Solo / Leader
Ghost Trance Septet plays Anthony Braxton
Recognising the uniqueness and almost unlimited potential of Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music system, Belgian guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe made it a personal mission to come to a deeper understanding of GTM and its implications for the interpreter. After his acclaimed solo album (Ghost Trance Solos, ATD10), Van Cauwenberghe invited a group of musicians to take a collective deep dive into Braxton’s musical wonderland of the Ghost Trance Musics and explore its unique communal aspects. 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. The result is the present double album.
=> 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
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 Free Jazz Collective, S. Stein
Mr. Van Cauwenberge’s septet excel in their interpretations of the four works involved. (…) 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
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
ghost Trance solos
In january 2020 I spent a week long residency at the GMEA studio in beautiful Albi in the south of France to explore and record several versions of Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music compositions in a solo context.
From Laura Tunbridges liner notes:
Over the course of a long career spanning free jazz and experimentalism, Anthony Braxton has continually questioned the systems by which music is notated, named and played. There is a warmth and humour to Van Cauwenberghe’s response to Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music that seems fully in keeping with the project’s radical, friendly openness.
label: all that dust
[…] astonishing and as hypnotic as an ensemble performance. - All About Jazz
[…] 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
Single guitar – jagged, or smooth – lines intertwine sometimes with other guitars, electronics and 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. - Ben Harper/ Boring Like a Drill
give my regards to 116th street
This solo album consists of all new pieces written by composers I encountered or worked with during my three-year long stay in New York City. For one reason or another most of these composers were or are affiliated with the music department of Columbia University located at 116th street. This program could be seen as my humble homage to a particular part of the new music scene in New York City.
"Beautifully conceived and realised in palpably real audio, this is end of year chart material for sure." - The Wire, issue 37
"Lovely record, of a baffling beauty!" - Vital Weekly #977
label: carrier records
