Jazz Articles about Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton/Andrew Cyrille: Duo Palindrome Vol 1 & 2

by Rex Butters
March 24, 2005

After meeting in Paris in 1969, Anthony Braxton and Andrew Cyrille didn't record together until Hat Art released Braxton's Lennie Tristano project in 1988. While a duo project had been discussed, it wasn't until 2002 that it was realized. Now, spread over two CDs, Intakt releases the results of those sessions. Original compositions, spontaneous improvisations, and a couple of oldies provide the maps for these two fearless explorers. As one expects, they overwhelm any notion of “reeds and drums," ready ...

Anthony Braxton: 23 Standards

by Rex Butters
January 26, 2005

Anthony Braxton 23 Standards Leo Records 2004

Anthony Braxton returns with a 4-disc set that resumes where 2001's 8 Standards left off. 23 Standards features the same quartet as the previous release, again touring the archives of jazz and popular song composition to come up with a refreshing and varied program of familiar tunes to work with. Joining Braxton, longtime collaborator Kevin Norton executes percussion, and Andy Eulau plays bass. Remarkable newcomer guitarist Kevin ...

Wadada Leo Smith/Anthony Braxton: Saturn, Conjunct the Grand Canyon in a Warm Embrace

by Rex Butters
January 17, 2005

Following last year's warmly received duet recording of Anthony Braxton and Wadada Leo Smith, Organic Resonance , Pi Recordings releases Saturn, Conjunct the Grand Canyon in a Sweet Embrace. Like the previous recording, this disc basks in the intimacy of two old friends' conversations. Both AACM charter members, both thought quite mad by self-appointed jazz guardians, both exerting incalculable influence on succeeding generations of musicians as prized educators at prestigious art colleges (Smith at CalArts, Braxton at Wesleyan), both vindicate ...

Anthony Braxton: Anthony Braxton's Charlie Parker Project 1993

by AAJ Staff
January 13, 2005

As a visionary with a fiercely independent approach to music-making, Anthony Braxton can be difficult to approach. It's not just that his compositions are annotated using pictures, that his musical world view revolves around a highly developed philosophy of restructural cycles, or that he's gone so far as to compose a work for intergalactic orchestra. You don't really have to travel outside the solar system to grasp what he has to say. But when he touches down inside the sphere ...

Anthony Braxton & Andrew Cyrille: Duo Palindrome 2002

by Jeff Stockton
December 18, 2004

Anthony Braxton/Andrew Cyrille Duo Palindrome 2002, Vol. 1 & 2 Intakt Records 2004

Even before he started wearing baggy corduroys, sensible shoes, and sweaters with elbow patches, Anthony Braxton's image was one of the enigmatic intellectual. You had to expect his playing to be more geometric than gutbucket. In a meeting at Wesleyan University (where Braxton is on the faculty), however, he and Andrew Cyrille make music that turns that image on ...

Max Roach and Anthony Braxton: One in Two/Two in One

by Clifford Allen
October 10, 2004

On paper, the pairing of one of the architects of bebop percussion with one of the most iconoclastic (at least in '79) reedmen of the post-Coltrane age might seem a bit strange. And both artists are certainly known for a few failed collaborations: Roach's playing with Cecil Taylor in more recent years has been as conversational (or, rather non-) as one might expect, and Braxton's engagement with the standard repertoire leaves a bit to be desired. Nevertheless, the latter half ...

Anthony Braxton: 3 Compositions of New Jazz

by Trevor MacLaren
August 21, 2004

Anthony Braxton 3 Compositions of New Jazz Delmark 1968

In the 1960s a new fuse had been lit under the ass of jazz. As musicians of the bop era drove out hard bop, free jazz and modal works, avant-garde was slowly taking root as well. Growing from the seeds of luminaries such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy and Cecil Taylor came wild and turbulent sounds. Nowhere else in the history ...