Anthony Braxton Music

There are five cuts. CUT ONE is a traditional tune, while the other cuts don't even have names--they are indicated on the album jacket by little diagrams.

CUT ONE. This piece has a name, namely, You Stepped Out of a Dream. Sax plus bass play the tune of this jazz standard for the first minute. At one minute, both sax and bass start improvising. There is never any trumpet or drums in this piece. The sax plays bebop style throughout. At 3 min, 50 sec, there is a lengthy bass solo. At 5 min, 40 sec, the sax returns. At 6 min, 20 sec, the original tune returns. The piece is never frantic, fast, or "out there." CUT ONE is 7 min, 10 sec in all.

CUT TWO. Flute, drums, and bass start this piece. The tune is slow, jagged, and spacey. (It could be something expected from the first album by Return to Forever.) At 2 min, Barry Altschul does a solo on his big collection of cymbals, gongs, and flexitone. At 3 min, 50 sec, the flute and bass return. The trumpet materializes at 4 min, 20 sec, but the piece ends only ten seconds later. CUT TWO belongs to Barry Altschul.

CUT THREE. This is the great stand-out of the album. The sax, trumpet, and drums play a pre-determined, jagged bebop tune. Throughout the entire piece, Dave Holland plays hand-plucked thumps, sounding like pig farts. There is no walking bass at all in CUT TWO. At 3 min, 20 sec, the sax lets out some honks, at 3 min, 50 sec, the sax lets out some squeaks. The trumpet starts at 4 min, and here we hear only the trumpet plus bass and drums. At 5 min, 30 sec, the sax returns, and at this point there starts a relatively brief meandering episode, which includes some stupid-sounding smacking noises. At 6 min, 45 sec, the original tune resumes and the piece ends at 8 min.

CUT FOUR. This is the blowing session of the album. The sax and trumpet start out, with slow, long-held notes. At 50 sec, the bass starts up, and it is bowed with long bowing notes, and there are sizzling cymbals. At 2 min, there is a ten second drum solo, and at 2 min, 20 sec, the sax and trumpet return--and the drums become more prominent, more clicking, more insistent, more varied. At 3 min, 20 sec, the bass starts to get very rapidly bowed (no more long, drawn-out bowings). The sax and trumpet continue with their original slow duet of pre-determined notes. At 4 min, 50 sec, Dave Holland gets a little wild and his bowing gets frantic. At 5 min, 15 sec, the excitement starts. Both sax and trumpet play sphagetti music--honks, bleats, free jazz. Dave's fingers are all over the fretboard. At 6 min, 30 sec, the trumpet drops out, and the sax plays more tangled sphagetti music. The trumpet enters at 7 min, 30 sec, and the sax drops out. It is a muted trumpet, and here, things get slower and quieter. The sax joins in cautiously at 8 min, 30 sec, and the mute is taken off of the trumpet at nine minutes. The flute joins in some ten seconds later, and here, there is just trumpet plus flute (no drums or bass). At ten and a half minutes, we hear a bass saxophone, sounding like a strange, grunting animal or perhaps a locomotive engine. At 11 min, 30 sec, only flute and bass play, and then only flute. At 12 min, 30 sec, there are weird high-pitched squeaks. By this point, most people would have put an end to CUT FOUR. At 14 min, 30 seconds, the flute plays some skittering sounds. At 15 min, 50 sec, there is a tiny drum solo. At 16 min, the original tune resumes, giving us hope that CUT FOUR will be ending soon. But unfortunately, CUT FOUR continues on for seventeen minutes and 20 seconds.

CUT FIVE. This piece is another stand-out. It is a bit like CUT THREE, in that the bass mainly plays a monotonous ditty much of the way through. The bass plays a 2-note motif. Sax plus trumpet join in, and play bebop. Eventually, at 1 min, 15 sec, the theme tune makes its first appearance (while the bass still plays the 2-note motif). At 1 min, 50 sec, the bass breaks away from the 2-note motif, and begins a walking bass. At 2 min, 30 sec, the 2-note motif returns, and the sax and trumpet both improvise. At 3 minutes, a fadeout begins and CUT FIVE ends at 3 min, 20 seconds.

There are five cuts. CUT ONE is a traditional tune, while the other cuts don't even have names--they are indicated on the album jacket by little diagrams.

CUT ONE. This piece has a real name, You Stepped Out of a Dream. For the first minute, sax plus bass only for one minute, play the tune. At one minute, both sax and bass start improvising. There is never any trumpet or drums in this piece. The sax plays bebop style throughout. At 3 min, 50 sec, there is a lengthy bass solo. At 5 min, 40 sec, the sax returns. At 6 min, 20 sec, the original tune returns. The piece is never frantic, fast, or "out there." CUT ONE is 7 min, 10 sec in all.

CUT TWO. Flute, drums, and bass start this piece. The tune is slow, jagged, and spacey. (It could be something expected from the first album by Return to Forever.) At 2 min, Barry Altschul does a solo on his big collection of cymbals, gongs, and flexitone. At 3 min, 50 sec, the flute and bass return. The trumpet materializes at 4 min, 20 sec, but the piece ends only ten seconds later. CUT TWO belongs to Barry Altschul.

CUT THREE. This is the great stand-out of the album. The sax, trumpet, and drums play a pre-determined, jagged bebop tune. Throughout the entire piece, Dave Holland plays hand-plucked thumps, sounding like pig farts. There is no walking bass at all in this piece. At 3 min, 20 sec, the sax lets out some honks, and at 3 min, 50 sec, the sax lets out some squeaks. The trumpet starts at 4 min, and here we hear only the trumpet plus bass and drums. At 5 min, 30 sec, the sax returns, and at this point there starts a relatively brief meandering episode, which includes some stupid-sounding smacking noises. At 6 min, 45 sec, the original tune resumes and the piece ends at 8 min.

CUT FOUR. This is the blowing session of the album. The sax and trumpet start out, with slow, long-held notes. At 50 sec, the bass starts up, and it is bowed with long bowing notes, and there are sizzling cymbals. At 2 min, there is a ten second drum solo, and at 2 min, 20 sec, the sax and trumpet return--and the drums become more prominent, more clicking, more insistent, more varied. At 3 min, 20 sec, the bass starts to get very rapidly bowed (no more long, drawn-out bowings). The sax and trumpet continue with their original slow duet of pre-determined notes. At 4 min, 50 sec, Dave Holland gets a little wild and his bowing gets frantic. At 5 min, 15 sec, the excitement starts. Both sax and trumpet play sphagetti music--honks, bleats, free jazz. Dave's fingers are all over the fretboard. At 6 min, 30 sec, the trumpet drops out, and the sax plays more tangled sphagetti music. The trumpet enters at 7 min, 30 sec, and the sax drops out. It is a muted trumpet, and here, things get slower and quieter. The sax joins in cautiously at 8 min, 30 sec, and the mute is taken off of the trumpet at nine minutes. The flute joins in some ten seconds later, and here, there is just trumpet plus flute (no drums or bass). At ten and a half minutes, we hear a bass saxophone, sounding like a strange, grunting animal or perhaps a locomotive engine. At 11 min, 30 sec, only flute and bass play, and then only flute. At 12 min, 30 sec, there are weird high-pitched squeaks. By this point, most people would have put an end to CUT FOUR. At 14 min, 30 seconds, the flute plays some skittering sounds. At 15 min, 50 sec, there is a tiny drum solo. At 16 min, the original tune resumes, giving us hope that CUT FOUR will be ending soon. But unfortunately, CUT FOUR continues on for seventeen minutes and 20 seconds.

CUT FIVE. This is another standout of the album. CUT FIVE is a bit like CUT THREE, in that the bass mainly plays a monotonous ditty. The bass plays a 2-note motif. Sax plus trumpet join in, and play bebop. Eventually, at 1 min, 15 sec, the theme tune makes its first appearance (while the bass still plays the 2-note motif). At 1 min, 50 sec, the bass breaks away from the 2-note motif, and begins a walking bass. At 2 min, 30 sec, the 2-note motif returns, and the sax and trumpet both improvise. At 3 minutes, a fadeout begins and CUT FIVE ends at 3 min, 20 seconds.

Intense, uncompromising solo saxophone. This is not the kind of music to provide background for a dinner party, as Mr. Braxton demands your full attention.

Anthony Braxton's For Alto is an amazing recording. It is a series of pieces, or sketches, of different people who have had a meaning in Braxton's life. And just as each person you have known well has had made a different kind of impact, so to does each different piece. It is interesting to guess what that impact might be. Tracks 5 and 6 are haunting, breathy, sparse, ballad-influenced pieces. To me itseemed as if the people for whom these pieces are dedicated had calm, simple, beautiful relationships with the master saxophonist. Track 4, for Cecil Taylor (my personal favorite) is a showcase for not only boundless technique, but astonishing energy...two things Cecil is known for. Track 2, for John Cage, shows some of the radical concepts and ideas Braxton absorbed from the avant-garde composer. And so on.

Obviously this album is groundbreaking. Others had done unaccompanied solos before...Coleman Hawkins, Eric Dolphy (a personal favorite) and one or two others, but Braxton was the first to program an entire album of them, each exploring a different venue of free jazz. And he inspired a whole host of others to try their hand at the same thing, most notably Evan Parker's excursions on the soprano saxophone. As an experimental album, most of it is simply breathtaking. Tracks 3-6 deffinitely deserve close, concentrated, repeated listening.

Unfortunately, like many experiments, not all of it "works." While I would deffinitely not call 2, 7 and 8 "failed," they seem to me to be dead ends, both creatively and stylistically. Honks, buzzes, screeches and the like are very effective ways of furthering the musical vocabulary, and I'm all for them. However, often these same sounds are almost unintelligible. While I am not one to claim music or art need necessarily be pleasing, it should at least be understandable. If you can't make yourself understood, you are just babbling to yourself. On these tracks Braxton seems to be groping in the dark, struggling to find a new outlet of worthwhile things to say...but in the end it really doesn't lead to anything.

That said, For Alto is a very important album, and despite my qualms about three of the pieces, I give this album 5 stars for concept, vision, tracks 3-6, and historical importance. All experienced jazz listeners need to give thie album a try at some point, so why not now? It is, at the risk of sounding pretentious, a "human portrait," as it were, not just of Braxton, in sound rather than paint. Some of it is ugly and jarring, but most of it is beautiful and powerful...just like life. This should be in any jazz lover's collection.

When you first glance at this CD your first impression is more than likely "boring". When you look at the stats- 1 alto saxophonist, 73 minutes... the odds are definitely not in Mr. Braxton's favor. While this beast of an album is intimidating, if you have an open mind (most people who listen to jazz should), you will find a full-length cd full of sounds and silence, all simply incredible.

As other reviewers have noted, a number of these songs are noise. Some people will find this annoying, while others will find it attractive. To myself there is something trancelike about the wandering curiosity and sheer emotion of the screeching and rolling and honking. In 'John Cage' you are taken on an exhausting roller coaster ride, as Braxton rolls through unknown scales and exceeds higher registers where the sound of him breathing into the saxophone is heavier than the saxophone itself. Some of the noise is downright scary. Kenny McKenny and Leroy Jenkins have to be some of the most frightening songs to listen to, but they are truly incredible. It's great to hear Braxton really exploring the unheard sounds of the saxophone at length. It is almost like a drug... at first its almost overwhelming, but as you contine to be exposed to it you become desensitized and it really takes effect.

The remainder of the tracks are equally as stunning if not more so. Ann and Peter Allen is a quiet, solemn meditation that uses heavy silence. Truly amazing. Susan Axelrod is a sort of more intense variation of it. The rest of the songs are the best for casual listening, great free improvisations loosely based on certain scales. Cecil Taylor is very bluesy, probably my favorite track.

This recording shows, at an incredibly young age, Braxton was already a master of the concept of improvisation, and more importantly the alto saxophone. In the course he makes his sax wail and scream, cry out gently and faintly, and create beautiful tones. You will gasp for breath after this exhaustingly good 73 minutes, and probably want to play sax.

Anthony Braxton's "For Alto" is one of the most bold recordings ever made-- Braxton, who was extremely new on the scene, recorded a double LP (73 minutes worth) of solo alto saxaphone performances.

The music on here is impressive-- most so because without any net whatsoever, Braxton largely manages to hold together and produces something absolutely amazing.

The music on here is a number of things-- aggressive, angry, explosive, but also tender, lyrical and melodic. It is not for everyone, you have to be able to accept that it lacks all conventional touchstones, but I suspect if you're reading this review at all, you'll want to hear it.

I used to play the LP on my jazz show simultaneously with other so-called avant garde tunes, most frequently Sonic Youth's Silver Session for Jason Knuth (thank god for whrb!) -- quite an analogous recording i'd say... Other times it was played with taped movie dialogue, some cuts from Neu!, and yes even Kenny G (just imagine braxton from the 60's barging on stage of a Kenny G concert in the 80's with one of his excruciating solos! ha! the audience would just blow up in their pastel suits) etc. etc. Well, you get the idea. The "fascination," the proverbial point is that this albums is about you the listener and your environ at the times of listening, anthony braxton the musician at the time of recording, and the attempted elimination of spatial and temporal boundaries therewithin. It's an attempt to create infinite permutations of an episode for every future listening of this recording. It dehumanizes the music. Well, and so on goes the theory... Yes, this album is definitely prettier in theory. If you like other things "avant garde," you will see how this fits into that worldview. If you don't, you will probably hate it. (Thank you delmark for finally re-releasing it on CD.)