Anthony Braxton

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Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American composer, player of multiple reed instruments, and pianist.

He has created a large body of highly complex work. Much of Braxton's music is jazz oriented, but he has also been active in free improvisation and orchestral music, and has written operas. Among the vast array of instruments he utilizes are the flute; the sopranino, soprano, C-Melody, F alto, E-flat alto, baritone, bass, and contrabass saxophones; and the E-flat, B-flat, and contrabass clarinets.

Critic Chris Kelsey writes that "Although Braxton exhibited a genuine — if highly idiosyncratic — ability to play older forms (influenced especially by saxophonists Warne Marsh, John Coltrane, Paul Desmond, and Eric Dolphy), he was never really accepted by the jazz establishment, due to his manifest infatuation with the practices of such non-jazz artists as John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Many of the mainstream's most popular musicians (Wynton Marsalis among them) insisted that Braxton's music was not jazz at all. Whatever one calls it, however, there is no questioning the originality of his vision; Anthony Braxton created music of enormous sophistication and passion that was unlike anything else that had come before it." [1]

Braxton's music is highly theoretical and mystically influenced, and he is the author of multiple volumes explaining his theories and pieces—such as the philosophical three-volume Triaxium Writings and the five-volume Composition Notes, both published by Frog Peak Music. While his compositions and improvisations can be characterized as avant garde, many of his pieces have a swing feel and rhythmic angularity that are overtly indebted to Charlie Parker and the Bebop tradition.

Braxton is notorious for naming his pieces as diagrams, typically labeled with cryptic numbers and letters. (The labels of long playing records were better suited than compact discs for the depiction of these diagram titles.) Sometimes these diagrams have an obvious relation to the music — for instance, on the album For Trio the diagram-title indicates the physical positions of the performers — but in many cases the diagram-titles remain inscrutable (and Braxton has pointedly refused to explain their significance, claiming that he himself is still discovering their meaning). Braxton eventually settled on a system of opus-numbers to make referring to these pieces simpler (and earlier pieces have had opus-numbers retrospectively added to them).

In 1994, he was granted a MacArthur Fellowship.

Beyond his musical career, Braxton is an avid chess player; for a time in the 1960s he was a professional chess hustler, playing in New York in Washington Square Park.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Partial discography 3 Bibliography 4 External links 4.1 Reading 4.2 Listening

[edit] Biography

Early in his career, Braxton led a trio with violinist Leroy Jenkins and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and was involved with The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the "AACM", founded in Chicago, Braxton's birthplace.

In 1968, Braxton recorded For Alto. There had been occasional unaccompanied saxophone recordings previously (notably Coleman Hawkins' "Picasso"), but For Alto was the first full-length album for unaccompanied saxophone. The album's songs were dedicated to Cecil Taylor and John Cage, among others. The album influenced other artists like Steve Lacy (soprano sax) and George Lewis (trombone), who would go on to record their own acclaimed solo albums.

Braxton joined pianist's Chick Corea's existing trio with Dave Holland (double bass) and Barry Altschul (drums) to form the short-lived avant garde quartet "Circle", around 1970. When Corea broke up the group, forming Return to Forever to pursue a fusion based style of composition and recording, Holland and Altschul remained with Braxton for much of the 1970s as part of a quartet, with the rotating brass chair variously filled by trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, or trombonists George Lewis or Ray Anderson. This group recorded on Arista Records. The core trio plus saxophonist Sam Rivers recorded Holland's Conference of the Birds, ECM. In the 1970s he also recorded duets with Lewis and with synthesizer player Richard Teitelbaum. In the late 1970s he recorded two large ensemble recordings, "Creative Orchestra Music 1976," inspired by American jazz and marching band traditions, and "For Four Orchestras." Both of these records were released on Arista Records.

Braxton's regular group in the 1980s and early 1990s was a quartet with Marilyn Crispell (piano), Mark Dresser (double bass) and Gerry Hemingway on drums. It was called "his finest and longest standing band". [2]

Braxton has also recorded and collaborated with musicians European free improvisers such as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and the Globe Unity Orchestra, or with giants from the 'regular' jazz world, such as Max Roach. Throughout the years Braxton has played with a wide variety of people, such as Mal Waldron, Dave Douglas, Ornette Coleman, Dave Brubeck, Lee Konitz, Peter Brötzmann, Willem Breuker, Muhal Richard Abrams, Steve Lacy, Roscoe Mitchell, Pat Metheny, Andrew Cyrille, Wolf Eyes, Misha Mengelberg, Chris Dahlgren and countless others.

Beginning in 1995, Braxton began to concentrate almost exclusively on what he calls Ghost Trance Music, which introduces a steady pulse to his music and also allows the simultaneous performance of any piece by the performers. More recently he has created new series of compositions, such as the Falling River Musics that are documented on 2+2 Compositions (482 Music, 2005).

Braxton studied philosophy at Roosevelt University. He has taught at Mills College and now is Professor of Music at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, teaching music composition, music history, and improvisation.

One of his children, Tyondai Braxton, also is a professional musician and guitarist with American instrumental rock band Battles.

[edit] Partial discography

Main article: Anthony Braxton discography

Braxton recorded albums for various labels, such as Leo Records, Braxton House, Hat Hut (Hat Art/hatOLOGY), Emanem, Delmark, [Black Saint/Soul Note|Black Saint], [Arista Records], Futura Records [3] etc.

[edit] Bibliography

• Braxton, Anthony - Tri-Axium Writings Volumes 1-3 - 1985.
• Braxton, Anthony - Composition Notes A-E - 1988.
• Ford, Alun - Anthony Braxton (Creative Music Continuum) - Stride, 2004.
• Heffley, Mike - The Music Of Anthony Braxton - Greenwood, 1996.
• Lock, Graham - Forces in Motion: The Music and Thoughts of Anthony Braxton - Da Capo, 1989.
• Lock, Graham - Mixtery (A Festschrift For Anthony Braxton) - Stride, 1995.
• Lock, Graham - Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton - Duke University, 2000.
• Radano, Ronald Michael - New Musical Figurations (Anthony Braxton'S Cultural Critique) - University of Chicago, 1994.
• Wilson, Peter Niklas - Anthony Braxton. Sein Leben. Seine Musik. Seine Schallplatten. - Oreos, 1993.

[edit] External links

[edit] Reading

• Anthony Braxton and the Tri-Centric Foundation
• Frog Peak: Anthony Braxton
• Lovely Music: Anthony Braxton
• Comprehensive Discography
• Yahoo Mailing List
• Complete Anthony Braxton Chronology Project
• Interview-excerpt on restructuralism, stylism & traditionalism
• : 'The Third Millennial Interview' by Mike Heffley, 2001 (100+ pages)
• Research papers by Anthony Braxton

[www.jazzhouse.org/library/?read=panken6 : Composite Interview, WKCR, 1993-1995]

[www.intaktrec.ch/interbraxton-a.htm] Interview for Duo Palindrome (2002) w/ Andrew Cyrille

[edit] Listening

• Breakfast Conversation in Concert: Anthony Braxton interviewed by Roland Young, Glen Howell, and Sandy Silver, before his concert at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, 10 October 1971.
• Braxton interview concerning the application of his musical language (1985)
• Epitonic.com: Anthony Braxton featuring tracks from 19 Solo Compositions, 1988
• Art of the States: Anthony Braxton Composition No. 186 (1996)
• Most of Braxton's recordings for Leo Records are available from emusic. This is no longer the case, but Leo Records has made almost all of Braxton's Leo sessions available as downloads from their own site.