Henry Threadgill is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader
who has been a seminal figure in the vanguard of contemporary instrumental music
since the early 1970s. He has created a body of music that includes more than 150
recorded works that, while firmly rooted in America’s Great Black Music tradition,
often integrate forms and instruments historically associated with chamber or
orchestral music. Awards include: Best Composer honors in Downbeat’s International
Jazz Critic’s Poll in 1991, 1990, 1989 and 1988, when he placed in 11 categories and
had two albums nominated as Record of the Year. Threadgill’s music has been
performed by some of the most acclaimed and adventurous instrumental ensembles of
the past two decades: the trio Air, which emerged from the core membership of
Chicago’s visionary cooperative, the Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians (AACM), to become one of the most influential bands of the 1970s and early
1980s; the resourceful seven piece Sextet he formed in the early 1980s and led
through the advent of the 1990s; such specialty units as X-75, his 20 piece Society
Situation Dance Band and his Marching Band; and his current group, Very Very Circus.
He has also received diverse commissions ranging from music for small ensembles such
as the Roscoe Mitchell and Rova Saxophone Quartets, to larger works for the American
Jazz Orchestra Salute to Harold Arlen, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave
Festival, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra.