Black History Month on Where’s the Beat?
Anthony Braxton: Composition No. 107 CENTAUR CDCM from Computer Music Series vol.
10, CRC2110
Tr. 8 (7:07)
To his list of achievements and awards,
Anthony Braxton may now add the 1994 MacArthur Fellowship: the so-called
"genius" grant of (in his case) $300,000, awarded to individuals
nominated for outstanding and original contributions to their field.
The
timing of this crowning achievement couldn't be better for Braxton's most
recent professional goals: he is the founding Artistic Director of the newly
incorporated Tri-Centric Foundation, Inc., a New York-based
not-for-profit corporation including an ensemble of some 38 musicians,
four to eight vocalists, and computer-graphic video artists assembled to
perform his composition
The
ensemble's debut at New York's The Kitchen sold out the last and most of
the first two of three nights, through the press excitement it generated; the
reviews--in Down Beat and the Chicago Tribune (John
Corbett), the Village Voice (Kevin Whitehead), and the New York
Times
(Jon Pareles)--ranged from positive to ecstatic.
Most
importantly, the musical success of the event inspired Braxton to pursue the
"three-day and -night" program concept for this ensemble, including lectures/informances,
and splinter chamber performances, around the world.
The
second New York event, indeed, expanded on the concept: The Knitting Factory
presented six nights of Anthony Braxton and his music, in all the variety of
its vision. The first night showcased the composer's solo alto saxophone
playing; the second his treatments of jazz-traditional material, both as reeds
player and pianist; the third, his music for solo piano, and for synthesizer
and acoustic sextet; the fourth showcased his new "Ghost Trance"
music for small-to-medium groups; and the fifth and sixth his large-ensemble
music, including Composition 102, with giant puppets. As
with The Kitchen, all six nights included a full house and enthusiastic
response.
This
successful first season paid off: the second season has been virtually paid for
by grants from the Mary Flagler Carey Charitable Trust and the Rockefeller
Foundation in New York City. It will feature the world premiere of the
four-hour opera Trillium R at the John Jay Theater in New York, and the
theatrical Composition 173 (for actors, improvisers, and ensemble) in
collaboration with New York's Living Theater members, at The Kitchen.
Anthony
Braxton is widely and critically acclaimed as a seminal figure in the music of
the late 20th century. His work, both as a saxophonist and a composer, has
broken new conceptual and technical ground in the trans-African and
trans-European (a.k.a. "jazz" and "American Experimental")
musical traditions in North America as defined by master improvisers such as
Warne Marsh, John Coltrane, Paul Desmond, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, and he
and his own peers in the historic Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians (AACM, founded in Chicago in the late '60s); and by composers such as
Charles Ives, Harry Partch, and John Cage.
He
has further worked his own extensions of instrumental technique, timbre, meter
and rhythm, voicing and ensemble make-up, harmony and melody, and improvisation
and notation into a personal synthesis of those traditions with 20th-century
European art music as defined by Schoenberg, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Varese and
others.
Braxton's
three decades worth of recorded output is kaleidescopic and prolific,
and has won and continues to win prestigious awards and critical praise. Books,
anthology chapters, scholarly studies, reviews and interviews and other media
and academic attention to him and his work have also accumulated steadily and
increasingly throughout those years, and continue to do so. His own
self-published writings about the musical traditions from which he works and
their historical and cultural contexts (Tri-Axium Writings 1-3) and his
five-volume Composition Notes A-E are unparalleled by
artists from the oral and unmatched by those in the literate tradition.
Braxton
is also a tenured professor at Wesleyan University, one of the world's centers
of world music. His teaching career, begun at Mills College in Oakland,
California, has become asmuch a part of his creative life as his own work, and
includes training and leading performance ensembles and private tutorials in
his own music, computer and electronic music, and history courses in the music
of his major musical influences, from the Western Medieval composer Hildegard
of Bingen to contemporary masters with whom he himself has worked (e.g. Cage,
Coleman).
Braxton's
name continues to stand for the broadest integration of such oft-conflicting
poles as "creative freedom" and "responsibility,"
discipline and energy, and vision of the future and respect for tradition in
the current cultural debates about the nature and place of the Western and
African-American musical traditions in America. His newly formed New York-based
ensemble company is bringing to that debate a voice that is fresh and strong,
still as new as evereven as it takes on the authority of a seasoned master. WEB SOURCE
Olly Wilson: Sometimes for tenor
and tape NEW WORLD RECORDS from
Videmus 80432-2
Tr. 1 (17:20)
Olly Wilson, born in St. Louis in 1937, is an internationally
renowned composer and performer of both orchestral and electronic works. He has
actively taught music at the university level since the early 1960s, and is now
a Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley, where from 1995
to 1998 he held the Jerry and Evelyn Hemmings Chambers Distinguished Chair. His
compositions have been performed by dozens of orchestras in the United States
and Europe. He has also been given numerous grants, commendations, fellowships,
and awards from institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, the National
Endowment for the Arts, the Black Music Repertory Ensemble, and the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, who elected him as a member in 1995. WEB SOURCE
Scott Joplin: Maple Leaf Rag CBC RECORDS from Rhythm n’flute MVCD 1101
Tr. 22 (3:12)
(1868-1917)
American composer and pianist, one
of the most important developers of ragtime music. Born in Texarkana, Texas,
Joplin taught himself piano as a child, learning classical music from a German
neighbor. In his teens he became an itinerant pianist in the low-life districts
that provided the chief employment for black musicians. He settled in St. Louis
in 1885. In 1893 he played at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and
in 1894 he moved to Sedalia, Missouri. There he published (1899) his
"Original Rags" and "Maple Leaf Rag" and opened a teaching
studio. He moved to New York City in 1907. In 1911, at his own expense, he
published his ragtime opera Treemonisha, a work intended to go beyond
ragtime to create an indigenous black American opera. Staged in a concert
version in 1915, it failed with the audience, leaving the composer's spirit
permanently broken.
Joplin's
music underwent a great revival after some of his compositions, including
"The Entertainer" (1902), were used as the background music in the
film The Sting (1973), and Treemonisha was staged with great success in
1975 by the Houston Grand Opera. Other Joplin compositions include
"Peacherine Rag" (1901), "Palm Leaf Rag—A Slow Drag"
(1903), "Euphonic Sounds" (1909), The School of Ragtime: Six
Exercises for Piano (1909), a work that contains his explanation of ragtime
style, and "Magnetic Rag" (1914). WEB
SOURCE
Albert Ayler: Angels ESP from Spirits Rejoice
ESP 1020
Tr. 4 (5:27)
Saxophonist
Albert Ayler (tenor, alto and soprano, as well as bagpipes and vocals) was
either a genius or a charlatan, depending on the listener's musical sensibilities.
A man at the
cutting
edge of the '60s avant-garde movement, Ayler remains an influential force in
the current revival of a genre that seeks to stretch or shatter the tonal and
rhythmic barriers of the music.
A
native of Cleveland, Ohio, Ayler was born July 13, 1936, in a musical home. His
father, Edward Ayler, was a saxophonist, violinist and singer, and his brother,
Donald, was a trumpeter who worked with Albert after the saxophonist's first
brush with fame. After starting with alto sax at age 7, Ayler studied at the
Academy of Music in Cleveland for seven years, working with R&B bands. A
stint in the U.S. Army (1958-'61) took him to Europe, where he returned in
1962, taking residence in Sweden.
Ayler
made his first recordings in late 1962 in Sweden, then taped My Name Is
Albert Ayler in Denmark in early 1963. He returned to the United States and
participated in the Jazz Composers' Guild, then recorded such iconoclastic
1964-'65 albums as Spiritual Unity, Bells and Spirits Rejoice for ESP and the rare and
long-out-of-print classic Ghosts for Danish Debut with trumpeter Don
Cherry, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray. He worked occasionally
in pianist Cecil Taylor's combo. His high-energy playing, rooted in black
gospel music, folk songs and marches, was marked by wide and wild interval
leaps, shrieks and foghorn effects. His later recordings on Impulse!, in a
career that rarely held much commercial success, began as cutting-edge examples
of the avant-garde but declined over a few years, and were considered a
sell-out by early fans. Ayler died Nov. 25, 1970, shrouded in mystery. He had
been missing for 20 days when his body was found floating in New York City's
East River.
In
1983, Ayler was elected by the Critics into the Down Beat Hall of Fame. WEB
SOURCE
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Romance of
the Prairie Lilies MARCO POLO from
Coleridge-Taylor 8.223516
Tr. 14 (6:29)
The
son of a Sierra Leonean doctor and and English mother. At the age of fifteen,
Coleridge Taylor entered the Royal College of Music to study the violin and he
also studied composition with Stanford. His best known work, which was
immensely popular during his lifetime, is "Hiawatha", a trilogy based
upon poems by Longfellow. He also wrote other works, such as the songs
"African Romances", the "African Suite" for piano, and
"Five Choral Ballads", a setting of poems on slavery by Longfellow,
which include influences from native African music. He visited America several
times, in 1904, 1906, and 1910, where he was lionised as a role model for black
composers. and was even received by President Roosevelt. He died in Croydon, in
1912. WEB SOURCE
Fela Sowande: African Suite- 1st
mov. Joyful Day CBC RECORDS SMCD 5135
Tr. 14 (7:49)
The life of Fela Sowande reads a little bit like a legend: he was born in Nigeria and, shortly before his thirtieth birthday, came to England, where he began serious studies in European music – though he led an active professional life based on his maturity in his native musical culture. Sowande worked as a jazz pianist and band leader, and earned a reputation in the official culture as an organist and administrator (with the British Ministry of Information’s Colonial Film Unit, during the Second WorldWar).
(from the liner notes, unfortunately there are no web resources for Mr. Sowande)
R, Nathaniel Dett: Magnolia Suite
– First Part NEW WORLD RECORDS from Dett: Piano
Works NW 367-2
Tr. 1-3 (8:30)
Celebrated composer Nathaniel Dett was
born in Drummondville (Niagara Falls), Ontario on October 11, 1882. He died on
October 2, 1943 in Battle Creek, Michigan. Dett studied piano as a child and
was church organist in Niagara Falls, Ontario (1898-1903). During this period
he composed numerous works, including the better known The Cake Walk and After
The Cake Walk. Among his other works are Listen to the Lambs (1914), an
eight-part anthem which was recorded by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; Juba Dance
(1913), a piano solo which has appeared in the Royal Conservatory of Music
syllabus and was a favourite of his friend Percy Grainger; and the oratorio
Ordering of Moses (1937).
Dett earned several degrees at various educational institutions
including Oberlin College (Bachelor of Music, 1908; Masters of Music, 1926);
Harvard University (Honourary Doctorate of Music, 1924); and Rochester's ESM
(Masters of Music, 1932). Dett studied piano in Paris with internationally
renowned Nadia Boulanger and performed at prestigious concert halls such as
Carnegie Hall and Boston Symphony Hall. Dett also performed for two American
presidents, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Dett taught at several distinguished schools including:
Lane College, Jackson, Tennessee 1908-11
Hampton Institute, Virginia 1913-32
Samuel Houston College, Austin, Texas 1935-37
Bennett College, Greensboro, N. Carolina 1937-42
Nathaniel Dett was dedicated to the cause of black music, winning
the Bowdoin and Frances Boott prizes in 1920 from Harvard University for his
paper, "The Emancipation of Negro Music" and for his motet, Don't Be
Weary, Traveller.
Dett also explored and promoted black music by editing collections
of spirituals and folk songs and was President of the National Association of Negro
Musicians from 1924-1926. WEB SOURCE
(editors note: Dett
is a controversial guy. Americans
and Canadians both claim him as theirs.
Certainly the fact that his family had travelled north on the
Underground Railroad certainly makes the Canadian claim, in my humble opinion,
more legitimate. And he was born
in Canada. I’ve found many
sources claiming he was born in Québec (Drummondville) but in fact they
are wrong, it was Drummondville in Ontario that later became Niagara Falls,
Ontario. An interesting guy; well
worth some more study!)
Muhal Richard Abrams: Crossbeams NEW WORLD RECORDS from the open air meeting 80512-2
Tr. 3 (7:34)
Black Saint
recording artist Muhal Richard Abrams is a pianist, composer, co-founder of the
Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and founder of the
AACM School of Music. Abrams serves currently as president of the New
York Chapter of the AACM and member of the board of directors of the National
Jazz Service Organization and, formerly, as music panelist for the National
Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.
In
April 1990, he was the first recipient of the grand international jazz award,
the JazzPar Prize, from the Danish Jazz Center in Copenhagen.
As
a performer, Abrams' musical affiliations have included Max Roach, Dexter
Gordon, Art Farmer, Clifford Jordan, Sonny Stitt, Woody Shaw, Anthony Braxton,
the Art Ensemble of Chicago, James Moody, Eddie Harris and many others.
Except for a brief period of study at the Chicago Musical College and
Governors State University in Chicago (where he studied electronic music),
Abrams is a predominantly self-taught musician who, as a result of many years
of observation, analysis and practice as a performing musician, has developed a
highly respected command of a variety of musical styles, both as pianist and
composer.
The
versatile Abrams and members of the AACM are responsible for some of the most
original new music approaches of the last three decades.
In
addition to teaching privately for the past twenty or more years, Abrams has
taught jazz composition and improvisation classes at the Banff Center in Banff,
Canada, Columbia University, Syracuse University and the BMI Composers Workshop
in New York. Abrams currently records and tours the United States with
his orchestra, sextet, quartet, duo and as a solo pianist, while continuing to
compose and score large orchestra and chamber works.
Jeffrey Mumford: a pond within the
drifting dusk CRI from Bang on a Can live
vol. 2 CD646
Tr. 6 (9:22)
Jeffrey Mumford, assistant professor of composition at the Oberlin
College Conservatory of Music, is the recipient of numerous fellowships,
grants, awards and commissions, including those from the Guggenheim Foundation,
the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music Inc., Meet the Composer and the
ASCAP Foundation. In 1994, he won the National Black Arts Festival/Atlanta
Symphony Orchestra's inaugural composition competition.
Mumford's most notable commissions
include those from the National Symphony Orchestra; Philip Berlin & the
Contemporary Music Forum of Washington, D.C.; the Walter W. Naumburg
Foundation; Cincinnati radio station WGUC; the New York New Music Ensemble; the
McKim Fund in the Library of Congress; and the Aspen Wind Quintet.
His current projects include a solo piano work for Margaret
Kampmeier; a string quartet for the Corigliano Quartet, commissioned by the
Nancy Ruyle Dodge Charitable Trust in Washington, D.C., and slated for premiere
during the 2003 season; a piano trio for a consortium of five ensembles--the
Arden, Guild, Mariposa and Gramercy Trios and the Faculty Trio of the
University of South Florida--a vocal work for soprano Deborah Norin Kuehn and
an ensemble for soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson.
Mumford's works have been extensively performed in the United
States at such venues as the Library of Congress, the Aspen Music Festival, the
Seattle Chamber Music Festival and the Bang On A Can Festival. Among the
prestigious orchestras and ensembles to play his larger works are the National
Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra,
the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the American Composers' Orchestra. His
chamber works have been performed by such major ensembles as the Corigliano,
Maia and Borromeo quartets, the Mann Duo, the CORE Ensemble, the Los Angeles
Philharmonic New Music Ensemble, the New Music Consort, the New York New Music
Ensemble and the Aspen Wind Quintet. The Washington, D.C.-based Contemporary
Music Forum, of which Mumford has been a member, has performed his music many
times.
In Europe, his music has been featured in London's Purcell Room,
at Finland's prestigious Helsinki Festival and at the Musica nel Nostro
Tempo Festival in Milan, Italy. Among the prominent soloists to perform
his music are cellist Fred Sherry, violist Misha Amory, and pianists Eliza
Garth, Margaret Kampmeier and Sarah Cahill.
Mumford, who was born in Washington, D.C., in 1955, received his
master of arts degree in composition from the University of California, San
Diego. He studied with Elliott Carter, Lawrence Moss, Bernard Rands and Peter
Odegard. He lives with his family in Oberlin, Ohio. WEB SOURCE
Tania León: Indigena CRI from
Indigena CD 662
Tr. 1 (8:18)
An extensive biography can be found here
Cecil Taylor: Tales (8 Whisps) BLUE NOTE from Unit Strucutres CDP 7 84237 2
Tr. 5 (7:10)
Pianist/composer
Cecil Taylor is one of the most explosive and exploratory musicians in the
sonic constellation. Although he has often been credited with leading the
avant-garde wing of jazz, the term jazz is not one he readily applies to his
music. Nevertheless, Taylor has been on the cutting edge of the creative music
scene for five decades. Whether he performs solo, with small groups or large
ensembles, Taylor's music fuses the base elements of jazz with techniques
culled from polyphonic classical music, African drumming, urban blues, Gamelan
chants and the spoken word. Over the course of his prolific career, he has
received the Guggenheim "genius" fellowship, been artist at residence
at several universities and has concertized with artists such as Mary Lou
Williams, Max Roach and Mikhail Barishnikov.
Born
in Long Island City, N.Y., on March 25, 1929, Taylor launched his jazz career
in the early '50s after graduating from Boston's New England Conservatory of
Music. In 1960 he performed in Jack Gelber's play The Connection and later in the decade
was one of the founding members of the Jazz Composer's Guild. His 1966 Blue
Note album, Unit Structures, is cited by some as a revolutionary work that
altered the path of modern jazz.
During the
'70s, Taylor taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Antioch
University in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and Glassboro State College in Glassboro,
N.J. In 1986 he was honored with a "Cecil Taylor Week" sponsored by
the Berlin Free Jazz Society.
Taylor
has increasingly incorporated dance, drama and the spoken word in his
compositions. His 1991 Leon release Chinampas features his poetry accompanied by
multi-instrumental improvisations. Nowadays, Taylor resides in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
and continues a busy schedule of composing music, writing poetry and
performing.
In
1975, Taylor was elected by the Critics into the Down Beat Hall of Fame. WEB
SOURCE
Sun Ra: Images LEO RECORDS from A Night in East Berlin LR 419
Tr. 2 (6:05)
Sun
Ra is one of the most unusual composers in the history of jazz. Born Herman
"Sonny" Blount in Birmingham, Ala. in 1914, Ra began playing piano at
an early age and was fronting his own group by the time he was 20. Though he
began recording in the late '40s, Ra's career didn't take off until the early
'50s, when Blount adopted his now-famous moniker ("Le Sony'ra") and
began claiming he came from Saturn.
Infatuated
with ancient Egypt, outer space and New Age mysticism, Ra formed a
Chicago-based group called the Arkestra, which played an intriguing mix of bop,
free jazz, and proto-electronic music. In 1956 he founded his own label, Saturn
Records, and five years later relocated to New York, where he established
himself as one of the most eccentric characters in town, releasing scads of
bizarre recordings which foreshadowed jazz fusion and ambient music by blending
traditional jazz instruments with electric keyboard and unconventional song
structures.
In
1970 Sun Ra moved to Philadelphia, where he continued recording and performing
for a small but loyal cult of jazz and rock fans until his death in May 1993.
In recent years there has been an orchestrated effort by music historians to
catalogue Ra's sidemen and recording sessions, an effort that resulted in the
release of the discography The Earthly Recordings Of Sun Ra.
The
Sun Ra Arkestra continues to tour and record under the directon of the Arkestra's
longtime alto player, Marshall Allen. WEB
SOURCE