Jazz Articles about Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton/Scott Rosenberg: Compositions/Improvisations 2000

by AAJ Staff
March 1, 2001

Whenever you pick up an Anthony Braxton recording, you can generally expect to hear a distinctive combination of structured composition and full-bodied improvisation. No exception with Compositions/Improvisations 2000. On this disc, Braxton joins forces with reed player Scott Rosenberg, a like-minded individual with his own compositional aesthetic and open-ended style of playing. Roughly a third of the tracks consist of compositions by each player, and the remainder features free improvisation.

The material on Compositions/Improvisations tends toward a chamber music sound--stark, ...

The Kevin Norton Ensemble and Anthony Braxton (Barking Hoop: For Guy Debord (in nine events)

by Glenn Astarita
February 1, 2001

Drummer/percussionist and highly regarded composer, Kevin Norton exhibits his writing and arranging expertise on this intriguing release inspired by filmmaker and writer Guy Debord. With this effort, Norton garners some extra special support from longtime musical associate Anthony Braxton, as For Guy Debord (in nine events) comprises one extended piece, segmented into intersecting movements.

Norton and Braxton commence this composition with a flirtatious vibes and alto duet, whereas woodwind specialists Bob DeBellis and David Bindman, alter the tone and direction ...

Anthony Braxton: For Alto

by Robert Spencer
January 1, 2001

At long last. For Alto always seems to arrive late: it wasn't released until a few years after it was recorded, and it only now appears on CD. Braxton has, of course, other solo recordings on CD, but this one is different: it was first. Not just first for him, but first for anyone. Before this, Coleman Hawkins and Eric Dolphy (most notably) had recorded reed solos, but nobody had ever filled an album with them. No one had dared. ...

Anthony Braxton: Knitting Factory (Piano/Quartet) 1994, V. 2

by Mark Corroto
November 1, 2000

Listening to Anthony Braxton’s piano albums (my count is up to five now) I always get the visual image that occasionally opens the British television show Monty Python’s Flying Circus, of comedian John Cleese. Usually you would hear Cleese playing the piano long before you saw him, the camera panning across some forest or beach scene to a piano placed outdoors, and Cleese playing it naked! Oblivious to his setting and raw conditions the comedian plays on, smiling to the ...

Anthony Braxton: For Alto

by Derek Taylor
September 1, 2000

Like any other sub-genre in jazz music free jazz is marked by a timeline of precedent setting events. Many of these moments inevitably center on recordings: Cecil Taylor’s Jazz Advance, Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, John Coltrane’s Ascension, Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity. In the case of the AACM two recordings by members of the association’s roster are widely regarded as points on this continuum- Roscoe Mitchell’s Sound and Anthony Braxton’s For Alto.

Braxton’s recording possesses a further and even more far-reaching ...

Anthony Braxton (Splasc: Small Ensemble Music (Wesleyan) 1994

by Glenn Astarita
August 1, 2000

Anthony Braxton’s Small Ensemble Music (Wesleyan) 1994 was recorded at “Wesleyan University’s - Center for The Arts - as the great saxophonist unearths some of his older compositions and partakes in a series of “Duo and Trio based improvisations along with the extended piece titled, “Three Compositions For Sextet”. On “Trio Improvisation” we hear Braxton toggle between five different woodwind instruments along with saxophonist Andre’ Vida and Brandon Evans who performs on oboe, shenai and bass clarinet. Here, the musicians ...

Anthony Braxton: Composition No. 94 for Three Instrumentalists

by Robert Spencer
November 1, 1999

This trio outing is one of Mr. Braxton's ambitious early projects, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Leo Feigin for bringing it to light. Braxton, trombonist Ray Anderson and guitarist James Emery present Composition No. 94 for Three Instrumentalists, the score of which features graphic notation. These symbols, according to the liner notes by Braxton's Boswell, Graham Lock, “allow a player to improvise on a sequence of shapes rather than, say, a sequence of chords, the chief difference ...