In the early 1970s, at the urging of producer Michael Cuscuna, composer and multireedist Anthony Braxton returned to the United States from Paris to accept a major-label deal, having been presented with a choice between Atlantic or Arista. Braxton chose the latter, and began a nine-album run that lasted from 1974 to 1980. Creative Orchestra Music 1976, the exhilarating fourth album, springs mainly from the big-band tradition, though Braxton’s arcane explorations in form, timbre, and feel stretch well beyond swing, drawing on such 20th-century classical exemplars as Anton Webern and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Song titles on the LP jacket were rendered as indecipherable pictograms—a practice that Braxton retained throughout his career. The record teems with the unexpected: Braxton supplements his main alto saxophone with clarinet, flute, and such impractical beasts as the contrabass saxophone and contrabass clarinet. His feats of agility on these massive horns are so beautiful, it’s almost comical. On “Opus 57,” his contrabass sax is heard alongside the bass sax of fellow AACM stalwart Roscoe Mitchell, while the stacked ensemble harmonies and the bass marimba of Karl Berger give the music a pronounced and haunting orchestral feel. On “Opus 55,” we hear the piano mastery of AACM co-founder and role model Muhal Richard Abrams, building on the language of Thelonious Monk and Andrew Hill in one of the most explicitly swing-based moments of the set. Kenny Wheeler, Cecil Bridgewater, Jon Faddis, and Leo Smith distinguish themselves in the trumpets—Smith conducts the first, third, and fifth pieces—while bassist Dave Holland and drummer Barry Altschul (as well as Warren Smith) make up the rhythm section. Conventional jazz terms, however, hardly apply to a work like “Opus 56,” with its abstract soundscapes and synthesizer contributions from Richard Teitelbaum, or “Opus 58,” an approximation of a Sousa march that grows more warped and distorted as it plays out.