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Hurrah for Anthony Braxton! Hurrah for his dedication to a music loosely categorized "avant-garde." Hurrah for the brilliance of his instrumental play, on instruments as comfortable as flute, soprano and alto, and as potentially unwieldy as baritone, bass and contra-bass saxophones.
Hurrah for Braxton the composer, committed to a multi-year project of Ghost Trance Music, compositions founded upon a rhythm or pulse structure. And hurrah for Braxton having the wisdom to return to a traditional jazz quartet format, as he is joined here by bass, drums and piano/melodica.
Why all of the hurrahs? Because Four Compositions is brilliant. Braxton has reached a point in his compositional strategy where he does not mind the listener finding a key to his work—the march-like pattern, or, on "Composition 244," a radicalized quote from Thelonious Monk’s "Brilliant Corners"—that opens the door to the improvisation that follows even as all sense of time dissolves and the role of rhythm section and soloist is nullified (the latter an explicit goal of Braxton’s work, one well achieved here by his sidemen, all former students of the composer). On "244," Monk is found in a reed-melodica cavort, in a piano cycle of notes that holds the ghost of Monk’s theme, and in a march-step finale by the quartet.
Liner notes reveal the spontaneity of this recording—all but one of the written scores were shown to the musicians only at time of recording. There are explicit written passages, and then points for departure, where the composition’s structure and force come from one musician’s play and the intimate decision of when/whether to respond or proceed independently. Time stops, only to have an ensemble pulse/march unison statement emerge that then leads the musicians and listeners into a new direction.
Accessible Braxton? This is not an oxymoron but an appreciation of and for uncompromised, brilliantly envisioned improvisation off of theme-design-skeletons that the listener can enjoy.
Anthony Braxton. Hurrah!
Release Date: 25 February 2003
Anthony Braxton:
Four Compositions (GTM) 2000 (Delmark)
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last update 21 March 2003