Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945 in Chicago) is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist and philosopher. Inspired by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen as much as John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton has crafted an immense body of highly complex work. Though Braxton is hardly known to the casual listener he is certainly one of the most prolific American musicians/composers to date, having released well over 100 albums since the 1960s. In 1994 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Braxton plays a multitude of instruments including 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.
Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945 in Chicago) is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist and philosopher. Inspired by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen as much as John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton has crafted an immense body of highly complex work. Though Braxton is hardly known to the casual listener he is certainly one of the most prolific American musicians/composers to date, having released well over 100 albums since the 1960s. In 1994 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Braxton plays a multitude of instruments including 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.
Four Compositions (Quartet) 1983
1993 release ** "Before getting to the music of this Anthony Braxton recording, the listener is confronted with a highly calculated methodology. The album bears the stark title Four Compositions (Quartet) 1983, and each song (itself merely a cataloged number) is accompanied by its own highly cryptic diagram. This sets up a struggle, whereby musical/emotional ends must be achieved through Braxton's analytical compositional means. For this 1983 session, Braxton selected materials from his collecti…
Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013
*2025 stock* PMP is proud to release Anthony Braxton’s “Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013”, a limited deluxe 4-CD box set documenting the one-time meeting of an all-star trio featuring the legendary saxophonist and composer alongside Roland Dahinden (trombone), and Hildegard Kleeb (piano). This is the first album of the Czech label PMP.Art Lange describes the impetus for the session in the liner notes: The 4 CD set box Four Compositions (Wesleyan) 2013 is built on the latest evolutionary stage o…
Live at Pioneer Works, 26 October 2023
Formed 29 years ago (1996) by Nate Young, Wolf Eyes is currently a duo generally characterized as "noise," though they have called themselves "psycho jazz" (among other things). Extremely prolific, they have literally hundreds of releases and are a towering presence in underground music. Saxophonist Anthony Braxton was an early member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and has won a MacArthur and been named an NEA Jazz Master, though his work is hardly confined t…
12 Duets (DCWM) 2012
*2025 stock* 'Several years ago, Anthony and I discovered our mutual (giddy) enthusiasm for the music of Richard Wagner. I feel compelled to mention this because there is a positively orchestral, if not Wagnerian, element to our recording together—a sonic Gesamtkunstwerk, if you will, representing all registers of playing. In each take, new drama unfolds, as if each were a new act in an operatic continuum. Yet the most amazing thing about the process of recording with Anthony was the vast spectr…
10 Comp (Lorraine) 2022
10 Comp (Lorraine) 2022 documents six live performances with Anthony Braxton's Lorraine Trio featuring trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, accordionist/vocalist Adam Matlock, and Anthony Braxton and four studio recordings featuring Braxton, saxophonist James Fei, and bassists Zach Rowden and Carl Testa.
![Quintet [Tristano] 2014](https://cdn.soundohm.com/data/products/2025-01/a2951698608_16-jpg.jpg.500.jpg)
Quintet [Tristano] 2014
*2025 stock* 7-CD set of Braxton's interpretation of the music of Lennie Tristano and associated colleagues including Billy Bauer, Connie Crothers, Warne Marsh, Sal Mosca among others.
Anthony Braxton: pianoEivind Opsvik: bassMike Szekely: drumsJackson Moore: alto and baritone saxophones (left channel)André Vida: tenor, sopranino, bass, contrabass, and c-melody saxophones (right channel)
GTM (Syntax) 2017
*2025 stock. 300 copies limited edition* A twelve CD box set of Anthony Braxton’s complete Syntactical Ghost Trance Music (SGTM) - the subset of Braxton’s revolutionary Ghost Trance Music compositional system written especially for the human voice. The recording also introduces the Tri-Centric Vocal Ensemble - a twelve member choir featuring some of the most exciting and accomplished singers in creative music. The recording is available digitally and in a limited edition 300-copy pressing, a del…
Trillium J
*2025 stock* Trillium J is a Braxton opera, and documents a surreal and witty installment in Braxton’s ongoing Trillium cycle. Available as a four-disc box set in both physical and digital forms and live performance video on Blu-ray disc, it includes a booklet with libretto, photos, and critical essays. Live performance recorded April 19, 2014 at Roulette, Brooklyn. Studio realization recorded April 21-22, 2014 at Avatar Studios, New York, NY.
Trillium E
*2025 stock* Trillium E is the first-ever studio recording of a Braxton opera, and documents a surreal and witty installment in Braxton’s ongoing Trillium cycle. Available as a four-disc box set in both physical and digital forms, it includes a 72-page booklet with libretto, photos, and critical essays. Each of Trillium E’s four acts features a different episode: a genie in a bottle, the invention of human cloning, interplanetary space travel, and the exploration of a jungle pyramid. The perform…
Duo (Amherst) 2010
*2025 stock* Recorded September 22, 2010 at Bezanson Recital Hall, Amherst MA
Produced by Taylor Ho Bynum for the Tri-Centric FoundationConcert produced by Glenn Siegel for the Solo & Duos Seriesof the Fine Arts Center at the University of Massachusetts, AmherstVideo recorded, edited and directed by Dennis SteinerAssistant camera by Nick RussoAudio recorded by Jim MatusMastered by Nick Lloyd, Firehouse 12 Studios, New Haven CTGraphic design by Ben HellerThanks to WMUA 91.1, ACTV, Amherst Media, …
Trillium R
2024 Stock. Minor signs of wear from long-time storage. Live recording of the fully-staged Anthony Braxton opera Trillium R - Composition No. 162 -- An Opera in Four Acts/Shala Fears for the Poor (dedicated to Nelson Mandela). Liner notes by Anthony Braxton. Trillium is the name I have given to a preconceived series of thirty-six autonomous one-act operas that will hopefully be completed in the next ten to fifteen years. I have conceived of this effort as an “opera complex” that allows for the i…
Duets 1987
Remastered from the original analog tapes of the duet between Anthony Braxton and Gino Robair from sessions recorded on August 6th and October 9th 1987 at Cal State University, Hayward, California. This release includes all of the music from the original, limited-edition LP as well as extra tracks from the same sessions.
Duo (DCWM) 2013
What becomes quickly apparent when the music ends is that the parts of the brain wired for multi-tasking and instant contextualization have been swamped by Masaoka and Braxton’s palette, their bold strokes and the vaulting arcs they form.
Town Hall 1972
Tip! *2024 stock* If Anthony Braxton were to be judged on the basis of his oeuvre alone, he would stand completely apart from any modern composer, bar none. He has an enormous body of work, written for every conceivable permutation and combination of ensemble, from two to over a hundred and also for practically all the modern instruments known to musicians. As a reeds and winds player, he has a staggering technique, but not only this: he dives deep into the soul to extract the most subtle emotio…
Circle - Paris Concert
Circle was a band on fire with creativity. Chick Corea and Dave Holland had just left Miles Davis’s band, keen to explore all parameters of new music in an improvised context. Anthony Braxton, equally inspired by Stockhausen and Coltrane, brought in new directions from the AACM. Barry Altschul’s resumé included extensive work with Paul Bley. Together they were, for a while, matchless. Corea called the Paris Concert (recorded 1971) the realization of a dream. Melody Maker: “Paris Concert is evide…
Solo Bern 1984, First Visit
"In its entirety, the concert is lively and penetrating evidence of Braxton’s remarkable facility, powers of invention, and commitment to his principles at this point in time, with special emphasis on saxophone techniques energizing variables of tone color, texture, and timbre to affect separate phrases, extended lines, and sectional contrasts." – Art Lange
Producer’s note: "I experienced over many years Anthony Braxton different performances. His solo performance 1984 in Bern belongs into the …
Sax Qt (Lorraine) 2022
4CD + 40 pages booklet with photos and an essay in english and Italian by Mario Gamba
Conference of the Birds
*2023 stock* It had been preceded by ECM duo albums with Barre Phillips and with Derek Bailey as well as the cooperative band Circle’s great Paris Concert, but Conference of the Birds, recorded in 1972, was Dave Holland’s first album as a full-fledged leader. An album of driving, progressive jazz it is also of historical significance as the only occasion when Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton, two of the music’s most strikingly original saxophonists, recorded together. Inside Dave’s compositions th…
Duet
“Composition 429” is the first piece using a new writing method that Braxton calls “Lorraine.” The composer’s notes to the piece describe Lorraine as “a music system that governs the ‘sonic winds’ of breath.” Saxophonist and longtime collaborator James Fei contributes an essay detailing the Lorraine system, which uses a combination of traditional notation and color-coded symbols of the composer’s design to indicate “specific sound types or performance techniques,” drawing from Braxton’s long his…
Echo Echo Mirror House
*2022 stock* Live recording of Anthony Braxton's Echo Echo Mirror House Music, where all the musicians use iPods in addition to their instruments, which took place during 2011 Tri-Centric Festival at Roulette.
In Echo Echo Mirror House musical system, all the musicians wield iPods in addition to their instruments, while navigating scores that combine cartography and evocative graphic notation, creating a musical tapestry combining live performance and sampled sounds from Braxton’s extensive reco…