what’s new
Dafnis Prieto Big Band (DP [drums, compositions], Peter Apfelbaum [saxophones, melodica], et al.), Back to the Sunset (with guests Henry Threadgill [alto saxophone; MCOTD Hall of Fame], Steve Coleman [alto saxophone], Brian Lynch [trumpet]), released 4/6/18
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Oak Park, Ill.
like nobody else
Henry Threadgill (alto saxophone, composition; MCOTD Hall of Fame) & Make a Move, live, Italy (Perugia), 1996
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday, Art Institute of Chicago
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Vase in the Form of Leda and the Swan, 1887-1888 (Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist, through September 10th)
MCOTD Hall of Fame
Today drummer Hamid Drake (1955-) enters the MCOTD Hall of Fame, joining saxophonists Von Freeman and Henry Threadgill; trumpeter Lester Bowie; gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates; composer Morton Feldman; poets John Berryman, William Bronk, and Wislawa Szymborska; and photographer Helen Levitt. Whatever the situation, he adds oxygen.
DKV Trio (HD, drums; Kent Kessler, bass; Ken Vandermark, baritone saxophone), live, Chicago, 2010
MCOTD Hall of Fame
Henry Threadgill (1944-, composer, alto saxophonist, flutist, bandleader, 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner), playing and talking, 2010
More.
Henry Threadgill’s Society Situation Dance Band
Live, Germany (Hamburg), 1988
#1
#2
#3
*****
Henry Threadgill and His Very Very Circus
“Too Much Sugar for a Dime,” live, New York, 1995
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
MCOTD Hall of Famer—and, as of yesterday, Pulitzer Prize Winner.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid
Live, Poland (Warsaw), 2011
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Live, New York, 2013
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Live, Washington, D.C., 2013
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
All music is classical music, you know. I don’t put up boundaries on music.
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Of course I started out in an ethnic community, with the blues and church music and jazz. But that was just one place to start. You read fiction then you start reading nonfiction! You start reading biographies and scientific accounts. It doesn’t change where you came from. It just broadens it. That’s what we do, we keep building on the foundation where we come from. You don’t lose it, you just keep building on it.
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I think we’ve gotten used to the dissonant, so it’s not even dissonant any more.
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[W]e have no control over anything but what we do. I just try to stay hopeful: I don’t want to get too pessimistic about anything.
—Henry Threadgill, The Guardian, 4/18/16
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the beat goes on
2,300 posts—and counting.
Even in death he remains a source of rare beauty.
Henry Threadgill (MCOTD Hall of Fame, bass flute) and Jason Moran (piano), “Sail” (H. Threadgill), live, New York (Ornette Coleman Memorial Service), 6/27/15
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lagniappe
reading table
The world she grew up in was so different it was hard to believe she was ever in it.
—Anne Enright, The Green Road (2015)
MCOTD Hall of Fame
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid,* live, Washington, D.C., 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
Nothings’s a Gift
by Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012; translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
I’m drowning in debts up to my ears.
I’ll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life.Here’s how it’s arranged:
The heart can be repossessed,
the liver, too,
and each single finger and toe.Too late to tear up the terms,
my debts will be repaid,
and I’ll be fleeced,
or, more precisely, flayed.I move about the planet
in a crush of other debtors.
Some are saddled with the burden
of paying off their wings.
Others must, willy-nilly,
account for every leaf.Every tissue in us lies
on the debit side.
Not a tentacle or tendril
is for keeps.The inventory, infinitely detailed,
implies we’ll be left
not just empty-handed
but handless too.I can’t remember
where, when, and why
I let someone open
this account in my name.We call the protest against this
the soul.
And it’s the only item
not included on the list.
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the beat goes on
Two thousand posts—and counting.
*****
*HT (flute, alto saxophone), Liberty Ellman (guitar), Jose Davila (tuba, trombone), Christopher Hoffman (cello), Elliot Humberto Kavee (drums).
sounds of Chicago
Jack DeJohnette (drums) with MCOTD Hall-of-Famer Henry Threadgill (reeds), Roscoe Mitchell (reeds), Muhal Richard Abrams (piano), and Larry Gray (bass), Made in Chicago, 2015
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lagniappe
art beat: more from the other day at the Art Institute of Chicago
This, too, I never tire of.
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Greyed Rainbow, 1953
genius at play
Henry Threadgill (alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader) leading a master class (excerpt), Big Indian, N.Y. (Creative Music Studio), 2014
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More.
Henry Threadgill and His Very Very Circus, “Too Much Sugar for a Dime,” live, New York, c. 1993
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Today Henry, who’s been lifting my spirits for over three decades, enters the MCOTD Hall of Fame, joining tenor saxophonist Von Freeman, trumpeter Lester Bowie, poets John Berryman, William Bronk, and Wislawa Szymborska, and gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates.
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lagniappe
art beat: more from Friday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Claude Monet (1840-1926), Irises (1914/17)
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radio
One of my favorite musical events begins tonight: the annual Bach Festival on WKCR (Columbia University), which runs through midnight New Year’s Eve.
music clip of the day 