Anthony Braxton's Nine CD Box Set

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On April 3rd, Firehouse 12 Records will release the Anthony Braxton 12+1tet's 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006, a nine-CD (plus one-DVD) box set documenting what Time Out New York called "last Spring's epochal run" at New York's Iridium Jazz Club in March 2006. These concerts featured the world premieres of Compositions 350 through 358, the final works in his Ghost Trance Music series, recorded over the course of this rare four-night stand on an American stage. Included with the music is a Braxton documentary, interspersed with live concert footage, and an extensive collection of essays, commentary and biographical information. This definitive set is being released in coordination with Braxton's return engagement at Iridium March 29th-April 1st, 2007.

"Going to hear Anthony Braxton in Times Square is a unique event, " writes trumpeter/ composer Dave Douglas in his commentary on the second night's first set. "The quizzical looks of tourists who just happened to come down for this set and seem to be asking themselves if this is some sort of introduction to something else or if in fact this is the thing itself. Rapt listeners aware that we are in for a very special treat. The tension was palpable, and it was inspiring to think that after all these years of brilliance--years of composing, performing, teaching, writing, living--this man is still on the front edge of what it means to hear new music, to be in time, to exist. There is a power in this music that urges us to do better, to learn, to grow, to change and adapt. To excel in each moment."

Anthony Braxton began playing the alto saxophone and clarinet in his teens, but he has since performed and/or recorded on every instrument in the clarinet and saxophone families, as well as piano. On these Iridium dates alone he plays everything from the sopranino to the rarely seen Eb contralto clarinet, which, as The New York Times' Ben Ratliff pointed out in his review of Saturday's first set, "looks like a giant paper clip."

His musical coming of age is closely associated with his hometown of Chicago and its musical renaissance of the mid-to-late 1960's. This relationship includes membership in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1966, the influential trio Creative Construction Company with violinist Leroy Jenkins and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, and his groundbreaking 1968 2-LP set For Alto on Chicago's seminal Delmark Records label, the first-ever improvised solo saxophone recording and one of Braxton's most enduring musical statements.

Collaboration with his peers has always been a major part of Braxton's career. The most obvious examples are the quartet Circle (with Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Barry Altschul) and his own longstanding group of the 1980's and 90's featuring Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway. He also appears on classic recordings such as Muhal Richard Abrams' Levels And Degrees Of Light (Delmark) and the David Holland Quartet's Conference Of The Birds (ECM), and has recorded duets with Derek Bailey, Ran Blake, Andrew Cyrille, Joe Fonda, Hank Jones, Mario Pavone, Max Roach, and Richard Teitelbaum among many others.

Braxton and his music appear on more than 230 recordings from the past 40 years on dozens of labels from around the world. Although he is a prolific composer, he is just as apt to record music by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Andrew Hill, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Lennie Tristano or any number of his collaborators and former students, as he has done frequently throughout his career.

Many of today's most innovative young musicians know him primarily as a teacher and mentor, either as a bandleader or via his well-documented teaching career at Mills College and most recently as a tenured professor at Wesleyan University. His wide-reaching role as an educator has included training and leading ensembles, conducting private tutorials with graduate students, and teaching courses in electronic music, jazz improvisation, and music history spanning Western Medieval composer Hildegard von Bingen to contemporary masters such as John Cage and Ornette Coleman.

With very few exceptions, most notably the series of 36 autonomous one-act operas he calls Trillium, Braxton's exclusive compositional focus since 1995 has been what he calls his Ghost Trance Music (GTM) series, which incorporates inspiration from Native American Ghost Dance rituals of the late 19th century among other world musical traditions. The music on 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 is the culmination of that 11-year compositional journey and showcases the unprecedented versatility and inclusiveness of his approach. "But of course, " added Nate Chinen in his New York Times preview listing for the original concerts, "the reason not to miss this engagement is Mr. Braxton himself, whose playing is as terse and riveting as ever, and whose concept has never faltered in its evolution."

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