9 COMPOSITIONS (IRIDIUM) 2006 - ANTHONY BRAXTON
Inarguably this year’s most expansive and creative improvisational performance, the “9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006″ nine-CD boxed set chronicles iconic alto-saxophonist Braxton on a four-night engagement with his 12+1tet at New York’s Iridium. Recorded in March 2006, the collection comprises nine large-scale, world-premiere Braxton compositions (with numerical titles, Nos. 350-358) that complete his 11-year-old “Ghost Trance Music” series of works that he calls “sonic units” and “language music.” 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.Billboard
