Anthony P. O'brien

Performance (Quartet) 1979 is a live album by American composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton recorded in Switzerland in 1979 and released on the hatART label. The album has also been issued as Performance 9/1/79 and Performance for Quartet.

Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Gil Rose present the world premiere recording of The Lord of Cries, a breathtaking opera by John Corigliano and Mark Adamo. Telling the story of Euripides’s The Bacchae with the characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the piece explores the power of sexual desire and humans’ need to blame and attack others for what they can neither resist nor accept in themselves. Corigliano returns to opera for the first time since his The Ghosts of Versailles, introduced by the Metropolitan Opera, made an international sensation in 1992. The brilliant cast—most of whom introduced their parts in the world premiere in 2021—is led by star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role.

This project represents a starting point in gently opening up the possibilities of incorporating an element of improvisation into the oeuvre of Bach's chamber music. Given that both Toshi and Anthony are improvising musicians, able and willing to extemporise in a variety of genres (jazz, folk music, early music, etc.), but also being devotees of the repertoire and musical language of Bach, it seemed natural to use certain works of Bach’s as a basis for new invention. The result is a fresh approach to Bach, where improvisation is part of the overall soundscape, whether through ornamentation, basso continuo or entire passages opened up for ‘jamming’. The instrumentation for this programme is also diverse, with Toshi and Anthony using two instruments each; broadening the timbral spectrum. This project is, for them, a crucial way in exploring just how we can be both faithful to the score and true to ourselves as creative musicians interested in mastering this musical language.

The three sections of this Triptych can be described as follows: the left-hand panel — Misery — depicts the vale of tears; Transitio on the right-hand panel represents a transformation in everyday life, whilst Transfiguratio , the central panel, portrays the brilliant colours of transcendental bliss.

Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy is the debut solo album of Dutch composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist Arjen Anthony Lucassen, released under the name Anthony. He sang leading vocals and played most of the instruments himself. However unlike most of his future works Lucassen doesn't play bass, with Peter Vink (future member of Lucassen's band Star One and future contributor of Lucassen's project Ayreon) playing all bass. The name of the album comes from the song "Across the Universe" (by The Beatles), one of Lucassen's favorite songs.

Recorded at the Institut fur Elektronische Musik und Akustik in Graz, Austria during the first week of August 2003, Anthony Braxton's (+ Duke Ellington) Concept of Freedom is a dazzling exercise in collective creativity. Braxton does not perform on this recording. Neither does Ellington, for that matter. Both men and their substantial accomplishments are honored and invoked by a quartet of skilled improvisers. These are trombonist Roland Dahinden, pianist Hildegard Kleeb, violinist Dimitris Polisoidis, and electronics artist Robert Holdrich. Kleeb, like her life partner Dahinden, has worked with Braxton's music in other contexts, most importantly perhaps her four-CD set devoted to 20 years' worth of his notated piano music which was released on the hatNOW series in 1996…