Anthony Braxton Diamond Curtain Wall Quintet

For more than four decades, the legendary multi-instrumentalist and composer Anthony Braxton has been a sonic innovator. With his Diamond Curtain Wall Quintet, the 1994 MacArthur Fellow and 2014 NEA Jazz Master combines intuitive improvisation with interactive electronics. The musicians in the ensemble react both to the evocative graphic notation of Braxton's Falling River Music and to the unique and responsive electronic patches the composer designed using SuperCollider programming software. In a program not for the faint of heart, Braxton will be joined for this concert by an ensemble of celebrated avant-garde musicians: Taylor Ho Bynum, cornet; Mary Halvorson, electric guitar; Ingrid Laubrock, saxophone; and Andrew Raffo Dewar, saxophones and clarinet. "Braxton's music is made of wonder," Jazz Times wrote of a recent Kennedy Center showcase. "Digital timbres rippled and blended with the players' restlessly held long tones; for a while, the music was full of migrating nodes, slippery tension, and cinematic beauty."