Braxton's music is difficult to categorize, and because of this, he likes to reference his works (and the works of his collaborators and students) as simply "creative music." He has claimed in numerous interviews that he is not a jazz musician, though many of his works have been jazz and improvisation oriented, and he has released many albums of jazz standards. In addition to these, Braxton has released an increasing number of works for large-scale orchestras, including two opera cycles.
Braxton's music is highly theoretical and mystically influenced, and he is the author of multiple volumes explaining his theories and pieces—such as the philosophical three-volume Triaxium Writings and the five-volume Composition Notes, both published by Frog Peak Music. While his compositions and improvisations can be characterized as avant-garde, many of his pieces have a swing feel and rhythmic angularity that are overtly indebted to Charlie Parker and the Bebop tradition.
Braxton is notorious for naming his pieces as diagrams, typically labeled with cryptic numbers and letters. Sometimes these diagrams have an obvious relation to the music — for instance, on the album For Trio the diagram-title indicates the physical positions of the performers — a variation on aleatory music that presaged his follower John Zorn's Xu Feng: John Zorn's Game Pieces, Volume I and Cobra: John Zorn's Game Pieces, Volume 2 — but in many cases the diagram-titles remain inscrutable. The titles can themselves be musical notation indicating to the performer how a piece is played. Sometimes the letters are identifiable as the initials of Braxton's friends and musical colleagues.
Braxton has pointedly refused to explain their significance, claiming that he himself is still discovering their meaning. Braxton eventually settled on a system of opus-numbers to make referring to these pieces simpler, and earlier pieces have had opus-numbers retrospectively added to them.
By the mid-to-late 1980s, Braxton's titles had become increasingly complex. They began to incorporate drawings and illustrations, such as in the title of his four act opera cycle, Composition No. 162 (Trillium R) [Act 1] Others began to include life-like images of inanimate objects, namely train cars. The latter was most notably seen after the advent of his Ghost Trance Music system.
Anthony Braxton, even in his 60s, still actively performs with ensembles of varying sizes, and has to date written well over 350 compositions. He has just recently finished the last batch of Ghost Trance Music compositions, and has now shown his interest in three other music systems: The Diamond Curtain Wall Trio, in which Braxton implements the aid of the powerful computer audio programming language, SuperCollider; Falling River Musics; and, most recently, Echo Echo Mirror House music, which is meant to hone in many different types of performance arts in addition to music.
Critic Chris Kelsey writes that "Although Braxton exhibited a genuine — if highly idiosyncratic — ability to play older forms (influenced especially by saxophonists Warne Marsh, John Coltrane, Paul Desmond, and Eric Dolphy), he was never really accepted by the jazz establishment, due to his manifest infatuation with the practices of such non-jazz artists as John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen [and though Kelsey doesn't mention it, Braxton has long been interested in Arnold Schoenberg's music]. Many of the mainstream's most popular musicians (Wynton Marsalis among them) insisted that Braxton's music was not jazz at all. Whatever one calls it, however, there is no questioning the originality of his vision; Anthony Braxton created music of enormous sophistication and passion that was unlike anything else that had come before it."
Early in his career, Braxton led a trio with violinist Leroy Jenkins and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and was involved with The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the "AACM", founded in Chicago, Illinois, Braxton's birthplace.
In 1968, Braxton recorded the double LP For Alto. There had been occasional unaccompanied saxophone recordings previously (notably Coleman Hawkins' "Picasso"), but For Alto was the first full-length album for unaccompanied saxophone. The album's songs were dedicated to Cecil Taylor and John Cage, among others. The album influenced other artists like Steve Lacy (soprano sax) and George Lewis (trombone), who would go on to record their own acclaimed solo albums.
Braxton joined pianist Chick Corea's existing trio with Dave Holland (double bass) and Barry Altschul (drums) to form the short-lived avant garde quartet Circle, around 1970. When Corea broke up the group, forming Return to Forever to pursue a fusion based style of composition and recording, Holland and Altschul remained with Braxton for much of the 1970s as part of a quartet, with the rotating brass chair variously filled by trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, or trombonists George Lewis or Ray Anderson. This group recorded on Arista Records. The core trio plus saxophonist Sam Rivers recorded Holland's Conference of the Birds, on ECM. In the 1970s he also recorded duets with Lewis and with synthesizer player Richard Teitelbaum.
In 1975, he released an album on Muse Records titled Muhal with Creative Construction Company, a group consisting of Richard Davis (Bass), Muhal Richard Abrams (Cello/Piano), Steve McCall (drums), Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet) and Leroy Jenkins (violin).
In the late 1970s he recorded two large ensemble recordings, "Creative Orchestra Music 1976," inspired by American jazz and marching band traditions, and "For Four Orchestras." Both of these records were released on Arista.
Braxton's regular group in the 1980s and early 1990s was a quartet with Marilyn Crispell (piano), Mark Dresser (double bass) and Gerry Hemingway (drums). It has been called "his finest and longest standing band".
Braxton has also recorded and collaborated with European free improvisers such as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and the Globe Unity Orchestra, or with giants from the 'regular' jazz world, such as Max Roach. Throughout the years Braxton has played with a wide variety of people, such as Mal Waldron, Dave Douglas, Ornette Coleman, Dave Brubeck, Lee Konitz, Peter Brötzmann, Willem Breuker, Muhal Richard Abrams, Steve Lacy, Roscoe Mitchell, Pat Metheny, Andrew Cyrille, Wolf Eyes, Misha Mengelberg, Chris Dahlgren, Lauren Newton, and countless others.
In 1994, he was granted a MacArthur Fellowship. From 1995 to 2006, Braxton's output as a composer concentrated almost exclusively on what he calls "Ghost Trance Music", which introduces a steady pulse to his music and also allows the simultaneous performance of any piece by the performers. Many of the earliest Ghost Trance recordings were released on his own Braxton House label (now defunct). His final Ghost Trance compositions were performed with a "12+1tet" at New York's Iridium club in 2006; the complete four-night residency was recorded and released in 2007 by the Firehouse 12 label as 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006
In addition, during the 1990s and early 2000s Braxton created a prodigiously large body of "standards" recordings, often featuring him as a pianist rather than saxophonist. He had frequently performed such material in the 1970s and 1980s, but only recorded it occasionally; now he began to release multi-disc sets of such material, climaxing in two quadruple-CD sets for Leo Records recorded on tour in 2003.
More recently he has created new series of compositions, such as the Falling River Musics that are documented on 2+2 Compositions (482 Music, 2005).
Braxton studied philosophy at Roosevelt University. He has taught at Mills College and now is Professor of Music at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, teaching music composition, music history, and improvisation.
Moreover, Braxton is the father of Tyondai Braxton, who was a member of Battles.
You Stepped Out of a Dream
Anthony Braxton Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
On a silent shore
I spoke to god
The sun is down
Assemble the great pandemonium
War
One more down by the brook of Babylon
One long drift across the lake of Avalon
One more trip that I must create
And my eyes sweep a shore
That was always there
A blood red line
Through the sonisphere
I can't resolve where it's coming from
I sense it's the great pandemonium
One more, just one more
Just one, just one more day
One more day by the pits of hell
Just one more when even yesterday was too late
One more thought that I have to sow
One last trick that you can't debate
War
On a silent shore
I confronted fear
I spoke to god
But he wasn't there
The sun is down
And the war begun
Assemble the great pandemonium
Growls
Break down
Got to break down
Break down
And my eyes sweep a shore
That was always there
A blood red line
Through the sonisphere
I can't resolve where it's coming from
I sense it's the great pandemonium
On a silent shore
I confronted fear
I spoke to god
But he wasn't there
The sun is down
And the war begun
Assemble the great pandemonium
Just one, just one, just one more day
Just one, just one, just one more day
Just one, just one more
War
The lyrics of Anthony Braxton's song "You Stepped Out of a Dream" are relatively straightforward yet cryptic. The repetition of the word "war" creates a sense of tension and chaos while simultaneously serving as a transition between the singer's thoughts. The opening line "On a silent shore" provides a vivid image and sets the stage for the singer's confrontation with God. The lack of response from God leaves the singer feeling abandoned and alone, prompting them to assemble the "great pandemonium."
The middle stanza discusses the singer's awareness of their own mortality and fate, with references to Babylon, Avalon, and hell. The repetition of "one more" emphasizes the singer's sense of obligation to fulfill their destiny. The third stanza brings the focus back to the present moment, with the singer sensing "the great pandemonium" approaching but unable to pinpoint its origin.
The final stanza is a repetition of the opening lines, with the singer once again confronting their fear and speaking to a seemingly absent God as they face the onset of war.
Overall, the lyrics suggest a struggle with mortality, the search for meaning in a chaotic world, and the inevitability of conflict. The cyclical structure of the song highlights the notion of recurring patterns and the inescapable nature of certain events.
Line by Line Meaning
War, war, war, war, war, war, war
The singer repeats the word 'war' seven times to emphasize the theme of conflict and violence in the song.
On a silent shore
The singer is on a quiet beach or coastline, possibly a metaphysical space representing a pause before the action or turmoil of war begins.
I spoke to god
The singer had a conversation with a higher power or divine figure, possibly seeking guidance or solace in the face of war.
The sun is down
The sun has set, possibly indicating the end of a day or a sense of foreboding before the chaos of war begins.
Assemble the great pandemonium
The artist's commands to 'assemble' imply a sense of control or leadership, while 'the great pandemonium' suggests a frenzied or chaotic gathering of powerful forces driven by a sense of destruction.
One more down by the brook of Babylon
The singer is reflecting on a previous loss, possibly indicating that war has already been fought and won or lost in the past.
One more down in accordance with my fate
The singer accepts that death or loss is inevitable and follows a predetermined destiny that cannot be changed.
One long drift across the lake of Avalon
The artist describes a journey across a mystical lake, possibly implying that they are on a spiritual or metaphorical quest before the final battle.
One more trip that I must create
The artist acknowledges that they are responsible for their own path and must make their own fate, even in the face of war and chaos.
And my eyes sweep a shore
The artist is observing their surroundings, possibly taking stock of their own emotions or the events that are about to unfurl.
That was always there
The singer realizes that their surroundings may have been present or significant all along, but they are only now noticing them due to their impending battle.
A blood red line
The artist describes a red line, representing death and violence, possibly foreshadowing the battle to come.
Through the sonisphere
The sonisphere may represent a celestial or divine realm associated with the sun, suggesting a mystical or supernatural significance to the impending battle.
I can't resolve where it's coming from
The singer is uncertain of the source or reason for the oncoming battle, adding to a sense of chaos and confusion.
I sense it's the great pandemonium
Despite their confusion, the singer believes that the looming battle is a manifestation of the powerful, chaotic forces of 'the great pandemonium.'
Just one more day by the pits of hell
The artist is resigned to facing one more day of battle, even in the face of demonic or hellish forces.
Just one more when even yesterday was too late
The artist acknowledges that time is running out and that the battle may be futile or already lost, but they must press on and face their destiny.
One more thought that I have to sow
The singer has a final idea or motivation that they want to share or act on, even though it may be too late or futile in the face of war.
One last trick that you can't debate
The singer has one final tactic or strategy that they are confident will work, even in the face of opposition or debate.
Got to break down
The artist is commanding themselves or others to break down or push through the obstacles that hinder them, suggesting a sense of determination in the face of adversity.
And my eyes sweep a shore
The artist repeats this earlier line to suggest that their attention is focused on a particular location, possibly the site of the impending battle.
That was always there
The artist repeats this line to further emphasize their sense of discovery and realization regarding their surroundings.
On a silent shore
The song ends as it began, with the singer on a quiet shoreline, possibly to suggest that their journey has come full circle but with a fatalistic sense of doom.
I confronted fear
The artist acknowledges that they are facing the ultimate test of courage and bravery, indicating that the entire song is a meditation on the nature of war and its effects on the human spirit.
But he wasn't there
The singer's earlier conversation with god has failed to yield any answers or solace, adding to a sense of abandonment or isolation in the face of war.
Just one, just one, just one more day
Repeating this line throughout the song adds to a sense of urgency and desperation, as the singer is resigned to facing one more day of war, even though they know it may be their last.
War
The final line of the song is a repetition of the first, suggesting a circular, never-ending cycle of conflict and violence that repeats throughout human history and across cultures.
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Gus Kahn, Nacio Herb Brown
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Najponk Jazz
Absolutely great!!!! Love this fantastic record!!!!
Jörg Klüber
Still some of my favorites for more then 40 years!
acurious yellow
great album this, these players have inspired me for years so underrated
Ken Diggins
First bought this LP in the 70's. I grew up w/ alot of old time greats as family friends. Chet baker, Jerry Mulligan, Zoot sims and others. When I introduced to them they listened to it over and over for hours. I was like 23 at the time.
Henrique Santos
Great memories! Great musicians! Thanks
unclejunglebass
one of the best bass solos ive ever heard.
PoetryHound
Gorgeous version of this tune. The rest of the album has more outside stuff.
michael seth
Pure Jazz: pure genius .
guikunz
Gracias !!! que temazo.....solo con la mitad de Circle, creo q es la mejor version de Saliste de un sueño.....
louis hamilton
When l saw him playing that seven foot sax at the Vanguard l was DONE! That and the fact that Stanley Crouch was hawking my herb made it a memorable night.