Eugene (1989)

Label: Black Saint Category: Music Average customer rating: Media: Audio CD Number Of Discs: 1 UPC: 027312013726 EAN: 0027312013726 ASIN: B0000010Z9 Release Date: 1993-09-08

Tracks:

1. Composition No.112
2. Composition No.91
3. Composition No.134
4. Composition No.100
5. Composition No.93
6. Composition No.45
7. Composition No.71
8. Composition No.59

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Customer Reviews:

Creative music for a big band.......2001-08-12

The music runs the gamut from fairly straightahead jazz to highly abstract composition. Composition 112 is a mid-tempo swing piece that strongly suggests Eric Dolphy's work through its angular melody & its use of vibes--it bears comparison with Dolphy's _Iron Man_ date. Composition 134 is an exercise in the overlay of interlocking ostinati: the effect is like hearing a roomful of metronomes carefully calibrated but at different speeds. Somehow Braxton's "title"--an image of a man and woman on the top of a building overlooking a cityscape, while a red biplane comes in to land on the rooftop--is exactly appropriate. Composition 100, by the sharpest of contrasts, is entirely outside the jazz idiom: it's an exercise in the quietly shifting expansion & contraction of the musical space, each insturment playing a different line: eventually after a series of irregular gatherings & dispersals of voices, there's a long silence, & a more unified passage concludes the piece. Composition 45 (the earliest piece on this disc) starts with a lumbering 6/4 motif rather like a march, then suddenly shifts to a continuous sound-space with fluttering reeds & interjections from the drums & tympani; a drum solo leads to a series of tumbling fanfares; then a vibes solo over mournful brass; & then the initial march resumes, newly energized, to take centre stage--there's a remarkable, splenetic tenor solo here over the orchestra's clangorous supporting chords. It gets a rise out of the audience, only to undo itself into delicate near-silence for an arco bass solo that forms the bridge to the next track (Composition 71, which works off a a sinuous 4/4 groove).

Not an easy listen, though those who've listened to much Braxton will be familiar enough with the vocabulary: dissonant, angular, & yet a convincing outgrowth of the entire jazz tradition. The feeling here is a lot "cooler" than on Braxton's small-group discs, in part because of the instrumentation (the vibes in particular), in part because Braxton's scorching alto isn't featured extensively. Yet the disc is compelling & rewards the attention: congratulations to all these players for putting themselves at the service of some very difficult music & pulling it off.

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