Steve Lehman Trio/Mark Turner- The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings 2025)

By Ken Blanchard

Anthony Braxton stands as one of the greatest explorers of that mysterious continent known as Avant-garde jazz. His breakthrough album For Alto (1969) “challenged every parameter of the music, tonal, textural, rhythmic, and structural,” according to The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recording (may it be praised!). Eugene, recorded twenty years later, is included in the Penguin Guide’s core collection. Braxton’s recorded pieces are frequently identified by abstract call letters: 40b, 23b & g, etc. Steve Lehman emerged as a member of Braxton’s group. You can hear him on Nine Compositions (2000) a recording devoted to Andrew Hill’s music.

The Steve Lehman trio features Lehman on alto sax, Matt Brewer on bass, and Damion Ried on drums. Mark Turner plays tenor. This album is a marvelous tasting menu for someone who is new to Braxton’s compositions or needs to remember why I picked up so much of it when I first began collecting in this direction.

I think the best cut is No. 40b, which you can find on the Anthony Braxton Quartet’s Willisau (1991) Studio recording. It is a conventional hard bop presentation: a four note theme, energetically elaborated. Listening back-to-back (or back and forth) is a great way to appreciate the genius of the ensembles across more than thirty years. The Lehman version is rather warmer in tone. The bass is much more distinct and supports the structure of the composition. The dialogue between Braxton and Marilyn Crispell on piano is replaced by a horn to horn conversation. Thematically, no one would have trouble recognizing the second as the same composition.

The best cut for sampling all four musicians is L.A. Genes, wonderful romp. The last cut on the album is a Monk composition: “Trinkle, Tinkle.” It wasn’t on Braxton’s Six Monk’s Compositions or anywhere else I looked. It is quite good. Get the Lehman album. If you have Amazon Music or something similar, track down some of the originals. In addition to the aforementioned recordings, I highly recommend Braxton’s Charlie Parker Project.

You can hear more Steve Lehman with the same trio as above, but thirteen years earlier, on Dialect Fluorescent (2012). It is worth your time.