http://www.sundayherald.com/43275

Here are the first and the last paragraphs of this 5/5 stars-review by
David Keenan:

"Alongside pianist Cecil Taylor, saxophonist Anthony Braxton remains the
most consistently challenging musician to come out of the 1960s jazz
revolution. Over the years his playing has lost none of its formal
rigour and his monolithic back catalogue has long been a whole musical
universe unto itself, operating according to its own elastic rules and
giving birth to one of the most fabulously complex cosmologies ever to
come out of jazz. Yet Braxton didn’t even merit a putdown in Ken Burns’s
“definitive” Jazz documentary series."

...

"Braxton’s latest release is 23 Standards, a four-CD set drawn from live
performances of jazz classics, covering material like Thelonious Monk’s
Round Midnight, Dave Brubeck’s It’s A Raggy Waltz (a particularly wild
reading) and Cole Porter’s Why Shouldn’t I. It functions as a great
riposte to reactionary critics everywhere, with Braxton’s phenomenal
quartet – including Kevin O’Neil, guitar, Kevin Norton, percussion and
Andy Eulau on bass – playing the hell out of these tunes, combining a
swinging note- perfect feel from right inside the pocket with beautiful
moments of flux that are way off any map. It’s jazz that feels
ecstatically alive."

Regards
Franz Fuchs