From the book on Anthony Braxton by Graham lock, Forces in Motion:
“For an African-American, you know, a young man … I was thirty, thirty-one, with visions of a piece for four orchestras, a three-record set: how many projects like that do you see released? … I’ve always been ambitious in the sense of having ideas and wanting to get them executed. I was profoundly inspired by Stockhausen’s Carré and Gruppen, by Xenakis’ Polytope — there was no way I was not going to enter that region. If I’d waited for somebody to give me $100,000 for a project, I would still be waiting and the piece would not be written. I decided the only way to keep evolution going was to not think in terms of somebody helping me, I just had to do it myself. I mean, I specialize in not getting projects out! But I’ll be damned if I’m not going to write the project just because they’re not going to give me a performance or a record. If nobody ever performed it, it’s fine by me! Well, I don’t mean it’s fine … but I am prepared to accept that, I’m prepared to write twelve operas and never get one performance. And the thing is, you can’t complain if you don’t write it. So first I’ll write my twelve operas, then I’ll complain.”
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