this week in Chicago
They will be playing, Thursday night, at the Chicago Jazz Festival.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid (HT, 1944-, MCOTD Hall of Fame [flute, alto saxophone, compositions]), Liberty Ellman [guitar], Jose Davila [tuba, trombone], Christopher Hoffman [cello], Elliot Humberto Kavee [drums]), live, Washington, D.C., 2013
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Henry Threadgill, interview, 2021
MCOTD Hall of Fame
His music I first encountered over 40 years ago, and it’s been a perpetual source of joy and inspiration ever since.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid (HT, 1944-, alto saxophone, composition [MCOTD Hall of Fame]; Jose Dávila, tuba; Liberty Ellman, guitar; Stomu Takeishi, bass; Elliot Kavee, drums), live, Italy ( Cormòns), 2008
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Chicago
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reading table
In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers.—Kobayashi Issa, 1763-1827 (translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
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.
For over thirty years he’s been taking me places no one else does.
Henry Threadgill’s Zooid, live, New York, 2013
#1
#2
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It’s not just notes on a page. Threadgill really reaches out and grabs you by the lapels. Someone else described it to me as ‘every time Threadgill enters, it’s like the curtains just parted.’ He has this way of cutting right through the texture of the music.
—pianist Vijay Iyer
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lagniappe
reading table: passings
Between my fingers and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.—Seamus Heaney (April 13, 1939-August 30, 2013), “Digging” (excerpt)
music clip of the day 