Composition No. 103

Anthony Braxton, born in Chicago in 1945, is a composer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist and one of the great innovators and avantgarde figures in jazz, whose practice as a composer has also been influenced by such exponents of new music as Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, Frederic Rzewski, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Vinko Globokar. Composition No. 103 was written in 1983, but re- ceived its world premiere 2005. It is a fully composed piece of approx. 45 minutes duration for seven trumpets with costumes and choreographed movement. The performance will be augmented or interrupted by three further compositions from the field of his Ghost Trance Music.

The semi-staged European premiere at the Maschinenhaus in Essen by the trumpet ensemble Monochrome Project led by Marco Blaauw, one of the world’s best trumpeters working in the field of new music, and musically rehearsed with Taylor Ho Bynum, a close Braxton associate, will be performed across the entire venue and proceed in a ritualized form.

Anthony Braxton
Composition No. 103 (For Seven Trumpets) (EA)
Composition No. 173