Anthony Braxton's 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 is a nine-CD-plus-one-DVD box set documenting what Time Out New York called "last Spring's epochal run" at New York's Iridium Jazz Club with his 12+1tet. Described by Braxton as "THE point of definition in my work thus far," these concerts featured the world premieres of Compositions 350 through 358, the final works in his Ghost Trance Music series, recorded over the course of this rare four-night stand on an American stage. Included with the music is a Braxton documentary, interspersed with live concert footage, and an extensive collection of essays, commentary and biographical information.
Musicians
Anthony Braxton :: alto, soprano, and sopranino saxophones, clarinet, and Eb contralto clarinet
Taylor Ho Bynum :: cornet, flugelhorn, trumpbone, piccolo and bass trumpets, mutes, and shell
Andrew Raffo Dewar :: soprano and c-melody saxophones, and clarinet
James Fei :: alto and soprano saxophones, and bass clarinet
Mary Halvorson :: electric guitar
Steve Lehman :: alto and sopranino saxophones
Nicole Mitchell :: flute, alto and bass flutes, piccolo, and voice
Jessica Pavone :: viola and violin
Reut Regev :: trombone, flugelbone, mutes, and cymbals
Jay Rozen :: tuba, euphonium, mutes, and toys
Sara Schoenbeck :: bassoon and suona
Aaron Siegel :: percussion and vibraphone
Carl Testa :: bass and bass clarinet
Please select "Anthony Braxton Shipping" when purchasing the box set.
Press Reviews of Anthony Braxton's 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006
It is ironic, given the diversity of material and instrumentation employed over these four evenings, that the results are still so astonishingly unified. The musicianship is of the highest caliber and it would be unfair to single anyone out; the set deserves essays and volumes, which are doubtless forthcoming, as it marks the end of a Braxton era...a singularly important event that staunchly defies mere qualifiers and descriptors.
-Marc Medwin, AllAboutJazz-New York
Inarguably this year's most expansive and creative improvisational performance...Braxton's music, characterized by form that elicits and invites free interplay, is a playground of shapes, tempos, layers, weaves and waves. It is journey music replete with comic harmonic excursions, off-balance meandering, quirky curiosity, elliptical eeriness and seesawing dissonance. On the one hand, the music is abstract, but on the other, deeply emotional with different hues of urgency, fear, lightheartedness and timidity.
-Dan Ouelette, Billboard
...Braxton achieves an ensemble music assembled from a collective of powerful individual voices. Trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum is an intense lead presence and the sound of Braxton locking horns with the other saxophonists (James Fei, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Stephen Lehman) is thrilling. A major CD event for sure, and an impressive introductory venture for this new record company.
-Philip Clark, The Wire
In Braxton’s huge discography there is no lack of box sets, but this is the heftiest by far. There are antecedents, to be sure, in 20th-century classical music. But Braxton's marriage of what he calls "trans-African" and "trans-European" aesthetics, or "mutable" and "stable" logics, is unique.
-David R. Adler, JazzTimes
Even if you ignore his purely conceptual triumphs, Braxton has amassed one of the meatiest and most varied bodies of work in experimental music. Nowhere have what Braxton calls the "multihierarchical" features of his latest system been documented so gloriously as on 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006, a new nine-CD box chronicling the entirety of his March run at the midtown club, where he was accompanied by an outstanding 12-piece ensemble containing many of his former Wesleyan students. The strings might unite in a stately cadence, while the brass players emit boisterous whinnies; the players scribble on small white boards and use hand gestures to signal composition numbers, as the ensemble becomes a sort of harmonious metropolis.
-Hank Shteamer, Time Out New York
...a joyous, exhilarating experience...the avant-garde equivalent of Columbia Legacy's Miles Davis' Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel, in that both releases document highly important and historically significant live performances.
-Edwin Pouncey, Jazzwise
Does the world need another Anthony Braxton multi-disc set? For anyone with more than a passing interest in Braxton's music, the answer is an overwhelming yes.
-Michael Rosenstein, Signal to Noise
The most recent example of Braxton's strategy is the stunning—in sheer size and quality—9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 (Firehouse 12; reviewed in PoD Issue 11). Braxton has described this 9 CD + 1 DVD box set as the defining point in his career so far. Featuring recordings of Compositions Nos. 350 through 358, among the last in the Ghost Trance Musics series introduced over a decade ago, this is a landmark publication for several reasons. It documents an extended engagement on a New York Jazz Club stage, a rarity in itself; it features a 13-piece ensemble that can better represent the current state of strategies like the use of sectional leaders and constantly reconfiguring breakout groups to implement the mix of a composition's primary pulse materials and the performance-specific array of secondary materials. A key element of the collection is the DVD, which includes a lecture by Braxton at Columbia University interspersed with video footage of the performances at Iridium. The lecture provides an instantaneous point of entry, as Braxton explains with great clarity and conviction the basic tenets of his music, and the snippets help identify the different characteristics of the compositions, vibrantly illustrating the composer's points in the talk.
-Francesco Martinelli, Point of Departure
Recorded live over four nights at Manhattan's Iridium Jazz Club with Braxton's sprawling 12+1tet, the nine-CD, one-DVD box presents a jaw-dropping display of discipline and wild imagination. Never mind that the Chicago expat and AACM pioneer commands a group bigger—and more coordinated—than this year's Bears. It's that the players, like Chicago's own Nicole Mitchell (on flute), attack everything from serialism to minimalism to Albert Ayler–style preaching with the same feverish level of intensity.
-Matthew Lurie, Time Out Chicago
...it is incredibly rare for an ‘avant-garde’ musician to be documented in this detail and with such a lavish production. Braxton's music requires—and deserves—demystification, and while this sumptuous box is only likely to appeal to established fans, it would do very well as a means of induction to Braxton's misleadingly forbidding aesthetic...a magnificent achievement, from players and label alike.
-Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, 9th Edition
Top 50 Records of 2007 (#38)
-The Wire
Top 40 of 2007 list (#14)
-WNUR 89.3 FM, Evanston, IL
Top 10 of 2007
-Philip Clark, Jazz Review
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-Alyn Shipton, Jazzwise
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-Stuart Broomer, Village Voice
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-Mike Chamberlain, Hour
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-John Szwed, Jazzhouse.org
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-Ted Panken, Village Voice
Top 10 of 2007
-John Szwed, Village Voice
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-John Sharpe, AllAboutJazz.com
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