Anthony Braxton - 3 Compositions Of New Jazz

3 Compositions For New Jazz is Anthony Braxton's debut album as a leader. While breaking away from traditions of Western music, which Braxton states in the liner notes is one of his many goals for this album, he does embrace one of his greatest influences. This music utilizes the collective improvisational teachings of the Association for the Advancement for Creative Musicians, which Mr. Braxton had been an active member of at the time. A musical platform which heavily emphasis's the social dependencies of group improvisation, while simultaneously expanding on the importance of individual expression. Multi-instrumentalism, another encouragement of the AACM, was a means of further expression widely showcased by all musicians on this album. The results provide some extremely free and liberating pieces of re-structuralism, but do tend to get too disjointed for my own interest; moments in the first and second track in particular. The Bell however, the third and shortest track, stands apart from the rest of the album in certain regards. Actually created by fellow AACM peer Wadada Leo Smith, The Bell sounds the most focused of all three tracks. The piece utilizes far more space than the former works, allowing each musician more room for individual expression. I believe Braxton executes the playing style of collective improvisation more successfully later, on the For Trio album on the Arista label than he does here on 3 Compositions For New Jazz.