Original Synesthetic: Anthony Braxton 75

We'll inaugurate June with the platinum milestone for possibly the most out-there musician and composer of our lifetimes.

His music is quite literally like no other's, ever, and the way he writes it down is like something out of the future.

Active since 1969 on recordings, he's a multi-instrumentalist, a composer of dozens of works, a teacher, a college professor, and a figure almost like no other in modern music I can think of.

The way he notates his stuff, in his own, multi-dimensional graphed language, is a living vision of synestheticism and the visualization of sounds.

I feel lucky to have seen him play in person more than once.

Has there ever been, is there, or will there ever be a Maestro as uniquely expressive and challenging as Anthony Braxton?

To celebrate his 75th today, we'll slot in this fantastically otherwordly 48 minutes of unbridled Free-Jazz-meets-20th-Century-Classical-Music-at-the-home-of-Louis-Armstrong mayhem, taped in 1979 in Germany and featuring a trio he never recorded, premiering one of his most seminal pieces.

Anthony Braxton Trio 

Philharmonie

Berlin, Germany

11.1.1979

01 Composition #94

Total time: 47:59

Anthony Braxton - alto, tenor & sopranino saxophones, clarinet

Ray Anderson - trombone

Richard Teitelbaum - synthesizer

spectral analysis goes to 20k in places, indicating a pre-FM source of indeterminate origin
212 MB FLAC/June 2020 archive link

I gotta go sort out what's gonna happen in June here, but if society doesn't completely collapse before I can post it all, you bet it will be worth hearing.

Today, though, let's give acknowledgement to one of the most creative and unusual musos of our lifetimes, and get you into these Brax attacks to commemorate his big birthday today.--J.