Studio Dan are an Austrian combo who have been together since 2005 and they’ve been interpreting the music of Anthony Braxton for about ten years. They’ve applied their craft to other jazz composers too, such as George Lewis on As We May Feel, plus they’ve performed and recorded with Elliott Sharp, Fred Frith, Michel Doneda and many others. Both Daniel Riegler (trombone) and Michael Tiefenbacher (piano) are also composers and highly active in the fields of improv and contemporary modern music, and they’re joined here by Clemens Salesny (woodwinds), Man Mayr (bass) and Raphael Meinhart (percussion).
Actually this set Braxton Et Al. (RECORDS AND OTHER STUFF ROS6) contains just one Braxton composition, the piece ‘Composition No. 107 for two Multi-Instrumentalists’ from 1982, although it’s also used as the basis for a ‘Korperstudie’ by Riegler, a new composition which I assume is intended as a homage. Well, Braxton’s complex music is hard to fathom, but these Viennese fellows have elected to perform the composition almost by rote, turning it into a cold, cerebral exercise; despite some flashes of technique, they don’t have a jazz bone in their body capable of fully interpreting the score. Maybe they were intending to be respectful, but it seems to have inhibited them from playing freely.
The group do loosen up slightly for ‘Korperstudie #1’, where the set themselves the task of living the Braxton dream of “comprovisation” – this great African-American made great inroads into resolving the conflict between jazz improvisation and modern composition (as many today are still attempting to do). For the four segments here, Studio Dan show us some more engaging instrumental interplay, unexpected harmonies, and a few snakes in the boots as they wriggle around in the recording chamber. ‘Fassung Fur Quintett’, also by Riegler, is much more like “jazz” than anything we’ve heard so far and this one might sell you on the record, assuming you have a taste for clever cross-patterns and expertly-woven rhythms. Once again the group seem to be oblivious to swing feeling, but it doesn’t seem to matter so much when the material is so rich. ‘Mr. Sierpinski’, another recent work this time composed by the pianist Tiefenbacher, likewise leans closer to conventional jazz moves and is a shade more intelligible, but they still can’t resist doing the stop-start herky-jerky thing with their dynamics, as if to exhibit instrumental prowess.