Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto.

[3][4] A prolific composer with a vast body of cross-genre work, the MacArthur Fellow[5] and NEA Jazz Master has released hundreds of recordings and compositions.

[6] During six years signed to Arista Records, the diversity of his output encompassed work with many members of the AACM, including duets with co-founder and first president Muhal Richard Abrams; collaborations with electronic musician Richard Teitelbaum; a saxophone quartet with Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and Hamiet Bluiett; compositions for four orchestras; and the ensemble arrangements of Creative Orchestra Music 1976, which was named the 1977 DownBeat Critics' Poll Album of the Year.

[23] He grew up in a poorer district on the South Side, where he attended Betsy Ross Grammar School and had a paper route delivering The Chicago Defender.

[24] He sang in a church choir[25] and had an early love of rock music, with Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and Bill Haley & His Comets among his favorites,[26] but as a child was more excited by rocketships, television, and technology.

[30] After high school Braxton attended Wilson Junior College for one semester,[31] but was unable to continue his studies due to financial difficulties; he instead applied and was admitted to the United States Fifth Army Band in 1963.

[32] He was initially stationed in Highland Park, Illinois,[32] where he could continue studies with Jack Gell at the Chicago School of Music, but he later traveled to South Korea with The Eighth Army Band.

[33] While in South Korea he met a number of improvising musicians and even led his own group,[33] though many in the barracks did not appreciate the more esoteric works in his collection, and he purchased headphones due to rules restricting his listening time.

[34] After a few years Braxton left the army and moved back to Chicago;[34] he later studied philosophy and music composition at Roosevelt University,[35] though he did not complete his degree.

[34] Braxton played over ten instruments on his 1968 debut, 3 Compositions of New Jazz, the influences for which he identified as Paul Desmond, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Jackie McLean, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Miles Davis, James Brown, and the Chicago Transit Authority.

[41] Braxton was initially pessimistic about making a living as a working musician and began hustling chess, but in 1970 he joined pianist Chick Corea's trio with Dave Holland (double bass) and Barry Altschul (drums) to form the short-lived avant garde quartet Circle.

[42] After Corea left to form the fusion band Return to Forever, Holland and Altschul remained with Braxton for much of the 1970s as part of a quartet that variously included Kenny Wheeler, George E. Lewis, and Ray Anderson.

[55][56][57] He worked with several groups, including a quintet crediting bassist Mario Pavone as co-leader with Thomas Chapin on saxophone, Dave Douglas on trumpet, and Pheeroan akLaff on drums.

"[63] Braxton has written several volumes to explain his theories and works, such as the three-volume Tri-Axium Writings and the five-volume Composition Notes, both published by Frog Peak Music.

[77] Inspired by 19th century Native American Ghost Dances, the GTM works are written to provide a "gateway to ritual space"[77] with elements "designed to function as pathways between Braxton's various musical systems".

[9] The escalation in complexity and intensity culminated in Fourth Species GTM, also called Accelerator Class Ghost Trance Music; these works have been described by a performer as "a labyrinth of hyper-notated activities", featuring irregular polyrhythms, dynamic extremes, color-coding to denote additional variables––and no geometric invitations to depart.

[9] In his Falling River Music, Braxton began to work on "image logics", resulting in graphic scores with large paintings and drawings with smaller legends of various symbols.

[88] In 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège in Belgium; fellow honorees included Archie Shepp, Frederic Rzewski, Robert Wyatt, and Arvo Pärt.