Programme
Coming soon
Directions
About The Vortex
News
FAQs
Gig reviews
CD reviews
Book reviewsHire
Agency
Features
Membership
Support The Vortex
Links
Contact
Gig requests
Music
Videos
CD reviews
Browse CD reviews
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Join the Vortex
email list
To receive monthly gig details, news and ticket offers.
RSS feeds
For news, gig and CD reviews and information about the club.
Click on the link below to get the subscribe address
Vortex
news 
For more informaton about RSS see the
RSS help pages
Anthony Braxton
Quartet (Moscow) 2008
Leo CD LR 518
This
live quartet concert (Anthony Braxton plays sopranino, soprano, alto and
contrabass clarinet; Taylor Ho Bynum cornet, flugelhorn, piccolo and bass
trumpets, valve trombone; Mary Halvorson electric guitar; Katherine Young
bassoon), like many of the Chicagoan multi-instrumentalist's performances,
sounds superficially like free jazz, with the various participants coming
and going, adding their voices spontaneously to an extremely various and
multi-textured sound-mix as the whim takes them, but in reality, this is
a seventy-minute visit to Composition 367b (plus a short encore), in which
long-time associate Taylor Ho Bynum in particular (Vortex patrons will have
seen him play at the club a year or so ago) clearly revels, finding a great
deal of space within it to make his own distinctive contributions.
Braxton himself, though, provides the main focusing elements; whichever of his many reeds he picks up is deployed with characteristically idiosyncratic energy and panache, his pleasantly breathless-sounding tone immediately recognisable, and providing fascinating contrasts with the unusual timbres provided by Halvorson and Young. Probably not recommended for Braxton tyros, looking for a way into his music, but it will undoubtedly please his many established admirers.
