While it is not as powerful or as revelatory as For Alto, Anthony Braxton's second album for Delmark, 3 Compositions of New Jazz is his debut as a leader and showcases just how visionary -- or out to lunch depending on your point of view -- he was from the very beginning. Recorded nine months after his debut with Muhal Richard Abrams on Levels and Degrees of Light, Braxton's compositional methodology and his sense of creating a band are in full flower. For one thing, there is no use of a traditional rhythm section, though drums and a piano are used. The band is comprised of Leroy Jenkins on violin and percussion, Braxton on everything from alto to accordion to mixer, Leo Smith on trumpet and bottles, and Abrams on piano (and alto clarinet on one track). All but one track -- "The Bell" -- are graphically titled, so there's no use mentioning titles because computers don't draw in the same way. There is a sonorous unity on all of these compositions, which Braxton would draw away from later. His use of Stockhausen is evident here, and he borrows heavily from the melodic precepts of Ornette Coleman. The use of Jenkins' violin as a melodic and lyric device frees the brass from following any kind of preset notion about what should be done. Abrams plays the piano like a percussion -- not a rhythm -- instrument, and colors the textural figures in, while Smith plays all around the open space trying hard not to fill it. This is a long and tough listen, but it's a light one in comparison to For Alto. And make no mistake: It is outrageously forward-thinking, if not -- arguably -- downright visionary. Braxton's 3 Compositions of New Jazz is an essential document of the beginning of the end. - Thomas Jurek
In the 1960s a new fuse had been lit under the ass of jazz. As musicians of the bop era drove out hard bop, free jazz and modal works, avant-garde was slowly taking root as well. Growing from the seeds of luminaries such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy and Cecil Taylor came wild and turbulent sounds. Nowhere else in the history of jazz was there such ferocity and angst. Melody was scrapped and replaced with articulated chaos. In the process the jazz's ideology was wiped from the charts. Taking cues from the avant-garde composers, jazz reset the bounds of experimental composition. Standing at the forefront in the late sixties with another new vision of composition was Anthony Braxton.
As understated and misunderstood today as it was upon its release, 3 Compositions of New Jazz can be cited as a masterpiece of western music's deconstruction or a glaring opus of misdirected noise. I believe it is in fact a masterpiece! Many, including myself, see Braxton as genius who threw caution to the wind and created complex and intricate pieces that can still challenge and provoke controversy even close to forty years later. Fusing ideas of jazz's avant-gardists with Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, Braxton created a new sound that stepped even further ahead than what his jazz predecessors had done. Though Coltrane may have channeled LaMonte Young on My Favorite Things , 3 Compositions of New Jazz tackles jazz from the view of deconstructionist western-based models. With this record and Braxton's career we have the New York Uptown Jazz scene featuring such notables as Bill Frisell, Joey Barron and of course Braxton's most notable heir John Zorn - his Naked City was profiled April 2003 - and America's answer to the European avant-garde take on third stream jazz.
Piled with layers complex pieces written for a variety of instruments clashing together is the first sound that comes to mind. The music hits like sheets of gnawing power, tearing into your head. Borrowing Coleman's melodic ideas, Braxton allows the rips of violinist Leroy Jenkins fill in for the brass' normally lyrical performance. Leo Smith's trumpet on the other hand works much in the same way as Don Cherry's did for Coleman, bending around the space and melody without filling any of it in. As well Muhal Richard Abrams uses the piano as a percussive instrument as John Cage and Cecil Taylor have. But Braxton's methodical composition style is where this record differs greatly from his peers. Braxton uses mathematical based methods for composing. This idea of using math as a foundation appears throughout the work of post-modern composer Iannis Xenakis who utilized graphs and architecture to create pieces. Although it may seem bizarre, music's structure is based in a numerical idiom itself, these composers merely twisted that foundation to different applications of mathematical ideas and created some of the most innovative sounds.
The argument begins here, is Braxton a genius or fraud? Listening closely to the pieces takes a great amount of effort. There is no use in even denying it. But as the sounds individualize themselves the cohesive idea begins to form. Once you are able to get by the seeming randomness of the instruments, it easy to see why many consider Braxton among the last great visionaries of jazz. Though artists like Zorn surely deserve credit for their innovative ideas, they were certainly not the first to push jazz into such a wild frontier. 3 Compositions of New Jazz is without a doubt one of the hardest records to win over, but its style, tone and ideas are also some of the most influential in modern music today. - Trevor MacLaren
Tracks
1. (840m) -Realize-44M-44M
2. N-M488-44M-Z
3. The Bell
MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS piano, cello, alto clarinet (3)
LEO SMITH trumpet, mellophone, xylophone, bottles, percussion, kazoo
LEROY JENKINS violin, viola, harmonica, bass drum, recorder, cymbal, slide whistle
ANTHONY BRAXTON alto & soprano saxophones, clarinet, flute, musette, accordion, bells, snare
All compositions by Anthony Braxton
Delmark Records – DD-415