Anthony Braxton - For Four Orchestras

[humprof]

Anyone heard this title? From Braxton's liner notes:

The placement of activity in this project has been designed to totally utilize the spacial dynamics of the quadraphonic technology--each orchestra will be heard coming from a separate speaker, and the mixture of events in a given section should give the sense of sound movement through space...

Sounds wild. There's a near-mint copy on Discogs for under twenty-five bucks, but I don't have a CD-4 setup (or any quad gear, for that matter). [Edit, 20 minutes later: I jumped on that NM copy. If there's a QQ member in the continental US who owns a good CD-4 rig and wants to hear this, PM me!]

https://www.discogs.com/Anthony-Bra...ylzjnMs4c9Hxvtpq7gKzULeiT2qtNMCEQdzguzDZl_meA

 

[vinylguy4]

I have a promo copy, almost nothing on the covers to indicate quad/CD-4.
Very avant-garde music.

 

[steelydave]

The music's not for me, but I find it fascinating from a historical perspective that Arista (whose last quad release before this one was Barry Manilow's This One's For You in August 1976) would put out a contemporary classical triple LP in CD-4 almost two years later. I'm surprised there was even a CD-4 cutting facility still going by this point!

Normally with quad releases if you look through the credits there will be a bit of "quad-friendly" DNA in there, be it the artist themselves, a producer, engineer, or recording facility. With this album I don't see any familiar names at all, which makes the genesis of this release even more mysterious to me. I'd also love to know who convinced Arista to bankroll this, given that quad was all but dead by 1978, and the label itself was, by all accounts, trying to stave off bankruptcy before it was finally sold to Bertelsmann the following year. Cutting three classical LPs in CD-4 in 1978 seems like a high-risk/low reward proposition, to say the least.

 

[humprof]

The music's not for me, but I find it fascinating from a historical perspective that Arista (whose last quad release before this one was Barry Manilow's This One's For You in August 1976) would put out a contemporary classical triple LP in CD-4 almost two years later. I'm surprised there was even a CD-4 cutting facility still going by this point!

Normally with quad releases if you look through the credits there will be a bit of "quad-friendly" DNA in there, be it the artist themselves, a producer, engineer, or recording facility. With this album I don't see any familiar names at all, which makes the genesis of this release even more mysterious to me. I'd also love to know who convinced Arista to bankroll this, given that quad was all but dead by 1978, and the label itself was, by all accounts, trying to stave off bankruptcy before it was finally sold to Bertelsmann the following year. Cutting three classical LPs in CD-4 in 1978 seems like a high-risk/low reward proposition, to say the least.

I can't imagine that Braxton himself had the kind of pull to get a project like that greenlighted. I mean, he certainly had a name by that point as an important figure in free jazz and contemporary classical, and I'm sure his previous albums on Arista with Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland, and Barry Altschul had done okay, comparatively speaking. (Considering that there was very little market for any kind of jazz records in the mid-late 70s, that is.) All I can think is that it was Oberlin money. The liner notes also mention NEA funding, but that can't have amounted to much. Maybe the booklet for the Mosaic Complete Arista set would shed some light?

 

[~dave~~wave~]

Braxton is like Sun Ra, almost from another planet.
Uses non-traditional notation, his scores are works of art.

 

[bmoura]

The music's not for me, but I find it fascinating from a historical perspective that Arista (whose last quad release before this one was Barry Manilow's This One's For You in August 1976) would put out a contemporary classical triple LP in CD-4 almost two years later. I'm surprised there was even a CD-4 cutting facility still going by this point!

The CD-4 edition of Barry Manilow's This Ones For You was done at the JVC Cutting Center in Hollywood.
I'd guess that the Anthony Braxton CD-4 release was also done at the JVC Cutting Center.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

I used to have that 3 disc CD-4 set , and i most definitely agree with Steely's comments , its kinda weird or surprising to see a CD-4 from Arista so very late in the quad years.

Anyways the music is not for everyone .....kinda classical meets jazz type of music .


Important to note for collectors that ALL copies were quad......single inventory quad no separate stereo albums.