Anthony Braxton

To present his new project, Diamond Curtain Wall Trio, the legendary American saxophonist chose the 14th edition of the Pomigliano Jazz Festival as his only Italian date, an event that, year after year, is confirming itself as one of the most important musical happenings in Italy.

Preceded by a rather uneven performance from the chamber trio led by bassist William Parker, the set by Braxton (saxophones, clarinet, electronics) and his two associates (Taylor Ho Bynum – trumpet, trombone, cornet, shells – and Mary Halvorson – electric guitar) was a performance that sorely tested the audience's patience, certainly not accustomed to such radical forms of jazz improvisation.

For about an hour, in fact, the trio produced a sonic continuum that laid bare pretty much all the essential traits of the Chicago musician's ongoing research. A highly concentrated form of free-jazz focused on timbral exploration and instrumental interplay, using electronic backdrops against which the bold elucubrations would crash, time after time, only to rise again from their own ashes.

An hourglass placed right in the middle of the stage, as if to remind us that this music, even as it unfolds in time, fights against the very logic of time, seeking its own eternity in the very instant it reveals itself.

Much water has flowed under the bridge since a twenty-three-year-old Braxton, having joined the ranks of the A.A.C.M. (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) founded by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams (who gave him his debut on his classic "Levels And Degrees Of Light"), recorded "3 Compositions of New Jazz", one of the cornerstones of all avant-jazz. But there's no denying that the Diamond Curtain Wall Trio is nothing other than a further evolution of that inquiry built around the fundamental relationship between sound, space and time.

And so, in the endless duets between Braxton and Ho Bynum, an entire discourse of nuances and timbral overflows plays out, one that Halvorson's guitar tries to hold within the confines of a geometric dimension, as if it were the driving center of the whole thing. Yet, given the absence of a rhythm section, the horns duel without limits, exploring a thousand directions, a thousand sensations, with Ho Bynum at one point even blowing into a seashell… And Braxton, between slap-tonguing and circular breathing, unveils practically his entire repertoire of tricks, letting the sound gradually take on ever more abstract vibrations.

Improvisation and composition fade one into the other, and what remains is the sense of a sound with neither beginning nor end, which the musician simply captures whenever he feels the need to express his deepest sensibility.

There's still room, too, for the sensational Braxton-Parker-Don Moye line-up which, while photos of the Fiat Pomigliano d'Arco workers' labour struggle are projected, manages to conjure an atmosphere charged with diamond-hard pathos, sweeping the audience through a back-and-forth of emotions. Job insecurity and the magic of a jazz as "free" as it is warm and enveloping: a powerful, necessary pairing.

In the end, as he signs a few records for me, it's heartening to see that such a brilliant musician is also incredibly humble and kind, and even seems almost surprised that anyone still carefully keeps his old masterpieces...

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