On June 18, 2021, the Tri-Centric Foundation and New Braxton House Records will release Anthony Braxton's "Quartet (Standards) 2020", a 13-CD deluxe box set documenting Braxton’s European tour in January last year. Armed with a songbook of over one hundred tunes, Braxton crossed the Atlantic and assembled a stellar ensemble of British musicians – Alexander Hawkins on piano, Neil Charles on bass and Stephen Davis on drums. The box set comprises sixty-seven tracks culled from nine evenings of performances in London, Warsaw and Wels representing decades of American music, from the Great American songbook to Paul Simon via music by jazz luminaries including Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Andrew Hill, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, and many more.
The long-awaited 11-CD box set of Braxton's interpretations of the Charlie Parker songbook. Very limited number of advanced copies. Braxton’s hard-swinging Charlie Parker Project, recorded in 1993 with a brilliant band including two geniuses since deceased—trumpeter Paul Smoker and pianist Misha Mengelberg—expands beyond its original two-CD form into a 11-CD box on New Braxton House, the imprint operated by Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation. The notion of listening to everything in sequence, including numerous versions of the same tunes, admittedly is daunting, but this is a set that you can drop into literally anywhere and be swept away instantly.
Since he released the completely solo For Alto in 1968, the accepted image of Anthony Braxton has been that he is more a theoretician and art music composer than a jazz musician. Therefore, it might seem strange that Mosaic Records is giving his Complete Arista Recordings one of their fabled box set treatments. But Braxton is both – and much more. This set – as well as the original Arista recordings – were produced by Michael Cuscuna, Mosaic/Blue Note label head. The sheer scope of these recordings is staggering. What we get in this amazingly detailed collection is the weightiest argument yet for Braxton's range and depth of field as a musical thinker and his role as a pillar of modern jazz.
In 2003 Anthony Braxton Quartet went on a European tour which has become legendary. The members of this quartet were Kevin O'Neil on guitar, Kevin Norton on percussion and Andy Eulau on bass. The concept of the tour was to perform jazz standards and during the tour the quartet performed over 60 different ones. The results of the tour were two 4-CD sets entitled 23 Standards (Quartet) 2003 and 20 Standards (Quartet) 2003 released by Leo Records. Both sets received tremendous critical acclaim. Reviewers noted that Braxton performed jazz standards in an entirely new way. Rather than echoing, aping or diminishing the tradition he was reinventing it making both the past and present much richer than it was before. Now we are releasing the remaining 19 standards (no duplication with previous volumes), totalling 4.5 hours of music. The set is a must not only for Braxton's followers but for all jazz fans at large. Limited edition 500 copies.
Several years ago, Anthony and I discovered our mutual (giddy) enthusiasm for the music of Richard Wagner. I feel compelled to mention this because there is a positively orchestral, if not Wagnerian, element to our recording together—a sonic Gesamtkunstwerk, if you will, representing all registers of playing. In each take, new drama unfolds, as if each were a new act in an operatic continuum.