CDOTD 08/02/2025

 Anthony Braxton with the Northwest Creative Orchestra: Eugene (1989) (Black Saint)

I visited Eugene, Oregon for the first time a few weeks ago. I'd summarily describe it as a cute college town. It's picturesque. There are two buttes (a kind of low mountain) that straddle the town, the East Butte and West Butte, that give a great view of the town below. There's a medium sized concert hall that benefits from being along the path from Seattle and Portland, to northern California. I'm told Napalm Death played there.

There are some nice restaurants and shops. If you are interested in such things, cannabis can be bought very cheaply. There are signs along the highway outside of town boasting $50 for an ounce, possibly even less.

Eugene is also not immune to the homelessness that plagues Portland. Considering how much smaller Eugene is, it's possible it's comparable per capita. But that's just idle speculation on my part. 

I was visiting my friend Josh Wulff, who is in the middle of a two year graduate degree and TA position. Take come courses, TA some courses, grade papers, play in ensembles, coach ensembles, for a stipend. He mentioned how a significant amount of the movie Animal House was filmed there. There's also some major Nike money that's gone into the sports facilities.

I've long had a curiosity regarding Eugene, based on this particular album. Recorded in 1989 but released in 1991, this is one of the many albums of Braxton's music after the publication of Graham Locke's book Forces in Motion, published in the US in 1989. It's part interview, part review, part biography, and part road diary of the 1985 Braxton Quartet in England (Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway). Though there are a number of contenders, there's little disputing that this is one of Anthony's most significant and greatest ensembles.

This album is one that really cemented my interest in his music. It's one of the best documents of his "creative music orchestra" music (read: big band). It's not as clearly recorded as a studio project, but it's amazing that this is a document of a single concert. 

I know from experience this music is not easy. I pulled together a more modest version of this sort of project in Pittsburgh. It was very interesting to see Anthony manage a group of very dedicated but nervous musicians. He was confident, direct. "We're going to do [this], followed by [that]" etc. He places a huge emphasis on the downbeat when conducting, using close to a full arm's length to emphasize the beginning of every measure. After playing the first several measures of our first piece in rehearsal, he stopped and urged everyone to play at half the volume. After running one piece (we worked on four), there'd always be time for a few minutes' break.

Also part of the rehearsals was coaching on the Music Language Improvisation System. That's Anthony's name for his conducted improvisation cues. I have little doubt that it's an element of this performance too. The performance is continuous, and the MLIS is probably employed in between works.

This does point out the nature of some of the compositions, though. You'd have to be a true Braxtophile (or look up the recordings), but I'll mention: 134 he a defined ostinato and compositional logic (ascending minor thirds) so it's easy to pick it out on casual listening. Other works are complexes of polyrhythmic activity with brief improvisations layered in, making it difficult to tell exactly which is which. In some ways that's exciting, that blurring of what's composed and what isn't. It sometimes runs the risk of sound formless, like we're waiting for the next solid event to occur. 

Clearly though, for as many notes as Anthony writes, it's the improvisations that are the life, the gusto of the performance. However he may veer from standard jazz practices, it has that in common with mainstream jazz.

Anthony has just been placed in the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame. Seriously it's about goddamned time. So maybe it is jazz after all?  Eh, who cares. I was thinking of how little of the content of this blog is thoughts on jazz music, something I myself happen to practice. But maybe, like Anthony, I don't want my listening and output to be defined by idiomatic conventions. Miles Davis didn't want to be called a jazz musician, he was a musician. Likewise my late friend Chuck Austin. I'm in that camp, along with Mr. Braxton. Musician.