Anthony Braxton celebrated his 60th birthday on June 4, 2005. Two weeks earlier, he was in Victoriaville playing three concerts, including an impromptu set with the harsh noise group
Wolf Eyes -- all three performances have been recorded and released by Disques Victo as three separate CDs. Two weeks after blowing out his 60 candles, he was in Ulrichsberg, Austria, for a weeklong residency that culminated in four performances, also recorded and released, this time as a four-CD set on Leo Records. And just like in Victoriaville,
Braxton kept it all about new, uncharted, daring music, without an iota of nostalgia. Disc one features "Composition 301" for solo piano, performed by
Genevieve Foccroulle. It is an unusual venture for
Braxton, with unusual results. The 35-minute piece offers plenty of puzzling structural and melodic ideas, but it sounds less immediately "
Braxton" than what listeners are used to. The marks of
John Cage,
Charles Ives, and
Witold Lutoslawski are more obvious here than anywhere else in his oeuvre. In his liner notes,
Braxton says that there are 11 solo piano pieces at this time and that
Foccroulle is working on a complete piano music recording. Maybe this project will provide an enhanced context for "Composition 301." Disc three is one of the very first recordings documenting
Braxton's Diamond Curtain Wall Music, i.e., his experiments with live electronics. "Composition 323a" features the saxophonist with trumpeter
Taylor Ho Bynum and percussionist
Aaron Siegel in an engaging performance. The electronics are rather discreet, enhancing the master's sound palette without denaturalizing it, and the interplay is intense while leaving room for silence. Discs two and four present two hourlong works performed by
the Ulrichsberg Tri-Centric Ensemble, a 14-piece orchestra of Austrian musicians with diverse backgrounds. It is "Tri-Centric" because of its three-headed conductorship:
Braxton acts as "origin conductor,"
Bynum is the "synchronous conductor," and
Siegel is the "polarity conductor." Conductors and section leaders are free to change course during the piece, creating strange kaleidoscopes that somehow always retain their cohesion. The two pieces performed are radical rearrangements of previously documented works ("Composition 96" and "Composition 169"). Following the various paths taken by everyone involved is a dizzying experience.
Braxton's music tends to have a stronger impact when played by smaller groups than this one, but these two performances are worthy of your time. Due to the widely different instrumentations featured in this set, some people would probably wish for separate releases. In fact, if the complete piano recordings do happen, this quadruple set could have been broken down into a two-CD set for
the Tri-Centric Ensemble recordings and a single CD for the Diamond Curtain Wall Music trio.