James Emery Music

Modern Sounds

All About Jazz
by Glenn Astarita

Thirty-four years is a long time for a tape to sit in a drawer, but jazz history is littered with such delays, and Anthony Braxton's discography in particular has always unspooled out of chronological order. Articulations, a duo session with guitarist James Emery recorded in Florence on June 19, 1992, finally surfaced this year on Emery's own Bandcamp imprint, self-released and produced by Emery with Ed Petersen. The reasons behind the gap are not spelled out in the credits, and speculation serves no one—what matters is that the recording exists, and that it captures two formidable improvisers near a creative peak, as annotator Ted Panken notes in the release copy.

Emery's connection to Braxton runs deep. Best known as a founding member of the String Trio of New York, he has spent decades moving between notated chamber music and free improvisation, and his rapport with Braxton predates this session by years. That familiarity shows immediately. Where a first meeting between saxophonist and guitarist might proceed cautiously, Articulations opens with the two already speaking a shared language, one built from Braxton's systems of pitch and rhythm and Emery's own vocabulary of clustered harmonics and oblique voicings.

At twenty-eight minutes, "Composition No. 167" anchors the album as its lone through-composed piece, and it is instructive to hear it in this stripped setting. The duo reimagines mini motifs on the fly amid brief unisons that stand as clues to something quite larger. Braxton's melodic fragments, occasionally buried inside larger ensembles, stand exposed against Emery's guitar, which neither accompanies nor shadows so much as argues a counter—thesis. The two remaining Braxton-adjacent pieces, "Falling River Time" and "Duo 2.01," draw on the graphic and proportional notation Braxton was refining during this period, yet nothing here feels academic. The playing has weight and patience amid some effortlessly executed unison lines and the intersection of sublime melodies.

The freer pieces reward closer attention. "Nesting" finds the two settling into genuine dialogue, phrases handed back and forth without ornament, and "The Next Level" closes matters with unexpected directness—superspeed whirling choruses and Braxton nearly swinging in its final minute.

Sound quality is clean without being sterile, a reasonable expectation for a 1992 recording only now reaching digital release, and the mix favors intimacy over polish. Nothing here sounds like an archival curiosity padded out for completeness. It sounds like two players who understood exactly what they were doing, on a night when nobody outside the room got to hear it until now.

Articulations is unlikely to reshuffle anyone's ranking of either musician's essential albums, but it does add a genuinely worthwhile chapter that neither catalog was missing so much as simply unaware it lacked. Three decades on, the delay no longer matters. What matters is that the tape survived—and that, after all this time, the music still sounds every bit as vital as it deserves to.

Modern Sounds

Downtown Music Gallery
by Bruce Gallanter

Featuring Anthony Braxton on alto & sopranino saxes, flute, clarinet, contrabass clarinet & compositions and James Emery on guitar, guitar synth & compositions.

Recorded in Florence, Italy in June of 1992. This is a previously unreleased duo recording made two guiding lights of the experimental/avant/jazz/modern classical worlds. Master guitarist James Emery worked with visionary composer & multi-instrumentalist in Anthony Braxton's Creative Music Orchestra as well as a trio with Ray Anderson. Mr. Emery wrote all but one of the six songs here with one long piece by Mr. Braxton. Beginning with "Maguire", Mr. Emery creates a theme which sounds jazz-like for Mr. Braxton's alto while Mr. Emery plays acoustic guitar, bending and muting certain strings while playing tightly with Braxton's swirling cascade on sopranino sax. Braxton's tone is warmer than usual yet is well matched by Emery's non-stop series of looping lines. "Falling River Time" keeps both Braxton's sax and Emery's guitar moving quickly together tightly, working their way through a series of challenging changes. The last time I caught Mr. Braxton play live was doing a solo alto concert at the Victo Fest. It was a lovely, heartfelt set and his tone had mellowed a bit yet his lines were as quirky and ever-shifting as ever. His tone here, although it is more than 40 years ago and it is equally warm while still coming up with surprising twists in direction. "Duo 2.01" is a bit more abstract and sounds like modern chamber music with haunting harmonies for both musicians. Aside from some consistently challenging composing, Mr. Emery is in strong form here, his playing is a continuous flurry of notes, reminding me of Ralph Towner sped up. The one Braxton piece here is "Composition No. 167" and it is the longest one here (28 minutes). Mr. Braxton starts out on flute, his tone and playing first extraordinary. He soon switches to the low-end grumbling of his contrabass clarinet. The interplay here is astonishing as both players explore a wide range of tones, Although I am often disappointed by the use of guitar synth, Mr. Emery sounds great playing those eerie electronics sounds which work well with Braxton's sly sopranino sax. This piece is episodic like a series of ongoing scenes, speeding up, slowly down as Braxton switches from one reed to another. This piece has more of that Braxtonian sound and keeps shifting as Braxton solos while Emery keeps intersecting with his own flow of ideas/lines. This piece is a tour-de-force and it sounds like a lost piece of historic and demanding music from many years back which still sounds modern and challenging today. Special thanks to James Emery and Anthony Braxton for rescuing an important part of our collective past.