Sunday, May 27, 2007

1995, Braxton in Istanbul, videos

It was October 1995 that Braxton Sextet was in Istanbul to have a gig in Jazz Festival. In one of the afternoons before the concert, we had a very nice seminar. Also before the seminar, we had a stroll in Beyoglu, had a "Typical Turkish" meal with the sextet in Haci Abdullah Restaurant and somehow were late to the seminar. I remember that we ran a few hundred kms to go there and jumped on the stage. It was half crowded something like 50 to 70 persons attending. Braxton's approach was very clear, to give an idea about the music, how it evolved, context of the music, black music as a whole, and so on. If somehow anyone speaks Turkish, he/she will understand my awful English then. I made very strong mistakes while translating, I don't have a video editor so I did not drop out those embarrassing moments. However, you will see that there had been no need to translate and I had given up that though job and Braxton continued from then on. Also the book I had in my hands was "Mixtery" a 50 years birthday present to Mr.Braxton. It was very new then, and what is more ... I don't remember.
Nevertheless, there are two video files split into 100 MB files, they are divx files and playable in all video players. I hope you will not experience any difficulty. It was also a hand VHS camera and so the it is not crystal digital high tech visual at all.
I dedicate this post to ChurchNumberNine contributors, namely, atanase, centrifuge and flux-us.
So, here are the links :
1.1.
1.2.
1.3.
1.4.
2.1.
2.2.
2.3.
2.4.
And also one thing more, I can not be able to run this blog any more. Due to many reasons, I am giving up, and last word is a quote from him : "thank you, sir..."