Arts
Henry Threadgill remains one of music’s great innovators—as a composer and as a musician. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2016 for his album In for a Penny, In for a Pound, becoming only the third jazz artist to receive the award. A multi-instrumentalist, throughout his career he has led ensembles of varying sizes—experimenting with instrumentation and creating new compositional techniques. In this podcast, Threadgill reflects on the vast musical legacy he found in his hometown of Chicago and the early influence of Muhal Richard Abrams and The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians—a collective that encouraged musicians to compose and play their own music. He looks back at his ensembles and the various musical languages he’s expressed with each as well as his overall philosophy of composing and making music—explaining why he believes the true test of music is in the live performance and why he eschews the word “jazz.” Henry Threadgill is not just a musical seeker, he’s also a deeply thoughtful and funny storyteller.