Anthony Braxton
12+1Tet
Venice, October 13 2012

Anthony Braxton
giving the keynote address
at the 2007 Guelph Jazz Festival

Two hours with Anthony Braxton

For its 40^th anniversary, the Exploratorium – the finest science museum in the United States – has been gradually releasing some of Charles Amirkhanian’s “Speaking of Music” programs, jointly produced by the museum, Amirkhanian & KPFA radio. The latest one is a two-hour interview by Amirkhanian of Anthony Braxton conducted in 1985. The series thus far has included some wonderful musicians: Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno & more. But the interview with Braxton deserves to be listened to carefully, to get some sense of the specificity with which he approaches whatever he does as well as the degree to which he uses categories of his own design.

Braxton’s current project is Trillium E

At more than 8 hours & over 60 musicians, Anthony Braxton’s Sonic Genome Project is my kind of song. Its world performance premiere came in Vancouver on January 28^th – the slightly less than half an hour that these three clips capture give just a hint of the entire event. All of the links in this paragraph are worth reading (&/or hearing / viewing) to deepen the experience. I wish I could have been there.