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Henry Threadgill Ensemble
The Other One
Pi Recordings PI 97
It’s a long way from Vietnam and the loft scene of the 1970s. Now seems the time to be reflecting on the long arc of Henry Threadgill’s career. After all, every Threadgill record is a proper event, and not just everyone gets to that kind of status. But that aside, The Other One not only features some of the composer’s most advanced music yet, it enters the world in the same season as does the 79-year-old’s autobiography. So yeah, let’s talk about that other world that only Threadgill can slip into so easily.
This time around, Threadill conducts a 12-piece ensemble through the multimedia work “Of Valence.” This live date from Roulette last year features all three parts of the composition that Threadgill dedicated to the late Milford Graves. The total output of Threadgill’s music doesn’t reflect how regularly he’s composed for mid- or large-sized ensembles, though his encyclopedic musical knowledge is widely known. So this piece represents just the latest in music that has always been combinative. Simply put, Threadgill’s music has always been singular in its continual becoming of itself. Whether it’s a piece that sounds like walking down Houston Street, or like three 1970s Nonesuch recordings mashed up, what’s going on with Threadgill’s music is that the dude just hears differently.
Henry Threadgill courtesy of Pi Recordings
The crack ensemble he used for this performance is well up to realizing all the nuances of the music. Jose Davila (tuba) and Christopher Hoffman (cello) are longtime Threadgill players in Zooid, but along for the ride are well-known players like bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck, violinist Sara Caswell, alto saxophonist Alfredo Colon, and the marvelous pianist David Virelles, who features heavily in the first of the pieces especially. Indeed, in the opening sections of “Movement I,” Virelles is able to achieve the kind of harmonic contrast and quirky phrasing that Threadgill elsewhere expresses through two or more instruments. Virelles has such touch, such a dynamic feel, and his spacious, broadly intervallic playing is perfect for this music. He weaves between the waves and wells of horns, from deep brass to high reeds, and thickets of strings.
The feel across these densely mapped segments of the piece is almost like you’re listening to different elements of Threadgill’s compositional output merging together. The complex chamber music of Song Out of My Trees, the bumpnoxious Very Very Circus, or the sprightly quirks of Zooid. The sections range from brief blips or little skirls to extensive grooves for bassoon, tuba, and strings. The predictably unpredictable course of the music resists summation, particularly in a review context, but the work as a whole is a distillation of the master writing, orchestrating, and conducting at the highest level. Dig into Virelles or Colon’s playing, or savor the unexpected rhythmic changeups of sections 9-11, which are almost Mingusian in places. Elegant and melodic in places, bumptious or fierce elsewhere, and all the players get their moment to shine.
Most gripping of all is the quarter-hour opening to Movement II, starting with a gloriously expressive string trio and expanding into the ensemble’s full dynamic and technical range. Loaded with tempo shifts and noise, but also with wide open space, it’s here where the shifting attacks, densities, and rhythms conjure up Graves’ influence the most. With total counterpoint and intensity, leading up to a patient diminuendo, this is music you can imagine being adapted into one of Threadgill’s other ensembles most readily. But without that, we might not get the pleasures of electronic percussion and shredding bassoon, or whooping strings glissing alongside some damn-near blues shapes from the piano. What can one ultimately say other than, it’s Threadgill’s latest. Bonkers and gorgeous.
–Jason Bivins
