Anthony Braxton

[GuitarGeek]

Any fans? Any thoughts? Anyone? Anyone?

[walt]

I was into Braxton starting in the mid 70's when my friend was turning me on to all these cats,AACM and otherwise.The first Braxton LPs i recall really liking right off was Town Hall 1972,with a trio of Dave Holland and Phillip Wilson and a quintet with Jeanne Lee,Holland,John Stubblefield and Barry Altschul.And ,of course, his Arista records of the 70's,especially the New York Fall 1974 and Five Pieces 1975 sessions,which made a big impression on me, all nicely put together on the Mosaic Braxton Arista box.

Saw him a few times, solo,duo with Richard Teitelbaum(Moog),trio with Dave Holland and Steve McCall,quartet with Hugh Ragin(trumpet), Leonard Jones(bass) and John Betsch(drums).Maybe a couple other shows that i don't recall offhand.

Kinda lost interest in Braxton over the last couple of decades.It seems Braxton's choice of ensembles/instrumentation didn't really appeal to me much.
I bought very few of his cds over the last 20 years,the best,imo, are the trios on Hatology(1989) with Tony Oxley-percussion and Adelhard Roidinger(sp?) on bass and the Tzadik cd with William Parker and Milford Graves,and of course the Mosaic Arista box.I still occasionally spin the first duo cd with Derek Bailey(Emanem) and of course, Conference Of The Birds with Sam Rivers, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul,and, not forgetting the CCC(Creative Construction Company) live date cd(1970)

Glad he's alive and well and still making music.

[Mister Triscuits]

not forgetting the CCC(Creative Construction Company) live date cd(1970/71)

Whoa--is there really a CD of this?

[Dana5140]

I love Braxton, have probably 30-40 of his discs covering 40 years of music, and actually put on a set of shows with him in duet with Roscoe Mitchell back in the mid-1970s. He's had a bit of a hard time; his music is often seen as not "black" enough for jazz, and too jazz-like to be seen as "new music." Whatever, the man is a polymath, a chess master, great writer and teacher, MacArthur genius award winner, and superb musician. And he writes weird titles for his songs, to boot! :-) I'm 60 and began listening to him in my teens.

[simon moon]

I am a fan more of his contemporary classical style than his jazz.

[GuitarGeek]

I like the Creative Music Orchestra album that was recorded in Cologne, Germany in 1978. Really dig the stuff Bob Ostertag does on synth on that one.

Another good album with synths is Time Zones, one of his duo albums with Richard Teitelbaum. I've got three albums by the two of them together, and I think that's the best one.

I've also got some of his quartet albums from the mid 80's, including a couple of the double CD's recorded in Birmingham and London in 84 or 85 (I forget which year, there's also a third album recorded in Coventry from the same tour, but I never got it because the back cover notes were a bit vague about it's contents, other than it included a "lecture", which I wasn't sure I wanted to listen to).

There was also a live disc recorded in Eugene, Oregon, I think 89 which is pretty good, another one of the Creative Music Orchestra deals. I remember someone telling me the woodwind and brass players played like "junior college" level musicians on that disc, but I've personally always liked it as well.

[mogrooves]

For Alto, baby!

I had a cousin in Chi-town who sent me all those hip Delmark and Nessa LPs when they were hard to find even in the NYC shops. I caught him a number of times in the 70s, the first at the open rehearsals for Conference of The Birds at Sam's loft space.

The group with Crispell, Hemmingway, and & Dresser was hip, but my relationship to Braxton's music became fairly attenuated after that. I did, however, receive Mosaic's box set as a gift a while back, which rekindled my interest. somewhat.

[Mister Triscuits]

(I forget which year, there's also a third album recorded in Coventry from the same tour, but I never got it because the back cover notes were a bit vague about it's contents, other than it included a "lecture", which I wasn't sure I wanted to listen to).

Yeah, that one consists of 82 minutes of music and an hour of spoken word. But you can get the whole thing as a download on Amazon for a paltry $3.96!

[Hobo Chang Ba]

Sadly (well not really sadly) his output is way to vast for me to explore with any kind of detail. That said...I love the two duet discs he made with Max Roach.

I also have the Black Saint/Soul Note box of 6 or 7 CDs from various points in his career. I've only listen to Birth/Rebirth currently, but I'm looking forward to listening to the headier stuff soon. I also will buy For Alto at some point too.

[Baribrotzer]

There was also a live disc recorded in Eugene, Oregon, I think 89 which is pretty good, another one of the Creative Music Orchestra deals. I remember someone telling me the woodwind and brass players played like "junior college" level musicians on that disc, but I've personally always liked it as well.

I was in the audience for that. Also, I knew some of the players. They weren't so much inept - not at all - as that a certain number of them had never played or even heard anything like that before. More than a few of them were primarily straight-ahead bop guys. So they were struggling not only with the considerable technical difficulty of Braxton's material, but with trying to make musical sense out of what seemed like pages and pages of random notes jumping every-which-way, little of it in any discernible key, and occasionally turning into drawings and other impenetrable symbols. And the peculiar self-invented jargon in which Braxton attempted to explain himself didn't help.

[walt]

Whoa--is there really a CD of this?

Yeah.I doubt if it's still in print.I was lucky enough to get the Japanese Sony cd of Vol.1 back in the early 90's.I wish Vol.2 were available.

Here are YT clips of Vol.1.





There are YT clips of Vol.2 also.

[Poisoned Youth]

Braxton is indeed a unique animal, and somewhat like Sun Ra, has a vast catalog that can be overwhelmingly eclectic. How do you attempt to digest something like 250 recordings, or even decide where to begin?

My faves are:

Five Pieces (1975)
Dortmund (Quartet) (1976)
The Montreux/Berlin Concerts (1977)
Six Compositions for Quartet (1984)
Composition No. 165 (for 18 Instruments) (1992)

I don't care for the GTM stuff and I can't for the life of me think of where to begin from the last 20 years of his work.

[Bake 1]

First heard him on Five Pieces 1975 and it's still a personal favorite. Around that time Phil Woods was saying in a Downbeat interview that Braxton couldn't swing or play, (his opinion wasn't unique). I think Braxton could do pretty much whatever he wanted to. As was mentioned before he's put out a ton of records and quite a few releases sound fairly conventional. The line up below frequently delivered a potent jazz rock fix w/ Braxton sometimes stepping back for awhile and coming in w/ really fine reedwork. A bunch of stuff w/ Norton and O'neil on Barking Hoop and Leo smokes pretty good.

[Poisoned Youth]

Excellent. Thanks for sharing.

[mogrooves]

So they were struggling not only with Braxton's very difficult charts, but with trying to make musical sense out of what seemed like pages and pages of random notes jumping every-which-way, little of it in any discernible key, and occasionally turning into drawings and other impenetrable symbols. And the peculiar self-invented jargon in which Braxton attempted to explain himself didn't help.

Likewise, I made a large ensemble gig with Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre many moons ago. His charts looked as though they'd been transcribed by a three-year old. A lot of good players had trouble with the music at rehearsal, and matters were made worse by the fact that McIntyre was a class-A prick. Consequences? Four or five guys skipped the gig. Lesson? If you're going to treat your hired guns like shit, do it after the gig, like real pros!

[GuitarGeek]

Yeah, that one consists of 82 minutes of music and an hour of spoken word. But you can get the whole thing as a download on Amazon for a paltry $3.96!

Ah, but does it come with the liner notes? I found the liner notes in the Birmingham and London sets (as well as the Cologne 78 set) to be very helpful in understanding exactly what the frell was going on, musically speaking.

[mogrooves]

Phil Woods was saying in a Downbeat interview that Braxton couldn't swing or play, (his opinion wasn't unique).

It sure wasn't. A friend of mine attended a birthday party for Lee Konitz years ago. In attendance were the by-then former "young lions" of Memphis, George Coleman, Frank Strozier (a monster, btw!), Louis Hayes, Danny Moore, and some others. At some point somebody put on one of Braxton's In The Tradition LPs. According to my man, the viciousness of the opprobium heaped upon Braxton was red tooth and claw in extremis.

[walt]

"Anthony Braxton,who works,as did many of his great predecessors, to extend his tradition and not merely to celebrate it,has been at various times a favorite target of the propagandists,attacking him for:betraying his race(as was Louis Armstrong);being an intellectual (as was Charlie Parker);and diluting the musical purity of his tradition(as was John Coltrane).In short, he stands accused of just about all those things which have previously served to strengthen jazz.Braxton,recognised by the musicians who work with him as an outstanding musical figure, is unlikely to be deflected by this sort of stuff but if jazz no longer values the sort of qualities he represents then it has a pretty arid future.

Fortunately,jazz has always had its share of unruly spirits, players unconstrained by either prevailing fashion or any single imposed aesthetic......."-Derek Bailey,from his book "Improvisation Its Nature And Practice In Music".

Word.

[Blah_Blah_Woof_Woof]

I was enthralled by his Arista LP's in the 70's and met a guy who went to a school with Braxton as teacher. The students would perform on the weekends. The man I talked to was a drummer but was urged to play saxophone at one of these gigs and was prodded to solo for longer than was comfortable. Still, he valued the experience and spoke well of Braxton as a leader and teacher.

[Dana5140]

When we did the shows with him and Roscoe Mitchell, the two of them spent an hour in the rehearsal room writing up something like 20 pages of musical notation. And each show, they threw the sheets into the air, so that they were mixed up each time they played...

[Baribrotzer]

Likewise, I made a large ensemble gig with Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre many moons ago. His charts looked as though they'd been transcribed by a three-year old. A lot of good players had trouble with the music at rehearsal, and matters were made worse by the fact that McIntyre was a class-A prick. Consequences? Four or five guys skipped the gig. Lesson? If you're going to treat your hired guns like shit, do it after the gig, like real pros!

Interesting story.

I revised my original post a little: I had tried to say that many players in the band struggled with making aesthetic sense out of the music as well as with actually playing it, and don't know if that's what came across. Incidentally, Braxton was not any kind of jerk at all, but he did and does often appear to have his brain somewhere on Pluto. And the amount of pot he smoked didn't help.

[wideopenears]

I love For Alto, and Five Pieces. Have a couple other live things....but nothing recent.

[JeffCarney]

Surprised that Circle hasn't been mentioned. Paris Concerts is one hell of a double album.

Seen Braxton many times. Solo and otherwise. A particularly good gig I recall was one of those with Rova Saxophone Quartet. Must have been the late 80s.

The guy is a musical mastermind, IMO. But I'm not drawn to his music very often at this stage of my musical journey.

[GuitarGeek]

I have the duo album he recorded at the Victoriaville Fest in 2005 with Fred Frith. Nice stuff here. Not enough that you get to hear Anthony in a purely improvisational setting.

[unclemeat]

Tonight :