Reviews

Anthony Braxton and the Diamond Curtain Wall Quartet at Colston Hall in Bristol

Posted on: 2015-01-23

A very mixed bag; alternately frustrating, noisy, shrieking, discordant, perplexing, musically questionable, occasionally laughable, atonal, and migraine-inducing, it was also bizarrely, almost hypnotically compelling.

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The fact that several people walked out before the end of the first half and over a quarter of the audience didn't return after the interval tells you everything you need to know about contemporary, progressive jazz. It's the Marmite of the musical world; you either love it or you hate it. As a musical genre it's perhaps one of most divisive. And it's fair to say that both for and against camps were present at the Colston Hall on Tuesday (20 January) for Anthony Braxton and the Diamond Curtain Wall Quartet.

Some of the audience evidently knew exactly to expect. Others clearly didn't and you could tell by the look of stunned horror on their increasingly mortified faces as the musical foursome unleashed its rather distinctive jazz sound on the crowd.  

 

Certain jazz aficionados believe modern progressive jazz is the epitome, the encapsulation of the true spirit of the medium; a genuine, heartfelt expression of it power as a natural, very human art form possessed with an uncanny, almost spookily perceptive ability reach into the very nexus of musical language. Conversely, others believe it's nothing more than a series of unsynchronised, ear-shattering sonic violations by musicians in the very loosest sense of the term.

True, there were musical sonorities that weren't too far off the mark in both those categories, but it certainly made for one of the most interesting, diverse and unexpected gigs I'll experience all year. Alternately frustrating, noisy, deafening, shrieking, discordant, perplexing, musically questionable, occasionally laughable, atonal, and migraine-inducing, it was also bizarrely, almost hypnotically compelling.  

Anthony Braxton is a jazz composer, musician and improviser and certainly one of the most prolific American musicians in the world.  With over over 100 albums under his belt since the 1960s, he's been at the forefront of free-form jazz experimentation and a pioneer of the genre for decades. European art music has always influenced his musical approach, and this musical polymath often utilizes a wide range of instruments including saxaphone, clarinet and flute. 

Braxton took it in turns to play clarinet and saxophone, bobbing up and down on the spot like a vaguely bewildered, slightly intoxicated uncle; his companions riffing alongside him in free-form jazz style on trumpets and guitar, sometimes producing sounds akin to notes, most of the time resembling people who had just picked their instruments up for the first time. It was like they were warming up and getting in tune before the concert proper - for an hour and 20 minutes.

That said, it did occasionally segue into a few passages of beguiling, unsettlingly seductive beauty - more fortuitously than foreseen - and sometimes rippled with an almost perceptible, evanescent wonder with the unpredictable, non-musical sounds the foursome could get out of actual musical instruments.

A very mixed bag then; part thrilling because it opened your ears to a musical soundscape you've never heard before (and possibly might never want to hear again), part maddening because, despite all your best intentions to appreciate it as abstract, avant garde musical art, the incontrovertible reality might lead you to the ultimate conclusion that it's all just a cluster of random, untalented noise. 

2.5/5

Reviewed by Jamie Caddick for 365Bristol - the leading events and entertainment website for Bristol

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