Anthony Braxton

One of the most prolific, wide-ranging and exploratory figures in all of modern music, reedist and composer Anthony Braxton has spent most of his life challenging preconceptions and conventions about Black music and beyond. Born in Chicago in 1945, Braxton showed a broad curiosity not only for diverse strains of music, but also technology and science. He dropped out of university after one term because of financial difficulties and joined the U.S. Fifth Army Band in 1963. After returning to Chicago he joined the newly formed Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), where he met many musicians he went on to work with, including violinist Leroy Jenkins and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, who played on his 1968 debut, 3 Compositions of New Jazz. A year later he released For Alto, the first solo saxophone album in jazz history. Braxton was part of the mass exodus of Black American avant-garde figures to Paris in the late 1960s, but by 1970 he was back in New York City, working in Chick Corea’s band Circle and playing in Dave Holland’s Quartet. During the 1970s and ’80s he toured and recorded prolifically as a bandleader, nonchalantly moving among jazz standards, marching band music, post-Stockhausen experimentation and conceptually driven classical music. Between 1985 and 2013 Braxton taught at Mills College and Wesleyan University, where many of his students played in his ensembles. He has developed numerous compositional systems over the years that guide his own work, and continues to actively record and perform.