Music of Anthony Braxton

For three decades, Anthony Braxton has been alternately celebrated, dismissed, and attacked for his musical innovations. His ambitious efforts to reconcile and personalize the historically divergent and often conflicting worldviews and principles of African-American (jazz), American Experimental (post-Ives), and Western European (post-serial) traditions have attracted both loyal supporters and passionate critics. Mike Heffley has followed Braxton's widely varied music from its beginning, and in 1988 began a professional musical relationship with him. His biography of Braxton's music is just that—a look at the music as if it were a living entity, with a traceable ancestry, a describable place in the world, and a history full of drama, intrigue, and passion.The music scholar will find here all the information necessary to understand the contents, contexts, and concepts of Braxton's music, and to further that understanding. The general reader will find the human and trans-human qualities that make the music so compelling to its makers and lovers.

"This is such an unprecendented and remarkably visionary book that it seems unfair to categorize it. Incited by Anthony Braxton's music, Heffley accepts the challenge by going wherever it takes him. His interrogation of Braxton's work is irresistible, and every page dares the reader to keep up with him, whether to the beginnings of civilization or to the outer reaches of space. Though it is as ambitious as The Road to Xanadu--J.L. Lowes' exploration of the secrets which lie behind Coleridge's poetry-- I know of nothing quite like this extraordinary book."-John Szwed, Yale University

MIKE HEFFLEY is a trombonist/composer, journalist, arts administrator, and ethnomusicologist./e The author of numerous works on jazz and new music, Heffley is Executive Director of Braxton's Tri-Centric Foundation.