Written in Woodstock between August 1979 and September 1980 and dedicated to Stockhausen, Composition 96 is a piece for orchestra and four slide projectors intended, says Braxton, "to celebrate the composite inter-relationship between dynamic symbolism and positive world change."
Composition 96 is, says Anthony Braxton, a key work in his music's evolution. This is true both on the structural level, where 96 is "a point of definition" in his development of "multiple line musics"; and on the spiritual or "vibrational" (to use Braxton's term) level where it is the second in his series of "ritual and ceremonial" pieces in which he employs "correspondance logics" to explore music's links with colour, shape, symbol, gesture, astrology and numerology. The visual components of Composition 96 are based on "12 symbols from various world culture religions and/or mystical teachings" (the remaining 4 symbols being created by various combinations of the original 12).
The Composers and Improvisors Orchestra are:
Denny Goodhew / alto sax
Deborah De Loria / bass
Scott Weaver / bass
Ray Downey / bass clarinet
Marlene Weaver / bassoon
Marjorie Parbington / cello
Page Smith-Weaver / cello
Scott Threlkold / cello
Paul Pearse / clarinet
Bill Smith / clarinet
Bob Davis / english horn
Denise Pool / flute
Rebecca Morgan / flute
Nancy Hargerud / flute
Richard Reed / french horn
Motter Dean / harp
Aileen Munger / oboe
Lauurri Uhlig / oboe
Ed Hartman / percussion
Matt Kocmieroski / percussion
Julian Priester / trombone
Scott Reeves / trombone
Dave Scott / trumpet
James Knapp / trumpet
Rick Bynes / tuba
Beatrice Dolf, Betty Agent, Jean Word, Sam Williams / viola
Jeannine Davis, Julian Smedley, Libby Poole, Mathew Pederson, Becky Liverzey, Jeroen Van Tyn, Mary Jacobson, Sandra Guy / violin
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Written for 37-piece orchestra and four slide projectors by Anthony Braxton. Recorded by the Composers and Improvisors Orchestra at the Cornish Institute, Seattle, Washington, May 30, 1981 and dedicated to the master composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Conducted by Anthony Braxton. Published by Synthesis Music. Produced by Leo Feigin. Remastered by Alan Mosley.
Available as 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC. Full liner notes included in download as PDF.
Tracklisting:
1. Composition 196 - 55:36
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The Chicago-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton is recognized as one of the most important musicians, educators, and creative thinkers of the past 50 years. He is highly esteemed in the experimental music community for the revolutionary quality of his work and for the mentorship and inspiration he has provided to generations of younger musicians. His work, both as a saxophonist and a composer, has broken new conceptual and technical ground in the trans-African and trans-European (a.k.a. “jazz” and “American Experimental”) musical traditions in North America as defined by master improvisers such as Warne Marsh, John Coltrane, Paul Desmond, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, and he and his own peers in the historic Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM, founded in Chicago in the late '60s); and by composers such as Charles Ives, Harry Partch, and John Cage. He has further worked his own extensions of instrumental technique, timbre, meter and rhythm, voicing and ensemble make-up, harmony and melody, and improvisation and notation into a personal synthesis of those traditions with 20th-century European art music as defined by Schoenberg, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Varese and others.
