so then we can really look at what you really know because there's a lot of masquerading in University I'm especially critical PhD programs I've been working in this area for 28 years with PhD students and watching how it works the university needs to recalibrate its energies to stay relevant in my opinion and part of that recalibration would be humility to working in a community 3 learning the real fundamentals and how to apply those fundamentals to help our young people better understand history as a way to have a better sense of present time and as a platform to help young people look into the future you're speaking to the fact that sometimes the PhD candidate is in a sort of isolated world without any real interaction with perhaps the present tense of realities of various things if it's if we look at just in the field of music alone there's sort of in this sort of isolated thing doing all this research whatever there's a lack of connection if you don't know what direction you're going in then any direction will do if you've never experienced the it of the real time moment then theory takes on a value system that sometimes becomes very unhealthy theory is what the technocratic I have on because they can't actually do it themselves and so suddenly one plus one equals two but as a musician composer you know that it's the number three not the number two the number three gives flex options and transpositional options that transcends dialectic reasoning and this difference while the surface might look not so important but on the unsurfaced it isn't and the the difference can be observed through time words like you get a guy who can play like Coltrane in his first five years he plays although mr. Coltrane slips in the next 10 years it was all of the looks just a peace Queen like mr. Coltrane even but so we're between the 10th and the 20th year disagree wait a minute ok this guy is a stylist or this gal is established we love stylus but the university should be in the business of teaching the traditionalists teaching the stylists and teaching the restructure las' and in my opinion the way to approach that is to have a holistic thought unit which is why in the past 20 years I speak of my music system ism I speak of my system as a tri central unit as a way to start the process of reconfiguring the psychology and the the transpositions of the psychology in a way that reflects the experiences of the artists in that dimension that you work in quite often opera is a form of musical presentation and artistic expression that you has always enjoy a flexibility in terms of its definition how do you personally define what opera is or given your clear commitment to this as a composer how does this form fulfill your deeper aspirations of artistic opera has been incredibly important to me since I turned 40 as a young guy however I did not like I couldn't be late if there was one guy whose work I hated it was Richard Wagner I this is too different for me when I hit 40 years old I asked myself this question why is it that I love the great music of Alban Berg but I've never given his operas a chance and so I wouldn't solve boys and boys that turned me upside down after that all roads would lead to Richard I know it was exhilarating for me to see now for me opera is a continuation of my interest in narrative structures storytelling what am I saying I'm saying this at some point as I got closer to the 40's I started I started experiencing a change I discovered that intellectual interesting was not enough even though I was always interested in the serialism of course Stockhausen would become one of my daddy's but I found at 40 I wanted something more than you know less you know that's real interesting and it was at that point that I began to become aware of the importance of storytelling oh the beauty of songs have always been a Sinatra or Johnny Mathis Billy Eckstine like Barbra Streisand kind of guy and I wanted to look for a way to bring vocal music musics into my work and so the Opera for me on the third plane would be opportunity to build structures with narrative logic connections an opportunity to explore poetic logics an opportunity to look at three dimensionality working with singers who are actors and actresses who are moving in the space bringing the community together the light crew comes in from this angle the stage who comes from this angle people working together to achieve one thing I think opera is great and who is my hero I see mine I see the Trillium opera complex system as a post Bogner expression a great deal from the great master and I continue which role and ceremonial musics it's a third tier of the document and so the trillion system was designed based on the eaching did that way with the e Ching as you know you come to it you ask the question you throw pennies and each in gives you a story and from the story you will decide for what that means to you if it has been to your question yes okay the third tier of my system starts with the tri-axial windings remember that I did were try Cedric thought unit involve philosophy above experience involves a set of ideas and a rich masseur and so before talking about before answering your question I go back to the tri centric try axiom ridings the triad axiom writings establishes of subject focus it takes a secondary focus basis on what that subject is and we can sort of dialectic in terms of questions and answers along with that no no that let me finish this along with that methodology are brought in schematics and the schematics a reduction and so the opera's system builds of story from a schematic in other words trillium is the living manifestation of the tri-axial right that's what I'm trying to say and so I've tried with my system do create a holistic thought unit where everything connects in different kinds of ways an approach of this nature it was consistent with what was happening with the music anybody and so Trillium is the fulfillment of the third house in my experience being let me explain explain this a little better experience on the plane on the triplane would be area space logics experience would be improvisation or improvisational real time strategies and house of the circle on a third plane would be the try axiom writings the philosophy going to the rectangle the rectangle would be ideas the kind of the idea of ideas are architectonic modeling and to two to four different areas survivors in this context means I can bring some composition from the system and we can move that through the system or if we want to take Johnny Mathis singing chances are we can bring it through house 12 and so this is a model that is trans in humanik and the elements are trans in your mannequin can be put together in different ways in the same way that the quartet began to put together compositions from all over the place let me have to throw something else at you then it did slight deviation but it's related exactly to where you're going one of the elements of musical construction that I had the pleasure of experiencing through your music was a unique form of modular organization which is sandwiches speaking about which resulted in a rich polyphonic and polyrhythmic musical environment it's one way of terming it this musical strategy at the time involved independent assignments which you at that time called pulse tracks which we are often the bass and drums would do together or other pairs of the quartet would do sometimes but as we began to move forward with this way of marveling Butler yeah you guys right this was the collective way in which we ended up working to some degree which is an interesting point as well but simultaneously you and Marilyn might play an independent composition or one other improviser composition all these things would happen at the same time we had different roles and this was the interpretation of these compositions for sometimes strict sometimes loose sometimes improvising with the material variaty off the theme i'm curious could you share how you thought how these threads of working this way of working in a very dynamic you're drawing from a very dynamic and broad resource base that's really clear when you talk about the opera it's really clear when you talk about in the way in which you've worried about the whole try centric logic system when you are i mean spending curious in what early formative ways do you did these ideas of collective thinking multidimensional layers going on at the same time where where did you find the beginnings of this way of thinking a musical organization wherein you're inheriting your story in your longer story this is a wonderful question and thank you for this question I feel that does one of the significant factors of the time space of the 60s was as opposed to the 50s the 50s would have the national music expression the 60s we have a global music aware him suddenly Ravi Shankar people that we normally did never listened to would come into our experiences so you more than most would gain early awareness of earth music because we have never been and so for me there were simple things I was one I was not interested in denying any aspect of myself whether it was my love for a Cecil Taylor or my love for Paul Desmond my motto is not based on rejection of anything my model is based on an affirmation love that every day as such the alto saxophone users would be the genesis laboratory after the first solo concert what am I saying I'm saying knows everything was happening in the a Jim the world was changing we're experiencing all about different musics and because of us Stockhausen sanaka Scott I said okay it's time you know freedom freedom the word freedom was always used in the 60s connected to the civil rights so I decided it was time to do a solo concert because I was so deep into shorebirds and stuff the first solo concert I did it was great it was great for two or three seconds I was repeating so suddenly I understood I'm not interested in freedom the freedom that was being proposed in the 60s in many ways was not the correct definition of what freedom is freedom is for me to be free from something not to be existentially free and so the second solo concert was the real concert that started my solo music since I began to divide things up so that I would not bump into the same ideas all the time the new differentiated in a way this is the beginning perhaps you were defining certain territories perhaps so that you could differentiate one thing from another and begin as you say they use these building blocks yes differentiation and then the oblique scale for instance I tried in the early period always to have with every solo saxophone syntax to take that syntax and transpose it to the notated space in the solo piano the solo piano music takes the logics from the solo saxophone music and put it in concrete notation space that's that was the always the function and then from there to expand it into the orchestral space or chamber space or dual space it would probably be better to say do little space because I'm talking about solo saxophone solo piano to the number two and later and so every logic would be manifested different and as a result I created a context for restructuring or modeling and that that's what really came the chance to reflect on and evolve different contexts and domains from musicians I play from I mean it was Anthony Braxton quartet but it was actually really a family and we learned from one another I came into the group clear ideas some of which didn't work so we do it all the way and we evolved it but doing the time/space we work together musicians who happen to be beautiful people like you guys and having a chance to work with musicians who complain whenever I write or who could who would listen to whatever concept I would come up with and then I realize it was a cosmic blessing and so I'm learning from the family of the music and try to evolve my work based on what seems to work what doesn't work the understanding being that there is such a thing as something works and something does not work that those operatives are still in place depending on what does I think there was a trust in the group that allowed for you you felt comfortable enough with us and your own music at that point that you things could be allowed to not happen in the conventional sense of improvisation where we just go out and do but instead that there was a sense like you're but you just just a unravel an involved in evolution of organization yes and here the way the quartet kind of took that ball and ran with it uncertain as a group as a collective and collectively thinking your music was at the heart of everything that we did we were playing your compositions we were using your compositions but the way in which we interacted with that environment music was the family yes and it was had a fluidity to it that allowed us to experiment on our own individually collectively on stage in sort of an organization and thinking this bro musicians into the quartet who didn't have the knowledge base that you guys and one girl Marilyn had it could not have worked I needed musicians who were students of the music who or had interests in world music music the conceptual dynamics of the music the musicians who could understand the state of where we were at in that time period the challenges of that time and so I was that the cosmic forces blessed me by bringing me musicians like yourself sir people who were and are super brilliant super dedicated and exploring themselves because you are a great composer separate from me you just a great composer and I'm not being nice and looking at what has happened in transpired through time time tells the hotel you can talk about what you want but if there's nothing to show for it you guys do you have to do the work Mad Dog so yes because of having three extraordinary individuals who believed in me then I was able to push back on some of those unnecessary controls not needed anymore because we were everything else for different formal models and models that would allow for composites energies and so the significance of the quartet in my opinion was connected to the significance of that time period with was the challenge to find fresh models challenge to have holism are the challenge to respond to the new technical breakthroughs of that period and we have people who were aware of many different kinds of musics it was a guy named Jerry Hemingway who turned me on the country music it was a guy named Jerry you know this guy to the world that we didn't even know exist it was coming from different directions so how to take that information and do something with it as opposed to having New Age Indian music or something new age music we weren't interested in that we were interested in learning from composite reality but then taking that information and making it our own a part of making it our own for me was to find out what was my domain and what was not my domain because we mistresses have talent before and unit structures was like the best people on the planet in my group I don't have to tell these people everything I'll just move the principle composition that we're gonna do will be these four Oh and Shannon no will target a solo for Jerry here would target a solo for mark here so we had targeted moments but we also had vast spaces we can go listen to it and it's not just a thought or memory we took care of business I came to meet with two hearts and you have two hearts today why because your guy was a true heart you

Channel: Gerry Hemingway

Views: 12,151

Rating: 4.9560437 out of 5

Keywords: Braxton Interview, Anthony Braxton, Gerry Hemingway, Mark Dresser, Marilyn Crispell, Willisau Jazz Festival, Jazz'n'More, Anthony Braxton Quartet, Cecil Taylor (Musical Artist), Association For The Advancement Of Creative Musicians (Nonprofit Organization), Wesleyan University (College/University), Improvised Music, Teaching Jazz, Jazz Education, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ghost Trance Music, Pulse Track Music, Modular Music, Opera (Composition Type), Gerry Hemingway Interviews

Id: A1JK_2YSQVA

Length: 57min 13sec (3433 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 05 2014