Amongst other goodies in The Wire 297 was a piece on Anthony Braxton's Arista recordings, where some of his wildest projects were bankrolled by a major label hungry for the new thing of the New Thing (it was probably the most complex feature I've ever subbed on the magazine, where Bill Shoemaker patiently unfolds these densely layered constructions).

Mosaic have kindly given us one of these great box sets of the Arista years, and there's a competition on our site to win it:

We'd like you to draw a diagram in the style used by Anthony Braxton to name his compositions graphically. The diagram should be describing a piece of music for any combination of instruments or elements. The main aim is to produce a diagram that looks like it might have been rendered by Anthony Braxton to name one of his compositions. The more imaginative and wild the better. Remember this is the musician who scored pieces for orchestras and puppet theatres, as well as for multiple orchestras located on different planets and in different galaxies.

If Anthony Braxton spent the 70s scoring pieces for celestial orchestras, I think you owe it to him to have a scribble with a pen and paper. More info is here

Derek Walmsley 27|10|2008

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