ROIO of the Week [Recordings of Indeterminate Origin]

This week, we offer you another fine jazz performance by one of the most prolific and documented multi-instrumentalists, Anthony Braxton. This is his most accessible of small groups, a standards quartet, recorded on tour in Europe 2003. The performances on this tour have been compiled into two four-disc sets on Leo Records. However, this show has never been compiled on any official release.

Click on the panels to download artwork

Anthony Braxton Standards Quartet 2003
Bergamo Jazz 2003 [no label 1CD]
Teatro Donizetti, Bergamo, Italy Feb 21, 2003

Anthony Braxton is best noted for his expositions of new ideas and directions for jazz. In the '60s, he pioneered the solo saxophone performance and later wrote new music that he preferred to number than to name, much like classical composers. He has performed as a soloist, in duets, with quartets, big bands and full-blown orchestras. His music has oftened been aligned with the cutting edge. It was only in 1993, that he formed a pickup band, which he called a Standards Quartet and they released 9 Standards, essentially, an album of jazz standards.

In 2003, Braxton toured Europe and the result was a four-CD boxset 23 Standards on Leo Records. This was followed in 2005 with 20 Standards, another four-disc set with more performances of standards taken from the 2003 tour. The quartet was Braxton, Kevin O'Neil on guitar, Kevin Norton on percussion, Andy Eulau on bass. The show presented here is from Feb 21, 2003 at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, Italy. It has never been released before and this is a superb stereo soundboard recording. For fans of Braxton, here is yet another side of collecting his works, which if you have, you will know how daunting is the task.

Braxton's approach to jazz standards is the same that faced Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins at the beginning of jazz - how to make popular music something more interesting. It is through invention and improvisation and he has in his quartet, musicians who can take up the challenge. Especially guitarist Kevin O'Neil who understands timing, urgency and dexterity count more when going for the soul of the music.

Describing Braxton's Standards Quartet, Stuart Boomer in his liner notes wrote, "In an era when the jazz past is regularly Bowdlerized, trivialized and travestied - reduced to little more than a marketing plan - Braxton presents it in much of its true potentiality as the authentic discourse of its time, making both the past and the present (even the future) that much richer than it was before". Amen.
- Professor Red

Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (these are high quality, stereo MP3s - sample rate of 192 kibit/s).

These tracks are no longer available for download as they have been officially released.

+ + + + +

Thanks to reader Stuart Kremsky who noted:

I wanted to let you know that the tracks of the Braxton Standards quartet from 2003 have now been issued by Leo in a third limited edition boxed set of 4 cds.,19 Standards (Quartet) 2003, as the first 4 tracks on disc 3.

+ + + + +

In 2003 and 2004, Leo Records assembled two boxsets of four discs each taken from concerts on the 2003 tour of Europe, 23 Standards and 20 Standards. Both were limited editions of 1,000 sets. None of the above tracks are from these sets.


Click here to order Anthony Braxton CDs.

For more... email mybigo@bigozine.com with the message, "Put me on your mailing list."