(Avant-garde, Modern Composition, hatOLOGY) Ran Blake & Anthony Braxton - A Memory Of Vienna - 1997, APE (image+.cue), lossless

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008
EAC extraction logfile from 6. June 2011, 17:28
Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON / A Memory Of Vienna
Used drive : TSSTcorpCDDVDW SE-S204N Adapter: 2 ID: 0
Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Used output format : Internal WAV Routines
Sample format : 44.100 Hz; 16 Bit; Stereo
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3 | 16:44.62 | 7:58.00 | 75362 | 111211
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7 | 40:58.62 | 7:34.00 | 184412 | 218461
8 | 48:32.62 | 7:08.13 | 218462 | 250574
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Filename C:\avaxhome\Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON - A Memory Of Vienna.wav
Peak level 91.3 %
Range quality 100.0 %
Copy CRC 253ACF96
Copy OK
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REM DISCID 710D0D08
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v0.99pb4"
PERFORMER "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON"
TITLE "A Memory Of Vienna"
FILE "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON - A Memory Of Vienna.ape" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Round Midnight"
PERFORMER "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Yardbird Suite"
PERFORMER "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON"
INDEX 01 11:06:62
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "You Go To My Head"
PERFORMER "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON"
INDEX 01 16:44:62
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "Just Friends"
PERFORMER "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON"
INDEX 01 24:42:62
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "Alone Together"
PERFORMER "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON"
INDEX 01 31:06:62
TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Four"
PERFORMER "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON"
INDEX 01 36:05:62
TRACK 07 AUDIO
TITLE "Soul Eyes"
PERFORMER "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON"
INDEX 00 40:58:61
INDEX 01 40:58:62
TRACK 08 AUDIO
TITLE "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You"
PERFORMER "Ran BLAKE & Anthony BRAXTON"
INDEX 01 48:32:62

On November 19, 1988, a few days before the Cool Noir music festival in Vienna, composer Franz Koglmann finished recording Orte Der Geometrie (Hatart) with his Pipetet a couple hours earlier than expected. A number of high profile artists and musicians were in attendance for the festival, so efforts were made to utilize the remaining pre-paid studio time. Pianist Ran Blake was on hand, as a special guest of the Pipetet, and composer/multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton had just stopped by the studio. The idea of recording Blake and Braxton as a duo arose, inspired in part by their duet on the pianist's album Rapport (Novus), made ten years earlier. Writer Art Lange assumed the role of session producer and selected a collection of standards for the pair to work on—two and a half hours later, A Memory Of Vienna was complete.
Ranging from such chestnuts as "You Go To My Head" and "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You," to bop archetypes like "Yardbird Suite" and "Four," the duo waxes poetic, interpreting eight venerable classics with respectful restraint and a few unorthodox twists. Braxton plays alto saxophone exclusively on these timeless songs, plying sonorous phrases that are among his most lyrical. Occasionally launching into brisk staccato runs, he avoids signature extended techniques like altissimo, multiphonics and over-blowing entirely, playing it straight by sticking close to the harmonic center of the tunes. Blake ranges slightly further afield, dropping icy accents and dissonant clusters at unusual intervals without veering too far beyond conventional melody and harmony. Although his oblique cadences and re-harmonized chords are somewhat ambiguous, he never fails to swing, lending the date a far more nostalgic air than one would have expected from such a pairing.
Though admired for their uncompromising, avant-garde innovations, the most surprising aspect of the session is not the duo's relative lack of cacophonous pyrotechnics, but the incredible level of intuitive empathy and conceptual foresight displayed—despite the ad hoc nature of the recording. A Memory Of Vienna demonstrates Blake and Braxton's longstanding reverence for standard material, bringing new life to timeless classics with understated creativity and soulful conviction.

Ran Blake: piano; Anthony Braxton: alto saxophone