“I think that the greatest thing to have happened has been George Floyd.” What?
As an artist, Henry Threadgill has never shied away from provocation. The music he’s made over his 50-year career challenges listeners’ ideas of rhythm, harmony, form, and timbre. This, however, is—to say the least—an unexpected assertion. Especially from the 78-year-old multi-reedist, composer, and bandleader, whose personal manner is unfailingly gentle and cerebral (not to mention a little playful).
But after the initial shock, it’s clear that Threadgill is talking about the aftermath of Floyd’s 2020 murder by a Minneapolis police officer: protests, activism, and the United States’ public reckoning with race and inequality. That, to him, has been overwhelmingly positive.
“It’s kind of like the civil rights movement,” he says, speaking by phone from his home in New York. “All of a sudden, in the music world, all of these women composers, composers of color, and LGBTQ composers are being recognized. Look, I went last October to Alice Tully Hall for a concert of Missy Mazzoli, John Adams, and Anthony Davis. A woman, a white man, and a Black man; all three American composers. The place was packed! People went crazy—they got five curtain calls! And George Floyd, he was definitely a catalyst.”
Conscious as Threadgill is of history, as an improvising musician he thrives on being present in the moment. As it happens, this moment is a remarkable one for him. In 2021 he was honored as an NEA Jazz Master, the U.S.’s only formal national recognition for jazz musicians. He also released Poof, a 2021 album by his quintet Zooid—the band’s first since 2016’s In for a Penny, in for a Pound became the third jazz work ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Such honors are wonderful, Threadgill concedes, but he doesn’t let them go to his head. “I just
