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Early 1970s Anthony Braxton


Bol

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Does anyone know of any reason that the early 1970's Anthony Braxton recordings -- I have in mind the Circle recordings on Blue Note, and the quartet recordings on Arista with Wheeler, Holland, & Altschul -- have not been available on CD? I would have thought that these would have appeared at least in Japan by now. Very strange and unfortunate.

Edited by Bol
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It's all very strange indeed.

Some of the recordings with Corea, et al. were briefly issued on a CD called Early Circle.

Of the nine or so Arista recordings, only Creative Music Orchestra and 3/4s of the Berlin/Montreux concerts were ever issued on CD. Meanwhile, quartet albums with Kenny Wheeler and Dave Holland have never been reissued. These include some of Braxton's best. The reason is that BMG is run by dorks. There has been some lobbying to get at least some of this material out on a Mosaic (particularly considering the Cuscuna connection), it appears no one crack the BMG vaults. The Braxton Yahoo group finally got so frustrated some kind fans got together and put the whole shebang on CD-R.

There's also some material on Moers and Ring from this era that haven't made it to CD, including a great solo concert and a double live album with the quartet that included Wheeler.

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Yeah, a # of us have been waiting/hoping for an "Arista Quartets" Braxton Mosaic for a long time now... the Sony/BMG merger initially was supposed to be good for Mosaic re: access, but who knows now? If the rumours swirling around the Miles releases are true, the BMG bean-counters have gotten the upper hand.. you'd think that might make them more likely to lease material they themselves will never deign to reissue, but logic isn't something I generally associate with the music industry.

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While the quartets would fit nicely on a Select, there's a lot more great music that isn't in quartet format: the duos with Muhal Richard Abrams, Braxton and George Lewis with a chamber orchestra, the Creative Music Orchestra date, For Trio with Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman on one side and Henry Threadgill and Douglas Ewart on the other, the solo album, For Two Pianos with Frederic Rzewski and Ursula Oppens, a sax quartet, etc. etc.

But don't hold your breath on seeing this any time soon. BMG is run by goofballs. Best case scenario we will get "Braxton for Lovers."

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  • 11 months later...

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