Composition n. 169 + (186 + 206 + 214)

Artist: Anthony Braxton
Label: Leo Records
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2
EAN: 5024792032020
ASIN: B00005RDED

Release Date: 2001-11-20

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Tracks:

Composition N. 169 + (186 + 206 + 214)

Tracks:

Composition N. 169 + (186 + 206 + 214)

Customer Reviews:

Braxton Fans, Don't Hesitate.......2004-04-07

Don't let the 3 star review below discourage you, Braxton fans. This is a very interesting performance with some great orchestral music. The review below gives a pretty accurate description of the music, but I think the impression that Braxton was disappointed with this performance is unsupported. Braxton's liner notes seem more focused on lack of time and money for choreography and the like. He says his 4 orchestra recording from the 1970's was also "not fully engaged," but it is still a landmark.

Ambitious & difficult music.......2002-01-13

This album was recorded live in Ljubljana, & is one of Braxton's ambitious large-scale works: four saxophonist/conductors, plus a large string orchestra (the Slovenia Radio Orchestra). Braxton's liner notes are characteristically opaque, & as usual contain complaints about how due to lack of money the resulting performance was not "fully engaged" (i.e. satisfactory). Certainly this does not sound like a fully successful realization, but I find the rawness of the document rather appealing, in fact, though it's a pity that the recording catches every last cough & beeper-alarm from the audience.

As for the music: this is extremely difficult, sometimes rebarbative music. I'm not sure that I have much patience with the principal theme, an orchestral tutti which frankly sounds like car horns beeping in unison; the performance opens with 10 minutes of this, & the whole thing ends on another 15+-minute climactic statement of this motif with minimal variation. Rather more interesting is what comes in between, much of which is taken up by collaged inserts of Compositions 188, 206 & 214 (Ghost Trance musics). The whole performance has a kind of strange, dreamlike method of getting from one episode to the next; it always seems to be in the midst of a deceleration or acceleration, but slowly & in a manner peculiarly hard to grasp--rather like an illustration of Bergsonian lived time vs. clock time. -- Though this is not "jazz" there _are_ improvised solos, & Braxton's first (of two) solos, on disc 1, is some of his best playing I've heard for a while--scorching, searching & absolutely of the moment. There's also a pair of good soprano solos immediately following, & rounding out disc 1, a mediocre, almost mooing alto solo--not sure who it is, because the liner notes are no help, but I think it's Jackson Moore. The highlight of disc 2 is when the orchestra drops out & all 4 saxophonists are left to do their thing. This gets a (rather sparse) hand from the audience--one wonders what the attendence & reaction to the piece was like, as after the last notes of the piece are played the CD abruptly ends--the applause is edited out.

So: is this an essential Braxton record? No. Is it worth a listen? Yes, though parts of it are a trial. Still, it mostly held my attention, & despite Braxton's dissatisfaction seems to me a mostly "engaged" version of this piece.

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