Roach/Braxton - One In Two - Two In One

Max Roach / Anthony Braxton
One In Two - Two In One
hatOLOGY 601

Art Lange’s liner notes give the misleading impression that this performance at Willisau was a “spontaneous collaboration” between Roach, who performed the previous day in a duet with Archie Shepp (captured in The Long March on Hat Hut), and Anthony Braxton, who performed with his quartet on the following day (also been released on the label). Perhaps this cross-generational melding of icons had not been planned by the festival organizers. However, the two were far from unfamiliar with each other, having performed a year before on the Black Saint release, Birth and Rebirth. That studio recording occurred within a period of great artistic fertility for Roach; within a four year span he recorded Streams of Consciousness with Abdullah Ibrahim, Historic Concerts with Cecil Taylor, M’Boom re: Percussion for Columbia, as well as two recordings of his touring quartet. Braxton was certainly no stranger to duet recordings, having done so with George Lewis, Richard Teitelbaum, Roscoe Mitchell, Ran Blake and Muhal Richard Abrams.

Birth and Rebirth was a true meeting of very different artistic minds - a rhythmic master who cut his teeth on bebop but always kept his ears open to further musical possibilities, and a multi-instrumentalist who was an integral part of the AACM before moving to Europe to spread the word of his unique approach to improvisation and composition. The result was a performance that grabs one’s attention from the first note, with a stylistic give and take that is both entertaining and challenging.

One In Two - Two In One contains most of the earlier compositions performed as a medley. As one would expect, the songs have morphed into somewhat different entities through time, as some phrases are emphasized differently in reaction to the audience or the mood of the moment. There are some additional unidentified collaborations in the live performance, including a memorably bizarre one where Max plays chimes under Braxton’s contrabass clarinet croakings, and some solo performances in the latter part of the concert. The one annoyance is that despite several appropriate places for track divisions, the CD reissue's only track division comes where the first lp of the original release ended and the second began. But this is the only caveat about an otherwise exemplary reissue; and the music itself is wonderful.

~Steve Griffith