Jazz Articles about Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton: Trio & Quintet (Town Hall) 1972

by Mark Corroto
March 15, 2011

Maybe the world wasn't ready for the music of Anthony Braxton back in 1972, when this concert was recorded, and maybe it wasn't ready for him, when it was released twenty years later in 1992. Then again, is it really ready for him today? Certainly, and this music is very accessible. This beautifully remastered edition of New York's Town Hall concert is another clue into the puzzle of Braxton's musical genius. Braxton circa 1972 was a 27-year old ...

Anthony Braxton: 19 Standards (Quartet) 2003

by AAJ Italy Staff
February 16, 2011

Fin dagli inizi della sua vicenda artistica, Anthony Braxton ha coltivato il piacere di ripercorrere le vie del jazz storico, affiancando alla ricerca complessa nella miniera dell'improvvisazione e della composizione la rilettura di standard o l'omaggio a figure fondamentali, come Parker e Tristano. Le sue scelte sono spesso andate a toccare un ambito vicino al jazz bianco degli anni Cinquanta, all'estetica cool di colui che fu una sua dichiarata passione: Paul Desmond. All'inizio fu con i due album In The ...

Anthony Braxton: 19 Standards (Quartet) 2003

by Glenn Astarita
August 18, 2010

Innovative progressive-jazz and avant-gardist Anthony Braxton employs his arsenal of saxophones while covering gems from the past, evidenced by his smoothly swinging spin on Tommy Dorsey's “So Rare," amid a medley of jazz and pop standards. These four discs capture the quartet's 2003 European tour, enamored by the crystalline audio processing and a muse that transmits an antithesis to the musical roads often traversed. Braxton's rippling notes generate a consortium of sublime and heated contrasts with the under-recorded ...

Anthony Braxton / Jerry Hemmingway: Old Dogs

by Mark Corroto
August 12, 2010

It is very difficult to separate the music of saxophonist Anthony Braxton and percussionist Gerry Hemingway from the actual experience of listening to four-disc, four-plus hour Old Dogs (2007). Each disc represents a morning or afternoon's work, recorded at Wesleyan University in early August, 2007, requiring almost complete immersion--letting go each moment, as it passes. There is little possibility of consuming this music in one sitting; it requires listening in either small bites, or an unfettered approach of allowing the ...

Introducing Anthony Braxton

by Robert Levin
July 17, 2010

[Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Jazz & Pop Magazine, 1970]To anyone still questioning the validity of the systems and methods at which Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman arrived, I would first of all recommend that he listen more attentively to the work of those men. But I'd also suggest that he make it a point to hear the strong and very exciting musics of an emergent collection of musicians from Chicago who constitute what is already ...

Anthony Braxton: Creative Orchestra (Koln) 1978

by Jeff Stockton
June 7, 2010

Jazz is often viewed as a progressive art form, one that by its very nature is constantly changing and reinventing itself. The paradox is that change isn't always what the audience wants to hear, so it frequently takes awhile simply to catch up. Such seems to be the case with the music of Anthony Braxton, one of music's most demanding theorists as well as a prolific talent whose well of creativity seems bottomless. In 2009 Mosaic compiled and issued a ...

Anthony Braxton: Creative Orchestra (Koln) 1978

by Glenn Astarita
March 21, 2010

Composer and multi-reedman Anthony Braxton's complex and personalized compositional paradigms emanated in the 1960s, underscored by 12 language types, diagrams, and other methodologies to complement the improvisation aspect. On this double-disc, 2009 reissue of a 1978 concert, Braxton employs a diverse dream team including reedmen Marty Ehrlich and Ned Rothenberg and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. Consequently, Braxton lays down his woodwinds and focuses on the conduction element throughout a mesmeric cycle of events.

The program parallels Braxton's 1970s Creative ...