Track Listing

1. Dedicated To Multi-Instrumentalist Jack Gell
2. To Composer John Cage
3. To Artist Murray De Pillars
4. To Pianist Cecil Taylor
5. Dedicated To Ann And Peter Allen
6. Dedicated To Susan Axelrod
7. To My Friend Kenny McKenny
8. Dedicated To Multi-Instrumentalist Leroy Jenkins

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12933 in Music
• Released on: 2008-07-11
• Number of discs: 1
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

From Amazon.com
Originally released as a two-LP set in 1969, For Alto is 73 minutes of unaccompanied saxophone solos by a young musician issuing just his second recording under his own name. Solo saxophone was then a rarefied tradition in jazz. Coleman Hawkins had done it once in the 1940s and Sonny Rollins in the '50s. More to the point, Eric Dolphy and Jimmy Giuffre had done it a few times in the early 1960s. Braxton was being more than brash, however, and doing something very different. He was applying fresh structural concepts to sustain extended improvisations, and he was exploring John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as the jazz tradition, to mark a new direction in the avant-garde.

Forgoing the "energy music" school, Braxton was exploring silence, noise, and forms of serialism with an analytical, almost sculptural, approach to sound. Each piece here explores a different approach or set of materials. There's buzz-saw saxophone on "To Composer John Cage," while "To pianist Cecil Taylor" is heartfelt blues that delves back before bebop for its sources. Tracks 5 and 6 are breathy, extended improvisations, the former exploring pianissimo understatement, and the latter developing elliptical complexity, with both drawing on and redirecting the jazz-ballad tradition. The concluding piece, nearly 20 minutes long, builds dialogue from contrasts between brittle, abrasive overblowing and the merest suggestions of notes. For Alto is one of those rare works that point to new possibilities, and it's been one of the most influential recordings of the past 30 years. It remains brilliant, challenging--perhaps even daunting--music. --Stuart Broomer

Chronique amazon.fr
Ce disque, originellement sorti sous forme de double LP en 1968, fut le premier entièrement consacré à la pratique du saxophone en solo, sans re-recording. On connaissait bien alors quelques échappées solitaires signées par Sonny Rollins, Lee Konitz, Eric Dolphy, voire Coleman Hawkins, mais celles-ci n'excédaient pas quelques minutes alors qu'ici l'heure est largement dépassée. À projet unique et ambitieux, motivations singulières (l'anecdote a été à maintes reprises rapportée). Braxton raconte : « Il était minuit et j'étais complètement déprimé. J'ai pris mon magnétophone. Je pensais à me tuer. Je me suis dit : non, je ne vais pas me tuer, je vais faire un peu de musique ». Ses pièces sont dédiées, entre autres, au compositeur contemporain John Cage et à quelques musiciens de free, dont le pianiste Cecil Taylor et le violoniste Leroy Jenkins, comme Braxton, membre de l'AACM. D'un morceau à l'autre, les ambiances varient considérablement : free et débridées, plus classiquement "parkeriennes" ou contemplatives et propices à la méditation (comme sur l'envoûtant et minimal "Dedicated To Ann And Peter Allen"). Braxton travaille le son, sollicitant toutes les possibilités que lui offre le saxophone, du bruit des clés au sifflement des anches. Indispensable, cet enregistrement a influencé tous les souffleurs, de Julius Hemphill à Louis Sclavis, qui se sont après lui livrés à cet exercice. --Philippe Robert