Anthony Braxton
For the last couple of days, I've been plowing through a pile of CDs by composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton. On first listen,"Six Monk's Compositions" and "Birth and Rebirth" (with Max Roach) are clearly material I would recommend to someone not so interested in Braxton's wilder creations. "Creative Orchestra Music 1976" would fall into this latter category. Is it adventurous? Hint: the track titles are diagrams.
- Homepage
- Discography
- Composition No. 186 (1996)
- Tri-vibrational dynamics in a nutshell
- A massive interview
- 1989 Wire article: "I'd like to say that Hildegard is as important as Johann Sebastian Bach. Yeah, put that in."
- 1985 lecture
That last one has Braxton speaking to a bunch of music students and there's a great quip about his recording royalties at the very beginning of the broadcast. A similar comment about his art's attractiveness to money can be found in the liner notes to "Five Compositions (Quartet) 1986":
All of this material [his books of musical theory] is now available from Synthesis Music (at this point in time we have advanced to ten copies of each book... and in the years to come we might well press - who knows - maybe twenty copies of each book). Capitalism is alive and well. Thank you.
Creative Orchestra Music does however have the “Circus Music” piece, which is probably one of the most likable things he ever did.
My favorite Braxton album of all time is his first solo record, “For Alto,” recorded on a pretty lousy tape recorder in 1969. It’s stunning and nearly unprecedented, though very uncompromising.
Braxton’s musical tastes have always been mercurial. His taste for Warne Marsh and Tristano isolated him from a lot of his 60s peers (like Cecil Taylor), and I remember seeing a list of his favorite music that included “the Florida State University Marching Band Theme.”
The CDs were all library loans, but I guess I must get a copy of “For Alto” one of these days.
Care to recommend any of his Ghost Trance pieces from the 90s?