Anthony Braxton - 1968 - Three Compositions of New Jazz

Anthony Braxton 

1968 

Three Compositions of New Jazz

01. 840M (Realize) 19:50

02. N/M488/44M/Z 12:50

03. The Bell 10:20

Alto & Soprano Saxophone, Clarinet, Flute, Musette, Accordion – Anthony Braxton

Piano, Cello, Alto Clarinet – Richard Abrams

Trumpet, Mellophone, Xylophone, Percussion, Kazoo – Leo Smith

Violin, Viola, Harmonica, Bass Drum, Recorder, Cymbal, Slide Whistle – Leroy Jenkins

If Three Compositions of New Jazz were a dinner party, it would be the kind where the chairs don’t quite match, the conversation loops into philosophy by accident, and someone quietly rewrites the rules of music between bites. Released in 1968, this debut album by Anthony Braxton doesn’t just introduce a new artist. It announces a new operating system.

Born in Chicago in 1945, Braxton emerged from a city already humming with experimental energy. He became a key member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, better known as the AACM, a collective that encouraged composers to treat genre boundaries like polite suggestions rather than actual rules.

Braxton is best known as a multi-reedist and composer whose works often resemble diagrams, puzzles, or secret maps more than traditional sheet music. He has spent decades expanding what jazz can be, occasionally to the confusion of listeners who arrived expecting something they could whistle. His catalog spans solo saxophone meditations, operas, orchestral works, and pieces with titles that look like they escaped from a geometry textbook.

On Three Compositions of New Jazz, Braxton is joined by two equally formidable figures: Leroy Jenkins on violin and Leo Smith on trumpet.

This is not a rhythm section in the traditional sense. There is no bass laying down a comforting pulse, no drums keeping time like a polite metronome. Instead, the trio operates as a three-headed organism, each musician contributing lines that intersect, collide, and occasionally float off into their own orbit.

Jenkins’ violin is particularly striking, darting between jagged abstractions and folk-like fragments, while Smith’s trumpet balances clarity and mystery, sometimes sounding like a call across a canyon, other times like a whisper aimed directly at your ear. Braxton himself moves across reeds with a kind of analytical passion, as though he’s testing the boundaries of each note in real time.

The title is disarmingly straightforward: Three Compositions of New Jazz. But these are not “compositions” in the sense of tidy themes and tidy solos. They are frameworks, environments, carefully constructed zones where improvisation unfolds under a set of guiding principles.

Braxton’s writing already shows his fascination with structure. The pieces are organized, deliberate, and surprisingly coherent, even when they sound like they’re teetering on the edge of chaos. Think of it less as free jazz anarchy and more as a city with unusual architecture. The buildings lean at odd angles, but they do not fall down.

Technically speaking, the album is a masterclass in collective improvisation. Without a rhythm section, time becomes elastic. Phrases stretch and contract, pauses become as important as notes, and silence occasionally strolls in like it owns the place.

Braxton’s phrasing can be sharp and angular, then suddenly lyrical, as if he remembered mid-sentence that melody is still allowed. Jenkins often mirrors or challenges these ideas, creating a dialogue that feels both conversational and slightly competitive, like two philosophers trying to outthink each other using sound instead of words.

Smith’s trumpet acts as both anchor and disruptor. He can sustain tones that stabilize the group, then pivot into fragmented bursts that send the music spinning again. The interplay is dense but rarely cluttered. Each musician listens intently, leaving space when needed and filling it when the moment demands.

One of the most remarkable technical aspects is the sense of form. Despite the apparent freedom, these pieces evolve logically. Themes emerge, dissolve, and reappear in altered shapes, like motifs seen through shifting light. It is complex music, but not random. There is always an underlying intelligence guiding the chaos.

When the album was released, it landed in a jazz world already being shaken by the avant-garde. Even so, this record stood out. Its lack of a conventional rhythm section and its emphasis on abstract structure made it a challenging listen.

Critics in the know recognized its importance, particularly within AACM circles, where it was seen as a bold statement of intent. For more traditional listeners, however, it could feel like being handed a novel written in a language you almost understand but not quite.

Over time, Three Compositions of New Jazz has become something of a cornerstone for avant-garde and creative music. It helped solidify the idea that jazz could operate without its traditional rhythmic backbone and still feel complete.

The album also contributed to a broader acceptance of composition as a central force in free jazz. Later musicians, from chamber jazz ensembles to experimental improvisers, have drawn on Braxton’s approach to structure and interaction.

Braxton himself would go on to build an enormous and often bewildering body of work, but the DNA is already here. You can hear the seeds of his later systems, his fascination with notation, and his refusal to treat music as a fixed object.

Listening to Three Compositions of New Jazz today feels a bit like opening a blueprint for a building that hasn’t been fully constructed yet. You can see the ideas forming, the ambition stretching outward, the sense that something new is being assembled piece by piece.

It is not casual listening. It demands attention, patience, and perhaps a willingness to get slightly lost. But for those who stick with it, the reward is a glimpse into a moment when jazz quietly reinvented itself, one carefully unruly composition at a time.