Taylor Ho Bynum keeps his Boston connection

English: Taylor Ho Bynum, Moers Festival 2007

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From The Boston Globe:

For Taylor Ho Bynum and his sextet all roads lead through Boston. Over the past decade the Brookline-raised cornetist has become a major force on the outward-bound side of the jazz continuum. As a prolific composer and multifarious bandleader, as the cofounder of the respected label Firehouse 12 Records, and as a dogged supporter of avant-garde patriarch Anthony Braxton, Bynum has forged deep ties with many of the most adventurous improvisers associated with jazz over the past half century. He celebrates the release of his multigenerational sextet’s new Firehouse 12 album “Apparent Distance’’ tonight at Outpost 186, and while he didn’t meet all his bandmates in Boston, they share enduring ties to the Beantown scene.

Alvin Lucier: A Celebration At Wesleyan University On Nov. 4-6

From Courant.com:

He knew he couldn’t write the “serial music” that was popular in Italy as well as the Italians could, and he was no longer interested in writing jazz and classical music. “I didn’t want to rely on European models,” he said. “I wanted to free myself from a musical culture that didn’t bleong to me.” So he decided to create a musical culture that did belong to him. “I found something that was my own,” he said. Decades later, Lucier, now 80, is a revered pioneer in the field of experimental music. This weekend, Wesleyan University in Middletown will salute Lucier, who taught there for 43 years, with a festival, featuring concerts, films, symposia, an art exhibit and a flash mob of students replicating his piece “Chambers.”

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Carl Testa Profiled

From Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra:

I’m very pleased to share a new interview with bassist Carl Testa.  Carl was featured in The New York Times last month for his work producing The Uncertainty Music Series in New Haven CT, which features quite a few folks from Tri-Centric Orchestra community.  I encourage you to visit that series if you can; and if you’re not on the East Coast, have a listen to one of the many albums on Carl’s website - he’s working hard to document his music, collaborate with others and find new ways support his creative community.  Pretty impressive!

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Anthony Braxton: A Grand Thinker Of American Music, Inviting 'Friendly Experiencers'

Anthony Braxton playing a contrabass saxophone

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From NPR:

The rap on composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton has always been that his music is difficult. But Braxton himself is far from austere. He’s easily approachable, so much so that he uses the term “friendly experiencer” to describe his audience.

He’s now known as one of the grand thinkers of American music. He is a product of Chicago’s seminal free jazz collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He’s a MacArthur Fellow. He’s written five operas. He’s a professor at Wesleyan University; as a teacher, he’s encouraged successive waves of creative protégés, many of whom have recorded and performed with him.

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A Music Series Where Uncertainty Is Embraced

From NYTimes.com:

UNCERTAINTY is getting a particularly bad rap these days, not least from politicians and pundits who blame it for the reluctance of businesses to hire and consumers to spend. But to Carl Testa, a musician for whom the act of making art is not divorced from the conditions in which it is made, the rise of uncertainty is a precursor to social transformation.

Nate Wooley on Anthony Braxton

Braxton, Anthony

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From Free Music Archive:

I’ve been lucky enough to work with Mr. Braxton for about 6 or 7 years now, and although usually I’ve found that meeting your hero is a bittersweet experience, my time in Braxton’s world has always been positive, instructive, and has done nothing but reaffirm my love of art that follows its true interests and its own rules.  One of the things I hear him tell the people in his groups is that “if you stick with me, sir, you will make a million dollars”.  This is sometimes told in the negative, in that you will LOSE a million dollars.  It’s a joke, of course.

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The Strange & Frightening World Of… The Thing

Mats Gustafsson

From The Quietus:

Sweat dripping down his forehead, Mats Gustafsson grapples with his baritone saxophone, its monstrous valves belching out heavy riffs and high-pitched squalls. At his side, Ingebrit Håker Flaten wrestles with his double bass, exploring its percussive qualities as much as its harmonic range. Behind them, drummer Paal Nilssen-Love‘s arms are a blur, creating a whirlwind of polyrhythms as his bass drum pounds away in a metre of its own. Out of freewheeling improvisations emerge recognisable nuggets of rock riffage: Lightning Bolt, PJ Harvey, Black Sabbath‘s ‘Iron Man’.

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Frank Zappa: The clean-living hellraiser

Records on wheels, Toronto, sept. 24 1977

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From BBC News, a review of a new Zappa memoir:

But by and large her new memoir of the Zappa years will disappoint anyone who thinks it must have been non-stop hedonism and exotic substances. She says Zappa’s true character was not as outsiders expected. “Frank Zappa was so serious about his work: it was his whole life. He did nothing but get up in the morning, compose all day at the piano and then go to bed. Between times he was chain-smoking and drinking endless cups of coffee. The melee went on around him but he ignored it.

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The music of Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez, a friend of Górecki during the ...

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From The Economist, another article on Mr. Boulez.

At 86, Mr Boulez hardly needs to work so hard. His career has already been long and successful. His most famous teacher, Olivier Messiaen, presciently declared him to be the future of music. During the 1940s and 1950s, with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono, Mr Boulez created a brave new world of music, divorced from traditional views of melody and harmony. Together they offered composers a break with the musical past—which then, as now, dominated most concert halls. With his natural charisma and extraordinary (and polemical) musical gifts, Mr Boulez has exercised untold influence on his contemporaries in Europe and America.

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Pierre Boulez: Rebel with a Cause

Pierre Boulez

From The Guardian, a Boulez profile in anticipation of upcoming UK performances:

I am listening to Pierre Boulez‘s Sur Incises. It’s a sensual musical bath of sonorous reverberation and exotic resonance, music that shimmers and glints with a seductive play of instrumental timbres that no composer had ever come up with before. Boulez makes three pianos, three harps, and three percussionists – who play steel drums, vibraphones, and marimbas – swell, soar, and flow with a ceaseless cascade and ripple of sound. It’s a ride on a musical magic carpet.

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