I'm currently exploring the catalogue of Anthony Braxton. Any recommendations? As w/ most Jazz artists, his recorded works are massive and intimidating to the neophyte...

...good starting points? Thanks in advance...

Luckily for you Braxton is one of those whom I have a great majority of his recordings. The thing with Braxton is that he has so many different stages/phases and he is constantly recording and new recordings are always being released or reissued.

So, you can have recordings, which come out that are current or from one of his previous stages from the sometime in the past. He may not even be still playing that phase of music anymore.

Also, his compositions all have numbers instead of titles. He also uses diagrams for his compositions. He is also one of the greatest multi-instrumentalists in music. I have lost count how many different instruments he has recorded with. He has several Standard's groups. In one these groups he also is the pianist.



Currently he is in what he calls his Ghost Trance Music stage and he is up into the 300+ composition series.

Get any of what is called his Forces of Motion Quartet recordings from the 80's that you can find, especially Willisau (Quartet) 1991 and Quaret (Santa Cruz) 1993. Both of which are out of print and hard to find, but every so often pop up. Beside these any hat Art recordings in which he recorded....you can't go wrong with most of his others on that label.


Of those recordings that are still in print, which you should be able to find.

Quartet (Dortmund) 1976 *****
Quintet (Basel) 1977 *****
News from the 70's ****
Three Compositions of New Jazz ****
Twelve Compositions **
Quartet (London) 1985 **
Quartet (Coventry) 1985 **
Qaurtet (Birmingham) 1985 **
Duo (London) 1993 - this is a duo with Evan Parker.
Trio (London) 1993 - Braxton, Evan Parker and Paul Rutherford.
Charlie Parker Project
Six Compositions for Monk - the cover of Brilliant Corners is worth the price of admission alone.

Trio & Duet - Not sure about this one. I have heard that Sackville only reissued a 1000 of this recording.

Composition No. 94: For Three Instrumentalists - after they finish playing this composition, the three musicians finish the performance by playing the composition backwards.

Victoriaville 1988 - Evan Parker is part of this group recording, as well.




His solo recordings, which you should be able to find

For Alto ****
Solo (Koln) 1978 ****
Solo (NYC) 2002 ****
Saxophone Improvisations, Series F **
19 Solo Compositions



Standards recordings

14 Compositions (Traditional) 1996
9 Standards (Quartet) 1993
8 Standards
Solo Piano (Standards) 1995
20 Standards (Quartet) 2003 ***
23 Standards (Quatet) 2003 ***


Marty Ehrlich handles the bulk of the reed work. Though Braxton does play some sax on these recordings.
Knitting Factory (Piano/Quartet) 1994, Vol. 1
Knitting Factory (Piano/Quartet) 1994, Vol. 2
Piano Quartet, Yoshi's 1994


Ghost Trance Music - I would put off this phase until you get the classic recordings first. Braxton fans are divided on this phase of his output. I happen to like it but I have friends who really don't. I have heard that Braxton recorded some GTM with a 55 member group that will be released sometime in the future.


Composition 247 - if you're not a fan of bagpipes, this one isn't for you.
Two Compositions (Trio) 1998
Six Compositions (GTM) 2001
Sextet (Istanbul) 1996


Here is a link to the liner notes of Comp 247 by one of those involved James Fei explaining GTM.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jcf17/247.html






If you can find any of his Arista lp's grab them if you can afford them. And for some unbelievable reason you don't like them, you can make a large profit on Ebay.


The Forces of Motion Quartet is made up of Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemingway, and Mark Dresser.

For example, they would start out playing say Composition 158 and in the middle of that Crispell might start playing something from 96 and instead of her playing the piano part to 96 it might be from Braxton's sax portion, Hemingway's drums or Dresser's bass portion of 96. The written parts were interchangeable and at anytime each musician would and could bring in parts from other compositions. While that is happening the other 3 are following and improvising.

For example on Willisau (Quartet) 1991 there is one track called No. 140 (+147 +139 + 135).


There is a good book, which is called Forces of Motion by Graham Lock, who followed the Quartet during their 1985 tour in England.




Legend:

***** hatOLOGY releases that should be picked up first before they go out of print.
****Essential non Forces of Motion Quartet recordings.
**FMQ recordings.




__________________________________________________ _____________________________


Seperate from the legend, so I could update about recent additions to this post.


1 I edited in a recent reissue of a formerly out of print hatOLOGY recording.

2 I edited in a recent reissue of a limited edtion release of only 5000 worldwide.

3 I edited in 2 Standard's box set recordings. They're limited editions of only 1000 each worldwide.

4 The two hatOLOGY's in bold recently went out of print. Get these while you can!!!!!!


5 Some previously hard to find Black Saint recordings, now have found a new distributor. These recordings were not listed before. I need to check to make sure which can be found. I will edit in new information when I have time.

Satchmo has done an excellent job with his post.

Just one thing to add,

I really enjoy Braxton's Charlie Parker Project

The only reason I didn't mention it and most of the other hat Art recordings is that they are out of print. I also left out Braxton's Black Saint recordings for the same reason.

Thanks for the recommendations, Satch...I now have some starting points to work from.

By the way, your PMs are working properly, I've just been lazy as of late in responding to them...I'll get back to you soon. :tongue:

You're welcome. My bill is in the mail. You're lucky I don't charge by the hour. Otherwise you would owe me your first 3 born. As well as a vacation to Brazil, Germany, Austria, or Speyside. Scotland.

It took 3hrs and about 20 browser crashes and computer freezes. As well as counless edits to finally finish that post. :tongue:

I am sure Haakon needs that vacation but it's already too long.

Just found out that the Braxton's and other musicians Black Saint recordings are once again available in the U.S. Most of Braxton's Black Saint recordings are excellent. There are only a few Black Saint recordings that are not well worth having.

To give you an idea of a few of the unusual instruments Braxton plays

Braxton playing one of the 8-15 Contrabass Sax's in the world.







A contrabass clarinet

A double-belled euphonium

hehe.

I bought a mint condition Anthony Braxton LP from a Record Fair the other day.

It is called 'Seven Standards 1985 Volume 1'

on the Magenta label.

Features Hank Jones on piano!

YO! ^