The Transbraxton Studies for solo instruments are a series of portrait studies that utilize solo saxophone improvisations by Anthony Braxton. Transbraxton Study I is written for solo violin and utilises the first 9 minutes of the piece ‘To Composer John Cage’ (8F) from the album For Alto (1968). Above is a performance by Graham Jennings at Kings Place March 2010

Transbraxton Study II is written for bass clarinet and is based on the piece 8G from the album News From the 70’s (1972).

Transbraxton Study III for Ganassi recorder is based on the piece 106J (pointillistic) from the album 19 (Solo) Compositions, (1988).

Rather than being literal representations of the original, these works seek to reformalize and extend the originals that have been improvised through various compositional processes. The pitch material has been left in tact whilst the timbral and rhythmic ideas have been manipulated and transformed through spacial notation and considerations pertaining to the intrinsic colours and sound worlds of these different instruments.

“……a musician requires a first type of refrain, a territorial or assemblage refrain, in order to transform it from within, deterritorialize it, producing a refrain of the second type as the final end of music: the cosmic refrain of a sound machine.” (Deleuze & Guattari 385)

Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari in their work A Thousand Plateaus have formed the conceptual framework of this current project and the Transbraxton Studies continue a process that I have been engaged with that involves transforming freely improvised music into notated solo and chamber works. In this context the initial Braxton improvisations represent these first type of refrains – self contained assemblages of phrases, syntax and language. These improvisations are then transformed through the act of composition, taken out of their original contexts and ‘deterritorialized’ into a second type of refrain. In notating and representing the music as an object or a fixed point in the form of a score the intention is to move the first type of refrain into the second type or what D&G describe as a ‘sound machine’, a mechanism, a score that has a life of its own (now separate from the first type) and is open to be repeated and interpreted by subsequent performances by different players.

“It is the extremely profound labor dedicated to the first type of the refrain that creates the second type” (D&G 386) and it is with admiration and respect that these pieces have been formulated from the previous work by Anthony Braxton with his generous approval.

Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus. London: Continuum, 2004.

Premiered in Tokyo on the 19th of June 2010 as part of the Tokyo Wonder Site program, ‘Hair’ variations has been an ongoing project between Japanese composer Chikako Morishita and myself. Here is a video of the Tokyo performance :

\’Hair\’ variations

It has been revised and performed at LASALLE College of the Arts on the 26th of October 2010 and exhibited in Berlin at the Bethenien Art centre as part of an exchange with TWS in May 2011……

In November I had the privilege once more to work with and perform Chikako’s solo saxophone piece – this time on the monolithic Suomelina Island in Johan Tobias’ Studio near Helsinki..

‘Hair’ variations (2010)
Chikako Morishita (composition) + Timothy O’Dwyer (saxophone/ improvisation)

12th November 2011, 4:15pm, HIAP studio at Suomelina

http://www.hiap.fi/suomenlinna

About work
Variation0: Mind (longing) *an independent piece ‘Hair’
Variation1: Tongue
Variation2: Nose
Variation3: Eye
Variation4: Ear
Variation5: Body
Variation6: Mind (will)

Hair is an emblem of surging of desire—the original piece ‘Hair’ is made up of trajectories alternately illuminated and thrust into shadow, and transforms from the world of ‘instability’ into ‘stable, sonorous and rhythmicised’ world which eventually unfolds into a place of continuity.

‘Hair’ variations is a performance work consisting of the original piece ‘Hair’ and six variations in which sentences on Kenko Yoshida’s essays in idleness provide the framework. Each of version of the original piece and variations correspond to six human sensations—Mind (Longing), Tongue, Nose, Eye, Ear, Body and Mind (Will).

The work is about transformation: the composer’s musical language into the performer’s ‘own’ creative language; notation (symbols on the paper) into physical gesture (sounds being the results of the instrumentalist’s physical movements); practice-based music (a composition developed from an observation of instrumental practice) into improvisation created ‘here now’— is a fully-notated piece and is a fully-improvised piece with the numbered pieces in between allowing for greater or lesser proportions of the performer’s creative input.

ARTIST’S profile

Composition: Chikako Morishita (Japan/Germany)
Chikako Morishita is a Japanese composer and pianist based in Tokyo and Berlin. Her work has been performed in Asia and Europe including ‘Asian Music Festival (Tokyo)’, ‘Bethanien-Kreutzberg Art Festival (Berlin)’ and ‘Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (Huddersfield, UK)’. As a pianist, she has regularly played with Tokyo Philharmonic at major venues such as ‘Tokyo Opera City Composium (Tokyo)‘ and ‘Suntory summer festival (Tokyo)’ where she worked with composers Helmut Lachenmann, Tristan Mulaillu, Joji Yuasa and Dai Fujikura. Her work focuses on the area of intercultural exchange and explores interrelationship between performer’s sensibility, their physicality and music’s form. Currently she is engaging with ELISION Ensemble, Richard Hayes/ Paul Hubner/ Stephen Menotti trio, and several solo performers. She is a PHD candidate at the University of Huddersfield, UK, under supervisions of Liza Lim and Aaron Cassidy.

http://www.tokyo-ws.org/english/creator/m/chikako-morishita.shtml

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Sunday 22 November 2009
ELISION performed interpretations and composed responses to the work of Anthony Braxton. Curated by saxophonist and composer Timothy O’Dwyer, this extended piece explores scores for small and large ensembles from the past 4 decades of the Braxton canon, interspersed with compositions and improvisations by the Elision Ensemble, inspired by the organisational concepts of Braxton’s recent large group compositions – particularly that of 9 Compositions (Iridium).

photo: Ziga Koritnik

Here is the recording of the live performance @ the Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield, 2009.
The Braxton Project

Here is the link to the interview I did for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
for braxton interview with curator timothy odwyer

Hi All,
The Australian Broadcasting Company ABC are currently podcasting Graham Jennings’ performance of my Transbraxton Study No 1 from the March 26th “imagines me into systems smeared along wires” concert by
ELISION Ensemble, SIAL (Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory) RMIT @ the Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Melbourne….
Please listen and compare with his performance above from March 2010… he is even playing it faster if you can believe this……
Click here to listen

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK)
Elision premieres Richard Barrett’s CONSTRUCTION at the Huddersfield Town Hall.
Broadcast Live on BBC Radio 3
Read the interview:

http://www.hcmf.co.uk/Richard-Barrett-a-monumental-CONSTRUCTION

OUT HEAR – Concert Series
“A general interrupter”
Elision soloists in concert

Performance of two of my solo compositions:
Transbraxton Study No 2 for bass clarinet (Carl Rosman)
Transbraxton Study No 3 for Ganassi recorder (Genevieve Lacey)

http://www.elision.org.au/ELISION_Ensemble/ELISION_2011__Kings_Place.html

HIAP (Helsinki International Arts Program)
Suomelina Johan Tobias Studio
Solo performance of Chikako Morishita’s ‘Hair’ variations (2010) alto saxophone

http://www.hiap.fi/event/chikako-morishita-two-new-solo-pieces-puristamo-cable-factory

Robbie Avenaim – mechanical drum beaters, sticks, junk, bass drums
Timothy O’Dwyer – baritone sax / pedals
Praxis Gallery

Fuzzy Assemblage
Robbie Avenaim – mechanical drum beaters, sticks, junk, bass drums
Timothy O’Dwyer – junk sax, microphone, feedback, delay

Yuen Chee Wei – electronics
Timothy O’Dwyer – table baritone sax / pedals
Brother McNally Gallery
LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore