By Lee Rice Epstein
Almost immediately after listening to the album, I reached out to Alexander
Hawkins to discuss some of what was behind the making of Togetherness
Music, both pragmatically and philosophically. We communicated by email
over several weeks, and what follows is slightly edited for clarity.
First, regarding the logistics of the recording. Given the state of things
with COVID-19, what was the process for arranging the recording session
[July 30, 2020, at Challow Park Studios, Oxfordshire, UK]?
Remarkably, there was a window over here in the UK when something of this
scale was safe, and legal. Where I was fortunate was in the floorplan of
the studio near Oxford I wanted to use: it actually has an extremely large
live room, and this meant that we could lay everything out with the
appropriate social distancing, but also without compromising either sight
lines between players and conductor, or indeed an optimal layout from a
sonic point of view. I would never have dreamt of inviting musicians into a
situation where they might feel uneasy (especially given that with the
dearth of work over the pandemic period, there were very real pressures to
accept work); this would never be the right thing to do ethically, or
simply from the perspective of teasing out the best playing possible. But
thankfully, due to the amazing work of the studio, and the patience and
good humour of everyone involved, the session itself was very relaxed; and
actually, more than that—a very real thrill for all of us, given that it
had been many months since most had played with other people.
There are threads of multiple motifs and concepts from previous
compositions throughout. James Fei discusses this in the liner notes, but
how long have you been working on Togetherness Music as a complete suite?
Three of the movements here originated in a commission from Aaron
Holloway-Nahum and the Riot Ensemble, and we performed these in a couple of
concerts in early 2019. These concerts were really wonderful, and
especially during the second, the music was really beginning to 'breathe'.
Almost immediately afterwards, I began to think about how I could develop
things to reflect some of the potential directions I was hearing during the
concerts. I had some kind of intuition that the Riot commission music could
sit alongside a couple of other ideas I had lying around; and so around the
time the first lockdown began, I began to look at the music in more detail
to see if there was any more concrete basis to this intuition.
Essentially, what I noticed was that each of these units of material I was
looking to work with was organised around some basic transformations of a
simple motif. Once I had that, the rest more or less fell into place. In
its final form, the piece can be thought of in two halves (the third and
fourth movements segue from one another, so as to not to make anything too
obvious): a solo feature (in movement I, for Evan; in movement IV, for me),
followed by a contrast (movement II is the most open, movement V is the
most through-composed); followed by a tutti (movement III and VI share a
technique for harmonisation the melody line, and numerous cells of this
line are shared between the two movements).
And then there is the addition of another "Baobabs" composition. At this
point, there have been solo, trio, quartet, and ensemble recordings (on
Song Singular
, Alexander Hawkins Trio, the Alexander Hawkins Ensemble albums No Now Is
So and
Step Wide, Step Deep
, the piece “Sun[g]” from the ensemble album Unit[e], and the Convergence
Quartet album Song/Dance). I know of at least two others, “Unequal Baobabs
(Goal by Garrincha)” and the site-specific LSO performance of “Unknown
Baobabs.” And in this recording, I hear threads of the original, some of
which sound like they're moving almost in reverse? Could you talk a bit
more about“Ecstatic Baobabs” and its change in structure from the more
formally additive versions?
As you say, the 'Baobabs' series are all variations on an additive
structure: cell A, then cell A+B, A+B+C, and so on. My big inspiration for
these pieces was Braxton's composition 23C, although of course, there are
other wonderful incarnations of the idea, such as Rzewski's 'Coming
Together'. Various pieces in the series simply change the melody, although
there are certain melodic cells which are common to many of them (a certain
group of three trills appears in most, for example). Others change the
rules of repetition in some way—so for example, in the trio and sextet
versions, one group of instruments plays the material additively, at the
same time as another deals with it subtractively.
'Ecstatic Baobabs' has its own melody, and a slightly different take on the
structure too. Usually the scores for these pieces are presented as a
simple melody line, with strategically placed repeat bars marking out the
geography for the performer. For this version, I started by producing a
score like this; but then improvised a separate realisation of this score
for each instrumentalist, and transcribed these realisations—which I then
reworked so as to be more idiomatic for the strings (the harmonics, and so
on). So the actual parts for this movement actually appear to be more or
less through-composed, and without repeat bars (I say 'more or less',
because there are also short windows for guided improvisation embedded in
the line).
There is one other element here, and you are absolutely correct: two of the
string players (Hannah Marshall and Benedict Taylor) are not playing a part
for 'Ecstatic Baobabs', but instead for the original 'Baobabs' composition,
so that we have this sense of a ghost of something familiar within the
texture. At some stage, I would like to perform all of the Baobabs series
simultaneously, and this is a small step towards how that might work.
Evan Parker seems so thoroughly stitched to the performance, even as his
part is improvised. Did you, Parker, and Aaron Holloway-Nahum discuss a
plan for his improvisation?
Throughout most of the score, and for all of the musicians, the directions
as to when to start and stop improvising are indicated (for the most part,
these windows are buried within notation; and in various passages, there is
'guided' improvisation—perhaps as to a language in which to begin, or how
to relate to the ensemble). However, once we had established this rough
organisation, the instruction was very much not to feel constrained by
these indications if that felt like an interesting musical choice in the
context: in other words, we were always looking to play music first, and
the composition second. Evan's part was slightly different, in that apart
from one very small set of gestures within the ensemble in movement IV, he
never had any notation to play explicitly, or any guidance as to language
(although he did have the same guidance as others as to when to come to the
fore, etc.).
However, for example in movements III and VI, he did have the principal
melodic voice in front of him, so that he always had the option to follow
or deliberately avoid contours, pitch sets, and so on, in his improvising.
The other way in which he is stitched-in is through instructions in the
ensemble parts. So, for instance, the way the all-interval chord (with
which the ensemble enters at the opening of the piece) collapses into the
octave unison is flexible, and behaves differently depending on how Evan
approaches his opening improvisation.
But perhaps how I should have tackled this question is initially not to
have talked about the composition, but to have focused on Evan and stated
the obvious: he is such a master that I'm not sure I could write anything
which would be anywhere near as interesting as what he would do himself. At
the same time as being such a powerful individual voice, he is also
peerless as an ensemble musician: part of his magic is how he is able to
tailor such a deeply personal language to the musical 'moment'—in other
words, I feel that knitting himself of his own accord into a context in a
fascinating way is simply part of his brilliancy.
[At some point in listening to Togetherness Music, I began to think about
Bill Dixon's late albums, like
17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur
,
Tapestries for Small Orchestra
, and
Envoi
. To me, a strength of Hawkins's compositions are the bidirectionality of
the ensemble's movement. And I find some overlaps with the depth and
lushness of Dixon's approach; thinking about Dixon led me to some questions
I had about the titling of the pieces here, specifically ones that could
work as either political or autobiographical gestures. So, I asked about
this.]
Titles are a really interesting one for me. I'm one of those people who
don't experience music visually, or in a narrative sense. So the things I
write (or indeed play) are never 'depictions of', or 'impressions of', or
indeed really 'about' anything.(I should say that I of course love much
music which is explicitly programmatic—whether that's the Berlioz
'Symphonie Fantastique,' “Circus '68 '69” from Liberation Music Orchestra,
or whatever—it's just that those aren't the terms on which I can personally
engage with it). I suppose in this sense, I'd align myself more with a
'music about music' aesthetic. But actually, I think this can potentially
be quite liberating when it comes to the title of the piece, which can then
do a number of things… perhaps express some commentary on matters internal
or external to the piece; perhaps provide a playground for technical play
(little word games or something. Evan is fond of this idea, I sense: he was
delighted with his 'Leaps in Leicester' concept for our duo CD some years
back); and so on. Actually, I once read some really interesting comments
from Muhal Richard Abrams, in which he said something essentially very
similar to this with respect to titles.
[To understand more about Abrams and his approach towards composition
titles, as well as directing improvisation within ensemble settings, I
recommend reading
Frank Oteri's wonderful and lengthy interview with Abrams from 2016
.]
Titling can actually be fairly laborious for me—the ideas very rarely
'flow' (the one exception being the concept for
Unit[e]
, where CD one's titles consist of two words, with the addition of a
bracketed letter before those which follow, where those on CD two are
formed by the addition of a bracketed letter afterwards). So as a result, a
few years ago, I started keeping lists of interesting phrases/ideas in a
notebook, which seemed to have some kind of resonance. These phrases were
often from things I was reading—hence 'Iron Into Wind' and the subtitle
'Pears From An Elm' (both from Eduardo Galeano, whom I love). To the extent
I can, these appear without context in my notebook, so that I can 'forget'
what they're about, and paraphrase/repurpose/manipulate them etc., much as
I do various musical jottings I have.
So as to the titles on Togetherness Music:
1) Indistinguishable from Magic: I don't actually know where I got this
from. Clearly the phrase comes from Arthur C. Clarke, but I have to admit,
I've never read Clarke—and I didn't realise the attribution when I found
the title! At any rate, it seems to be a nice reflection on music itself,
and also what Evan has pioneered with his circular breathed soprano
language.
2) Sea No Shore: there's a little more to this one. I have a background in
playing the organ, and this is a hymn tune/harmonisation I've always loved
[“How Shall I Sing That Majesty”]. I'm firmly agnostic, but nonetheless,
these hymns often have wonderful poetry in them. The final verse of this
one is as follows:
How great a being, Lord, is Thine,
Which doth all beings keep!
Thy knowledge is the only line
To sound so vast a deep.
Thou art a sea without a shore,
A sun without a sphere;
Thy time is now and evermore,
Thy place is everywhere.
Well, those first four lines I can do without… but what amazing imagery in
the next two! Then one day I was listening to the radio with my partner,
when this came on, and she remarked how she had always loved these lines
too. At that point, I was beginning work on this
commission for the Berlin Jazz Festival
, and so a manipulation of that 'A sun without a sphere' (= 'Sun No Sphere'
= 'Sunnosphere') felt like an intriguing title. I was also in the process
of looking for titles for this album (that's something else I should have
mentioned above, 99% of the time, the repertoire gets recorded long before
it has a name!), and so the sister title also felt very interesting: 'a sea
without a shore' = 'Sea No Shore'.
3) Ensemble Equals Together: this was actually very nearly the title for
the Unit[e] album. Absolutely—this is, as you say, one with a definite
political thought behind it: I believe the perfect state of being for a
musical ensemble (and therefore by extension…) is one where a group of
'equals' (a starting point which so many macho narratives of the heroic
jazz soloist ignore—echoes here too of 'the reality of the sweating brow'
from Braxton's Tri-Axium Writings) do something 'together'(hence ideas of
solidarity, collective action, common enterprise etc.). Then there is the
more playful reading of this as a straight fact from e.g. a french language
textbook: 'Ensemble = Together' as in 'this means that'.
4) Leaving the Classroom of a Beloved Teacher: I can't for the life of me
find the reference, but bizarrely, I can visualise the series of books from
which I'm pretty sure the phrase originated! (Penguin recently published a
series of excerpts from larger works—usually 50-60 page 'pamphlets'—which
they sold for £1; and I found these a really interesting way to sample some
authors, to find a 'way in' for further reading). But I think your
observation about something potentially autobiographical is spot on. It's
not a 'concrete' gesture, but I guess maybe it potentially just invites
interesting questions… who is doing the 'leaving'? who is the teacher? Or
is the teacher a 'genre' (jazz? classical music?)? Etc. I guess what's
significant for me here is not that a listener would think about how these
questions apply to me as the person doing the 'leaving'—I think that would
be far too self-important! More that these layers of questions are there if
anyone wants to sit and reflect on the titles. I'm also perfectly happy if
someone listens to the music and never notices the title, just in the same
way that I'm perfectly happy if people aren't concerned about some of the
technical musical details which are buried in the composition.
On technical musical details, there's another one to go into here, and
which is relevant (more obliquely) to 'leaving the classroom of a beloved
teacher'. It's a bit of a strange one to go into, but it's to do with being
able to let go of certain obsessive-compulsive behaviours which from time
to time I struggle with/have struggled with (it's much, much less prevalent
than it used to be!). So those walking bass parts in the two cellos and two
basses: this is a form of notation which I first used in the composition
'Sarah Teaches Kirsty to Read'
. In these earlier forms, I used a (very simple!) cipher I devised to
translate texts into notation, and I did this pretty obsessively and
exactingly in various incarnations of the idea. Pitches and rhythms were
specifically worked out etc. More recently, I've been able to be less
concerned with these precise transcriptions of texts—so this is the
'leaving'. The 'beloved teacher' bit on this reading: obviously one of the
very beneficial aspects of obsessive compulsive behaviour when working on
the technical aspects of the instrument is the hangup with repetition. So
when I was at University in particular (between the ages of 18–24), I had
these obsessions with practising technical exercises in multiples of 3
(actually, in my case, only 3 and 9 were the 'significant' numbers). For
all this could be debilitating/embarrassing in various respects, it is
nonetheless true that repetition is incredibly beneficial when it comes to
developing technical strength. So it was 'beloved' in helping me shore up
my technical foundations!
Anyway, in this piece, and actually, this pattern was beginning in the last
couple of versions of the notation, I was able to be much less precise
about this encoding. Somehow, I'd got over the hangup about doing it all
very precisely, realising that actually, there was a more elegant, simpler
way to notate the sound I was after.
5) Ecstatic Baobabs: we talked about the Baobabs thing. The other word in
these titles is usually much more impressionistic. E.g. 'Imperfect
Baobabs'—this appeared in a commission from the BBC for their baroque
season. One theory of the etymology of the word 'baroque' is that it comes
from the word 'barocco', meaning 'strange' or, in the case of a pearl,
'irregular' or 'imperfect'—hence 'Imperfect Baobabs'. Here, the 'Ecstatic'
was tied into that idea of a really quiet ecstasy, e.g. that astonishing
final note Sonny Rollins plays in 'Loverman', from the album with Coleman
Hawkins.
6) Optimism of the Will: The reference is to Gramsci (I'm no kind of expert
whatsoever on his work, but when I was doing my PhD, I did also teach
undergraduates a course about the criminal justice system, and Gramsci is
hugely influential obviously in the sociology here). Gramsci's dictum was
to do with 'Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will' (I think it
was originally from his 'Prison Notebooks'). I think his pessimism in this
context (1930s) was about the growth of authoritarianism; but the
'optimism' was about the possibilities for certain forms of socialism to
counter this trend. I think that these ideas are almost alarmingly relevant
these days!
Hence too, the sentiments from titles 3) and 6) in particular, the title,
'Togetherness Music'… and just the music itself hopefully bearing out the
possibility of radical individualism, but within a framework of mutual
respect and solidarity, ideas which I think have in fact always been borne
out by the very greatest big bands, with my hero in this respect being
Ellington. I always feel that no band was ever so stacked with immediately
identifiable individuals, but also, no other ensemble ever felt so much
like a band.
[From here, we went down a number of paths, from Luciano Berio's “Points On
the Curve To Find” and Anthony Braxton's Ghost Trance Music, to the
malleability and portability of Togetherness Music. One thing in particular
that I was (and still am) curious about is whether Braxton's influence will
be felt more as a mentor, or are his musics laying the groundwork for
further evolutions of his conceptual framework. Hawkins dug into this
fairly deeply and shared the scores to illustrate how the notation works on
paper.]
I recently had a commission for a piece of solo music, and I did consider
using one of the string parts from 'EcstaticBaobabs' as a starting point
for transformations, but in the end, took another path. (Some of my pieces
do have things deliberately built into them which are devices for
recontextualising/moving between them—e.g., the trills in the 'Baobabs'
pieces are there as 'portals' from jumping between comparable points in the
compositions—but this isn't an idea I've had the chance to play with in
performance/on recording yet.) In Braxton, the system has evolved to the
point now where essentially, there are a lot of different ways to move
between compositions. There are scenarios where a conductor can cue things,
but more usual is either that the musicians cue amongst themselves, or
indeed that an individual musician without the grouping makes their own
choice. I sense that one of the crucial aspects for Braxton is creating
something which is in many senses egalitarian and 'decentralised'. I've
been lucky enough to participate in two of the Sonic Genomes now, and this
in some ways is the fullest expression of this idea, a durational
performance, which activates an entire space (in Italy, 8 hours in a huge
museum; in Germany, 6 hours in a similar space) with subgroupings—which
themselves are mutable—of musicians, creating a giant 3D collage, like a
huge sound playground.
At this point, my own experiments in this direction are much less fully
developed than Anthony's: in part because I'm trying to figure out whether
what he is providing amounts to a generalisable methodology which any
ensemble can use with any pool of material (which I think is how
increasingly I lean), or whether it's something very specific to his
language, meaning that other composers really ought to try to find their
own way to address these issues of non-linear composition and delegation of
compositional 'authority'.
So a very modest example of how it might work in something of mine is the
basic score for 'Baobabs': in measure 6 a series of trills correspond to
measure 7 of 'Imperfect Baobabs'. The idea being that each time in the
structure that these trills occur, the performer could hop between the two
compositions, or alternatively, jump off into an improvisation initially
based on the trilling language. A lot of the activities of groupings of
players are determined by them rather than necessarily determined by the
structure of a conductor within some of these pieces.
Read the review of Togetherness Music here.
