GHOST TRANCE PROJECT
“Rather than have a composition that goes from “Mary had a little lamb” and then it’s finished, it’s like “Mary had …” and then there’s a lot of different things she could have had.
”
Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music
Balancing between notation and improvisation, Anthony Braxton’s “Ghost Trance Music” represent a unique body of “open works” that challenges traditional roles of composer, score and performer. In “Ghost Trance Music” Braxton’s entire fascinating musical universe comes together. You step into a ritual, guided by a melody without beginning or end, a stream of consciousness that serves as the central track leading you into the unknown. Originally inspired by the Native American practice of the Ghost Dance ritual, where surviving members of Native American tribes would attempt to communicate with their ancestors through transcendental ghost dances, the Ghost Trance Music pieces are specifically designed to function as pathways between Braxton’s different musical systems, between notation and improvisation, between past, present and future. It allows for a plurality of musical practices to join forces, transcending traditional genre boundaries. It creates an arena in which Braxton helps curate intuitive experiences for both performers and listeners.
Ghost Trance Project is the result of a research project dedicated to performing and exploring the different interpretational possibilities of Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music (GTM) in both solo as group contexts.
Ghost Trance Solos explores the full extent of Braxton’s GTM compositions in the context of a solo performance. In order to generate what Braxton refers to as a field of activities in a solo-context, I developed an intuitive set-up using loops and live-electronics to have several layers of musical material develop simultaneously and spontaneously.
In january 2020 I recorded some of these Ghost Trance Solos during a residency at GMEA studio in Albi, France. They were released as a solo album on All That Dust in november the same year. More info here.
PRESS FOR GHOST TRANCE SOLOS:
[…] astonishing and as hypnotic as an ensemble performance. - All About Jazz, M. Corroto
[…] Kobe van Cauwenberghe's great achievement in this solo is to dig his own groove. […] It is also a beautiful way to penetrate the music of the composer without his presence: one perceives here perhaps more the paths taken and this form of infinitude characteristic of the GTM that van Cauwenberghe exploits marvelously. An exciting discovery. - Citizen Jazz, F. Barriaux
Single guitar – jagged, or smooth – lines intertwine sometimes with other guitars, electronics and [frequently] with the voice to produce multiple musically magical pathways. (…) These are vivid and dramatic performances – fitting appropriate into the realm to which Mr Braxton aspires. - JazzdaGama, R. Da Gama
[…] a fantastic beast part Christian Wolff, part John Zorn. […] This is true postmodernism, an eclecticism that retains a clear character throughout, never stooping to pastiche. - Boring Like a Drill, B. Harper
After this acclaimed solo album, I invited 6 musicians to join me in a collective deep dive into Braxton’s musical wonderland and further explore the unique communal aspects of GTM and its implications for the interpreter. In the summer of 2021 this Ghost Trance Septet recorded four GTM-compositions, covering the entire spectrum of the four different ’species’ of the GTM system, resulting in a highly praised double album for El Negocito Records.
GHOST TRANCE SEPTET
Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, guitars & synth
Teun Verbruggen, drums
Steven Delannoye, tenor sax & bass clarinet
Elisa Medinila, piano
Anna Jalving, violin
Niels Van Heertum, euphonium & trumpet
Frederik Sakham, double bass & e-bass
Ghost Trance Septet at Rainy Days, Luxemburg, 12/11/2021
The musicians of this Belgian-Danish septet have excellent reputation, whether in the art of improvisation, the interpretation of new music, or both. Braxton's work is made for exploratory instrumentalists with such expertise. After the Ghost Trance Septet's performance at the rainy days Festival on November 13, 2021 in Luxembourg, the composer (who was booked for a trio concert at the festival) was sitting in the audience and could hardly contain himself with emotion and excitement. Understandably so. I dare say he had never experienced his GTM concept from the listener's perspective as varied, elaborate and fluid as on that day.
The Ghost Trance Septet does everything right on this production. Whereby "right" is not meant in the sense of correctness, which Braxton dismisses in his recommendations to performers above, but in the sense of astonishing creative, daring, lustful, sensitive, and thrilling. How to play Braxton? Whoever holds this album in his hands can put a very convincing answer on the record player. Over and over again.
- - Excerpt from Timo Hoyer’s liner notes.
Press for Ghost Trance Septet (selection):
=> 2022 Album of the year, Avant Music News
=> Top 10 albums of the year, Free Jazz Blog
=> Best of Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp, June 2022
There’s a clear mastery of this often unwieldy material that’s almost giddy in its energy. Each of the four pieces, spread out over two CDs, is packed with detail and quick-blink episodes, delivering such densely crafted journeys that I hope others will follow suit and give Braxton’s pieces the treatment they deserve. - Best of Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp June 2022, P. Margasak
My own view is that Van Cauwenberghe and his septet have redefined the landscape of Braxton recordings.
- The Rambler, T. Rutherford-JohnsonBraxton's equations turn out to be readily accessible sounds if you leave your preconceptions about music and the nature of time at the door. Kobe Van Cauwenberghe's Ghost Trance Septet remembers both a Braxton future and a Ghost Trance past. - All About Jazz, M. Corroto
A festival of creativity, joy and surprise. - All About Jazz, J. Sharpe
Ghost Trance Septet plays Anthony Braxton is one of the best interpretations of Braxton’s music yet by an ensemble not including Braxton himself. Very well done. - Avant Music News, M. Borella
The Ghost Trance Septet have created a blueprint in how to play this music. More crucially, by emphasizing each member’s talent as well as Braxton sequences, they’re come up with an original piece of work true to themselves and the composer. - Jazz Word, K. Waxman
[…] exceptionally rich music that certainly performs Braxton's music to the spirit. It is an ardent plea for a body of work that should reach the stage much more often. - Jazzflits (No. 382), H. te Loo
It is ensemble music at its best, at times leaning firmly on the chamber music tradition, but also steeped in jazz as an ongoing art of transformation. - Gonzo (Circus), G. Peters
Great, inspiring performance. - Salt Peanuts, E. Hareuveni
Highly Recommended - Jazz Special (No. 182, 2022), T.S. Høeg
[…] a delight to both those with an ear for classical and those preferring a freer form of playing. […] The recording feels like an immersion; the music washes over the listener in waves, cleansing and pure. It is a stream of consciousness that emanates from the musicians, serving as a guide between that which is known and the unknown. Clear guidance to form is tempered beautifully with an allowance for freedom that this kind of music gives. There is a sense of connection to the past, a sense of being very much in the present and with the future. Listening to this music is an experience, not an act, and Braxton creates a sense of endless potential. The Free Jazz Collective, S. Stein
It is pretty rare for other ensembles to perform their own versions of Mr. Braxton’s compositions and even rare for anyone to do Ghost Trance Music. (...) After listening to the first disc, I will admit that this is some of the best versions of Ghost Trance Music that I’ve heard. Absolutely superb on all levels. - The Downtown Music Gallery NY, B.L. Gallanter
Mr. Van Cauwenberge’s septet – comprising musicians similarly attuned to Mr Braxton’s radical-speak – excel in their interpretations of the four works involved. (…) [A] marvelous musical architecture (…) Inside this dramatically expressive music is an altogether other kind of beauty exclusive to the music of Mr Braxton. (…) These recordings speak to the breakout of Kobe Van Cauwenberge – a musician with a fertile imagination capable penetrating virtually anything a composer might throw at him. - JazzdaGama, R. Da Gama
A wonderful achievement that will once again allow us to appreciate the idiosyncratic approach of this great American composer. - Citizen Jazz, F. Barriaux
How does one play Braxton? (…) This CD offers a convincing answer to this question. - Neue Zeitung für Music, D. Heißenbüttel
The Ghost Trance Septet hasn't just made an enjoyable (and very much so) record for the current moment; they've contributed to the future critical assessment of a musical mind as important as Ellington and Riddle on the one hand and Stockhausen and Xenakis on the other. - The New York City Jazz Record, K. Gottschalk
Gonzo (Circus) also published a very nice double interview with James Fei and me. The interview is in Dutch, you can download it here. Georges Tonla Briquet wrote a fine contribution in the Dutch magazine Jazzism (pictured on the left). One would almost think with all this that I am a jazz musician, but the headline of this article somewhat contradicts this. 🙃 The point here is that it may be high time to discard artificial genre categories and just talk about the music itself.... Braxton's music would certainly benefit from it.
Dates:
25/06/2019 Ghost Trance Solos Unerhörte Musik, Berlin (DE)
09/10/2019 Ghost Trance Solos, Red Room, Baltimore (US)
24/10/2019 Ghost Trance Solos, Articulate Research Days, Royal Conservatory Antwerp (BE)
01/02/2020 Ghost Trance Septet, Post X, Merelbeke (BE)
07/02/2020 Ghost Trance Septet, Het Kip & De Ei, Antwerpen (BE)
08/02/2020 Ghost Trance Septet, Werkplaats Walter, Brussel (BE)
16/04/2020 Ghost Trance Solos, EPARM conference, London (UK) [CANCELED because of COVID19]
18/06/2020 Ghost Trance Solos, Anthony Braxton conference, Elb Philharmonie, Hamburg (DE) [CANCELED because of COVID19]
30/09/2021 Ghost Trance Solos, Riverrun, Toulouse (FR)
13/11/2021 Ghost Trance Septet, Rainy Days, Luxemburg (LU)
12/03/2022 Ghost Trance Solos, Time Canvas, De Singel, Antwerpen (BE)
02/06/2022 Ghost Trance Solos, Citadelic, SMAK, Gent (BE)
02/06/2022 Ghost Trance Septet, Citadelic, SMAK, Gent (BE)
05/06/2022 Ghost Trance Septet, De Singel Antwerpen (BE)
09/12/2022 Ghost Trance Septet, Visitations, Rataplan, Antwerpen (BE)
10/12/2022 Ghost Trance Septet, Visitations, Rataplan, Antwerpen (BE)
For more info and bookings just drop me a line here.
For further reading, check out my article “A Ritual of Openness: the (meta)reality of Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music.” Also check out Erica Dicker’s article for Sound American 16, The Braxton issue. Or go to the Tri-Centric Foundation website.