Jazz Articles about Anthony Braxton

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Anthony Braxton & Fred Frith: Duo (Victoriaville)

by Kurt Gottschalk
December 10, 2006

Anthony Braxton and Fred Frith each have about as close a relationship to the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville as just about any non-Canadians. The first release on Victo, the label run by the producers of the annual Canadian festival, was a guitar duo with Frith and Rene Lussier; the second was a duet between Braxton and Derek Bailey. Until this year, each had released three discs on the label. But 2005 was the Year of Braxton and ...

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Anthony Braxton: 20 Standards, 4 Improvisations, 2 + 2 Compositions, Live at the Royal Festival Hall

by Marc Medwin
May 28, 2006

Anthony Braxton 20 Standards (Quartet) 2003 Leo 2005 Anthony Braxton 4 Improvisations (Duets) 2004 Leo 2005 Anthony Braxton 2 + 2 Compositions 482 Music 2005 Anthony Braxton (London) 2004: Live at the Royal Festival Hall Leo 2006

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Anthony Braxton with the Creative Jazz Orchestra: Composition No. 175 & Composition No. 126: Trillium-Dialogues M

by John Eyles
March 18, 2006

If you have been impressed by recent excellent but very different Braxton releases like 20 Standards, Ninetet (Yoshi's) 1997 Vol. 3 or Quintet (London) 2004: Live at the Royal Festival Hall (all on Leo, 2005), there is no way any of them will have prepared you for this latest Braxton release.

The music here was recorded at Sadler's Wells in May 1994 with the 23-piece Creative Jazz Orchestra; despite the orchestra's name, this music is most definitely not jazz. It ...

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Anthony Braxton Quintet (London) 2004: Live at the Royal Festival Hall

by John Eyles
December 17, 2005

This concert was the undisputed high point of the 2004 London Jazz Festival. Braxton, appearing in the UK for the first time in years (decades?) played the first half of a double bill (the second half featured Cecil Taylor) and effortlessly stole the show. I was one of the 2,000-strong audience who cheered the quintet after a triumphant performance, so I have keenly anticipated this release ever since. Given that kind of anticipation, the actual CD was bound to be ...

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Braxton/Szabados/Tarasov: TrioTone

by AAJ Staff
November 22, 2005

By Ken Waxman

Perhaps Anthony Braxton's most uncommon yet satisfying CD of the past decade, TrioTone is memorable because the American saxophonist functions as part of an improvising trio rather than promulgating his own ideas.

Recorded on a busman's holiday to Serbia-Montenegro in 2003, the disc features Braxton operating as one-third of a cooperative trio convened to play two compositions by Hungarian pianist György Szabados, which led to three subsequent encore/improvisations. Braxton, who is always up ...

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Anthony Braxton: 20 Standards

by Christian Carey
June 30, 2005

By reputation, saxophonist Anthony Braxton may be most closely associated with the avant garde, but he is also firmly steeped in traditional jazz, and he has recorded a fair bit of it as well. 20 Standards (Quartet) 2003 is a four-CD set of live performances of standards in a quartet setting; Braxton is joined by guitarist Kevin O'Neil, percussionist Kevin Norton, and bassist Andy Eulau. Much of the repertoire featured here was integral to the cool jazz of the fifties, ...

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Anthony Braxton: Charlie Parker Project & Shadow Company

by Ty Cumbie
June 16, 2005

Bespectacled, tweedy, bristling with intelligence, one could easily mistake him for a professor from some obscure, brainy university (which would be correct), of science or mathematics or philosophy (actually music, though he has an impressive command of those other fields). Anthony Braxton, the musician, is renowned primarily for three traits: fearless experimentation, mountainous technique and a deep devotion to the great work of jazz music's mainline pioneers.

Anthony Braxton Charlie Parker Project hatOLOGY