Inevitably it's back to Anthony Braxton and another track from the Braxton/Hawkins/Charles/Dakiz Davis box set, Paul Simon's 'Old Friends' in this case. Inevitably because what we have heard so far keeps us drifting back and more tunes are now streaming in all beauty. It's moving hearing 'Old Friends'. Let's leave it at that, the highest. Makes you want to just sit and think hearing the track. We'll go back to the source and listen to Simon and Garfunkel as well.
On this new version Hawkins is pointillist so when as here you can jump the species from music to painting which is always an aspiration and rare and be, without being fanciful, like Seurat if the piece were a painting maybe, then there is a certain magic to cling on to as a parallel imagining as Braxton inflates the tear to be Rahsaan almost against the harmony and journeying beyond. Quartet Standards (2020) a 13-CD epic is to be released next week by New Braxton House Records. Ring the date in your diary.
Anthony Braxton photo: Peter Gannushkin
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