Anthony Braxton - Quartet (Standards) 2020 review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

The Guardian 0

(Tri-Centric/New Braxton House)
Latin jazz, freebop and traditional swing rub shoulders as this mammoth set reworks iconic jazz themes and classic pop songs

Reeds-virtuoso and composer Anthony Braxton has spent half a century bridging contemporary music from bebop and improv to opera, and composing hundreds of original works – but the 67 tracks on this mammoth set rework the iconic jazz themes and classic pop songs that generally shelter under the collective title of “standards”. Braxton brought a handpicked songbook spanning from Thelonious Monk to Simon and Garfunkel to Europe for his 75th birthday celebrations in January 2020, recording them on tour with attuned UK partners Alexander Hawkins (piano), Neil Charles (bass), and Stephen Davis (drums). An invitingly open window on the world of a frequently implacable iconoclast, the collection nonetheless never swaps nostalgia for Braxton’s lifetime focus on the vividly malleable present and imagined future.