Very wise, Ron.

Well, I just had another listen/viewing and my experience of that music seems deeper as a result (must get the entire piece!). I was listening with Richard's observations about the tensions and symbioses between improv and notated in mind, and that really does seem to be a fruitful way into it. To my mind, it certainly accounts for a lot of the extremely visceral energy in that performance; although I found all kinds of ambiguities and uncertainties popping into my mind concerning the degree to which those tensions hadthemselves been planned or negotiated in some sort of a priori fashion. Not that the effect was in any way detrimental to the musical expression - rather the opposite. The other thing that struck me, quite forcibly this time, was the sense of evolution (another reason I must hear the complete piece), of improvisational 'gambits' as well as of identifiable harmonic and gestural ideas.
One last, tangential, thing: that's a pretty damn fine sound, isn't it? Especially since it's YouTube. Is the commercial recording as good as that suggests? (It's not just the mic-ing and mixing, I think, but the technique of the performers - they're using a glorious range of sonorities as part of the musical process, and you can hear it.)

Which is kind of a negative way of looking at things... why does there need to be an answer anyway? I know we've been here many times before, but the problem with drawing the music/nonmusic line according to personal prejudices is that when look at for example that YouTube clip and say to yourself "this isn't music", OK, so what is it? It obviously involved musicians and sounds so seemingly it fulfils all the requirements of music except whether John W happens to like it, which is as Ron says a pretty arbitrary kind of definition. I guess this isn't particularly important to you - I remember, when you were a moderator, your remark regarding people here getting worked up about the board that it was "just a messageboard". I would imagine that you'd respond to people getting passionate about music that it's "just music" (correct me if I'm wrong). To many of us that's an alien attitude.

By the same token Mozart is "clearly similar" to Wagner, and anyone hearing them without experience of what to listen for is, like you, going to attend more to the similarities than the differences. Some people look no further, which I think is a shame.

Martle, I remember the commercial recording of 98 being extremely good. It would be good to know how to get hold of it somehow.  As for the technique of the performers, it maybe isn't obvious from the clip, but when I first heard the record it was above all my previously-held ideas of what the trombone could do which were exploded. How thoroughly was it prepared? I haven't had direct experience of AB at work, but from what people have told me and from what I've heard I have the impression that he values spontaneity way above premeditatedness, to the point where some of the earlier recordings of his fully-notated music (like Composition 82 for four orchestras) come over as shoddy and ill-prepared. More often, though, he has the benefit of players who come to the music with an understanding of how to make it "work" (unlike the student orchestra which performed 82) and, of course, his own participation.

Music consists of sounds occurring in time. Beyond that, I don't see why any further narrowing of the term is productive. 'Jazz', of course, is a generic term referring to some set of definable attributes (not easy to narrow them down exactly, though - what is it that makes Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor 'free jazz' and Peter Brötzmann and Evan Parker 'free improvisation' (if, indeed, that's what one thinks they are)?) so there is some point is discussing whether something 'is jazz' or not, perhaps.

Well, if that is such an unequivocal 'IS', then what exactly 'IS' this something else, then? And who is ordained with the power to determine what it 'IS'?

this is not jazz, but Ornette does seem to be saying, not playing, something about catgories and music, and composing a dance piece...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FutdXQkBvKo&NR=1


ornette and george russell discussing intuition in the ensemble:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHYOCOStIdQ&feature=related

this is offered as an ostensive definition of jazz ensemble improvisation, using song based harmony and how that differs from RB's description of AB's musical process i struggle to discern....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wbA3qIlbKA

AB claims to be 'in the tradition' and cites the following, amongst others, as strong influences:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qc3VaXtW5M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJkBNAC9Fco&feature=related


the question may be easier to respond to if framed as 'when is AB playing jazz?' rather than is he jazz or not; he certainly played it and the quartet session would pass as jazz for me. the other question then to consider perhaps is 'considered as jazz, how good is it?' but i am not going to ask that one.....or answer it...

This is just tiresome rubbish any reasonably mature adult should be ashamed of. Having people sneer at personal remarks trying to establish some kind of coherent context is irritating and adolescent, seeking some kind of ad hominem leverage irrelevant to the topic. You wouldn't do that to a friend in a pub, don't do it here. And if you do, as in a pub, expect some kind of reaction - for which I will not be demonised.

I know perfectly well about mutual respect, I also know about the above and other kinds of forum dynamics which are tiresome, pointless, and ultimately enervating.

This has at last moved onto something vaguely interesting, avoiding pronouncements that if you don't like free jazz you don't "understand" it - a dynamic I'm perfectly familiar with, and how its enacted in various situations most tellingly with religionists.

I say again, I "understand" it perfectly well - in my terms, and largely don't like it nor think it has aesthetic value. It wouldn't bother me in the slightest if someone started a thread here saying Bud Powell is rubbish, I would simply accept that there are zillions of opinions in the world about zillions of things, that's not mine and its simply not a conversation that interests me. I would not seek to defend Bud Powell; an extremely boring and pointless enterprise. Braxton though seems to provoke defensive reactions, much of it based on this "you don't understand" nonsense.

Having said that's what I think, and endured a few slings and arrows of outrageous internet fortune for saying it, I am quite happy to move onto some of the interesting points raised here.

Yes, sound and its relationship to time could indeed be applied to the music of AB, and other music for that matter, and offer a way of describing it and communicating its 'meaning'. That does not itself offer anything whatsover pertaining to whether one likes it or thinks its legitimate; equally, you could describe other conceptual reasons why this is not so - and I began to do so with reference to TS Eliot, and the 'aesthetic' you can extrapolate from his poetry, with specific reference to the difference between form and meaning - though frankly, I'm not inclined to elaborate on that having seen that the more sophisticated what you say is, the more pointless it is on the internet where dialogue is more effective in terms of less is more and some get gleeful delight from that in unconstructive ways; that complicated stuff seems to predictably become pointless mudflinging.

There certainly are ways of unpicking this, and I'm aware AB himself does it in his writings. However that means very little; the same thing happens with contemporary art and you can write a book about a crumpled ball of paper or turning a light switch on and off - and I could write a book in response saying why its still just a ball of paper and a light switch and, further, the attempt to glamourise it as something different is just that and, further, there is the point about the kind of personality that does that kind of work and what its psychology is. I am not averse to wild, mad, bad, and rocking; I sometimes still enjoy the Clash and other heavy music. I am averse to a totally abandoned pursuit of ugliness and then the subsequent attempt to intellectualise and dignify it. In my youth, there was one particularly vicious tune I sometimes "enjoyed":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3-ZiNc8UZY

I look at it now, as a more sober adult, and find it rather disturbing: they went further than the Sex Pistols did into sheer rawness in terms of both content and sound.

This is another:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_HOYk9ED9Q

I actually agree with the sentiment there: I can't stand religion. However, that is disturbing stuff like The Wasteland and Samuel Beckett on steroids, a vision of hell, without balance.

Maria Callas once said the purpose of music is to soothe the nervous system, which modern classical doesn't. I partially agree, in the sense that while I don't mind a bit of rough I do not like, so to speak, a diet of thirty strong coffees every day that fries my nervous system.

No, not directly but in terms of the aesthetic of entropy and its full ramifications and meanings. While in many respects the two aren't remotely similar, I find Crass disturbing in one similar way to free jazz: it jars me, and while I used to get a buzz from that in my youth I don't any more. I still haven't said anything wholly specific about AB incidentally, since I've not heard much. But I've had a representative taste of free jazz (and mostly don't like it and don't accept that any conception about it thereby changes its value).


Yes, that is interestingly paradoxical. Unless its the Sugababes, I guess (joke).

It was indeed precisely tiresome rubbish like the parading of "three university degrees" that led to my responding. It does not take "three university degrees" to enable one to think for oneself. Nor is being a teacher necessarily much of a recommendation. I hope, but doubt, that you are suitable ashamed of using such low tactics here.