Henry Threadgill Overview

Henry Threadgill's music might best be described by the name of his band: Very Very Circus. His circus of sound combines traditional jazz instruments with strings, accordions, and tubas, and integrates influences from Mexico, Asia, Europe, and elsewhere. Out of this... [more]

Henry Threadgill's music might best be described by the name of his band: Very Very Circus. His circus of sound combines traditional jazz instruments with strings, accordions, and tubas, and integrates influences from Mexico, Asia, Europe, and elsewhere. Out of this eccentric multiplicity emerges an orchestral, polyrhythmic music that wanders through many different worlds. Threadgill's music does not fit into traditional conceptions of jazz. His musical texture is almost overwhelmingly heterogeneous -- compositions dart quickly through series of diverging movements, as moody and complex as the work of many classical composers. These are, indeed, compositions: every note is played as Threadgill himself wants it to be played. In live performances, Threadgill's band recreates the music as it is heard on the albums. The influence of Threadgill's Vietnam-era experience in the army's marching band can he heard in his love of deep horns. Beneath strings, saxophones, and guitars, you can still hear the bounding counterpoint of big brass instruments rounding out the bottom of his band. Threadgill is also an innovative saxophonist. His solos have a vibrant vocal quality to them, an intensely expressive, emotive energy that erupts in singular voluptuous fits. He is not one to merely link a series of riffs together; he incessantly modulates the manner in which his instrument speaks. Of his own musical activity, Threadgill says, "I don't perceive what I'm doing in a finite sense." Clearly not, as each of his songs strives towards its own infinity. [show less]