I'd be a little surprised if anyone reading this will see what I'm
about to mention, but it is on topic in general:

The Sprout Fund, a local philanthropic organization, put some serious
money towards my Braxton Play Pittsburgh Plays Braxton project. (Thank
you!)

They have an annual fundraiser/multimedia party, "Hot House"
(http://www.sproutfund.org/hothouse/home/). For this year's Hot House,
I was asked to do some sort of follow-up to our Pittsburgh creative
music orchestra project. I explained to them that reconstituting the
15 piece orchestra would be quite impossible (especially without
Anthony's leadership), but that I could pull together a small group to
play some of his compositions.

SO....

I've pulled together a quartet (myself, another saxophonist, bass,
drums) to play some early Braxton Quartet tunes. For those of you who
are as big Braxton nerds as me (that is, anyone reading at this
point), we'll play some or all of these: compositions 6n, 23d, 23g,
29b, 29d, 40m, 40n. We rehearsed today and I'm pretty excited by the
results.

Among my 50+ "Projects I'd like to do if I had the time", having a
quartet that plays only Braxton pieces has been high on the list.
Furthermore, the other saxophonist and I have talked about having a
quartet to play things like Ornette, Pharoah, etc, so this could
potentially develop into something more.

Ah heck, anyway, we might do it again, given the chance. It could be
great! So that's the latest.


-Ben