Mondo Jazz

ANTHONY BRAXTON: UN MUSICISTA CREATIVO

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La figura di Anthony Braxton rappresenta un nodo complesso nella scena musicale americana contemporanea.

Anche sul mio blog recentemente sono comparsi pareri discordi sul suo appartenere all'universo afro-americano e sulle sue doti di musicista.

Personalmente ho sempre seguito con il massimo interesse l'evolversi della straordinaria carriera del musicista chicagoano: dagli albori con l'AACM fino alla ghost trance music e agli ultimi progetti decisamente in area euro-colta.

Lui stesso non si considera un jazzista tout court, ma questa affermazione è il naturale sviluppo di un oramai lungo percorso sviluppato a partire dagli anni 60'.

Ho trovato in rete un articolo secondo me illuminante e ricco di rimandi sulla personalità di Anthony. E' ad opera di Howard Mandel, critico e giornalista americano. Ecco in sintesi il testo che ampiamente condivido:

Mentoring women musicians as well as men distinguishes Anthony Braxton among avant-garde composer-performers. That’s not the only unusual aspect of the career of Braxton, a 66-year-old composer, improviser, philosopher, educator and multi-instrumentalist who just celebrated a four-night festival overview of his work at Roulette music and dance space, new to Brooklyn. But it’s a significant one. He discusses such mentoring in a new eyeJAZZ video I’ve posted at Youtube.

Braxton says he’s not to a jazz musician nor a classical one, but rather a “creative musician” who has spent his life in uncategorizable spaces. You can hear what you think — there is a free sampler of his music at his website. But the breadth of programming at Roulette — which included debuts for small ensembles, solo piano, an orchestra, 12 vocalists performing two acts from his new opera Trillium J, works with movement and electronics — certainly bears this out.

Having emerged as an iconoclastic and virtuosic multi-reeds player from Chicago’s AACM —Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians — more than four decades ago (check out his 1968 albums Three Compositions of the New Jazz and 73-minutes of solo sax dedications, For Alto) Braxton has earned an international following by creating an unmistakable personal approach to sound and culture. He has collaborated with an extraordinary array of other major talents