Anthony Braxton On Contrabass Sax

There are very few contrabass saxophone players out there, and even fewer who have reached the stature of Anthony Braxton. Braxton, the prolific American performer and composer, has released over 100 albums over the past 4 decades.

While his performances on almost all voices of saxophone are legendary, there are those in the jazz community who would argue that Anthony Braxton is not a jazz musician at all.

Whatever you call his music, his mastery of saxophone, flute, clarinet, and piano have allowed this composer to create “music of enormous sophistication and passion that was unlike anything else that had come before it”.

Braxton on contrabass

    Photography by cattoo Source: Flickr

This is a video clip of the performance where the above photo was taken in 2007.  The Braxton Septept was performing at Iridium, in Times Square. 

In Part 2, the group performs Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music, on April 1, 2007.

This was the last date in a four night stand at iridium that coincided with the release of a 10 disc box entitled “Anthony Braxton, 9 compositions, iridium” which was recorded during a four night stand at iridium in march of 06.

  alexrobes

Is Anthony Braxton’s music Avant-Garde/Jazz? I’ll leave that for you to decide. One thing is for certain, he is a musical genius who certainly has his fair share of unusually large and rare woodwinds.