Relationships are the DNA of improvisational music. It’s people to people, requiring uninhibited voices among friends. It’s a conversation of trust, daring, vision, and virtuosity. Henry Threadgill’s voice in this conversation is most urgent. Embodying the astonishing innovative power of community, it resonates with a profound survival instinct and a resistance to the dominant culture as it leans into the future, outrunning the past and present.
In February 2019 Henry Threadgill and his current longtime project Zooid were cobilled at the Walker Art Center with past bandmates from Very Very Circus and Make a Move, who comprise most of the power trio Harriet Tubman—Brandon Ross, J.T. Lewis, and Melvin Gibbs. These artists have walked the knife’s edge throughout their careers, which stretch across several decades. The Twin Cities was thrilled to have them perform for us and with us, to celebrate Threadgill during the two-night festival. On the first night it was my honor to help curate more than twenty musicians from our community, forming five different bands and representing several generations and perspectives, who delighted the audience with fresh interpretations of Henry’s music. This was old-home week for me, having been lucky enough to experience as a player the inside of his music when I moved to New York in 1989, and to have formed lifelong friendships with many of the incredible musicians who worked with Henry, including Brandon Ross and J.T. Lewis from Harriet Tubman.
There were no cell phones or laptops back when I was first turned on to Henry Threadgill’s music in the mid-1980s by my Uptown Minneapolis neighbor two doors down, Willard Jenkins (then director of Arts Midwest, current artistic director of the DC Jazz Festival). Instead of dropboxing me audio files, one day he shoeboxed me an amazing collection of cassettes featuring the cello in jazz. Nestled next to Julius Hemphill and Abdul Wadud’s Dogon A.D. were several Henry Threadgill Sextett recordings with Diedre Murray on cello, wailing away with the horns. That sound blew my mind. I spent long hours playing alongside these recordings, trying to cop Diedre’s saxophone-infused tone and her fearless intervallic leaping.
In the late 1980s Conduction artist and composer Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, a close friend and colleague of Henry’s, convinced me that I needed to move to New York. We hung out during his weeklong Walker residency in 1987 with IMP ORK (a large, improvising orchestra led by Twin Cities saxophonist and composer John Devine and myself). Butch talked a lot about Threadgill, whom I had been listening to and worshipping for quite some time, thanks to Willard. One of my first Henry sightings when I did land in NYC was through an East Village restaurant window, where he was laughing with Diedre and others from the Sextett. I pinched myself. In front of me were gods pretending to be regular people. I was in the right place at the right time.
Henry Threadgill was very often in the audience for Butch Morris’s exquisite Conductions (conducted improvisations), and due to my good fortune and timing, I was very often in the band then. Morris’s performances drew serious and voracious fans of experimental music, which NYC was full of, so it was always a big party. People hung around after these events, and that’s how many connections were made. Eventually, I was sitting next to my cello hero Diedre Murray, recording Henry’s Song Out of My Trees (for Black Saint records), and performing with her in Henry’s Society Situation Dance Band. I learned that her fearless intervallic leaping was tied to her fierce attitude. “Just go for it!” she said. I had to pinch myself often in those days.
The Society Situation Dance Band was another big party. Intended by Henry to be a groove-oriented live experience, this large band (about 18 people) toured major jazz festivals around the world since its inception in 1986. Working with Henry in this project was a joyful and challenging endeavor. During rehearsals, intense focus was punctuated with raucous laughter as Henry demanded peak performance one minute and had us laughing hysterically the next. All the while he danced tirelessly at the podium, baton in hand, moving like an electric marionette—his energy was unlike anyone else’s. Henry kept this large orchestra, full of friends, in a state of heightened intensity, on the edge of our seats and eager to please while pushing all the musical envelopes. In performances his soaring spirit lifted the group to ecstatic heights, sweeping giddy and mesmerized audiences along as witness.
At the Verona Jazz Festival in 1994, after one of these cathartic shows performed in an open amphitheater under the stars, the band literally rocked the bus cheering and hollering “Henry! Henry!” until Henry jumped on and the bus drove everyone off to an Italian warehouse rave. We danced with each other all night long, smoke and drank curious substances, and played charming party games like running the length of the warehouse and bashing into each other with trashcan lids. Being that this was all pre–cell phone, I remember crazy details from the tour like … respectfully acknowledging people and looking one another in the eye, and carrying on meaningful conversations with each other over dinner. There were no texts coming in from another dimension, no emails to answer, no Instagram feed. We were here now.
Sometimes I’d see Henry Threadgill charts on the music stands of my friends, with numbers and equations written all over the music. Guitarist and composer Brandon Ross tried to explain the sketches and the math involved in traversing and improvising within a Threadgill composition, but it was too much to just talk about: it needed playing to begin to be revealed. While preparing my own performance for last February’s Threadgill festival at the Walker, I asked the amazing and innovative bassist, longtime Henry bandmate Stomu Takeishi if he had a chart for 100 Year Old Game, which he recorded in 1997 with Henry’s band Make a Move on the release Where’s Your Cup? (Columbia Records). It arrived with lots of extra mysterious numbers beyond the usual chord changes and notes. Henry’s ever-evolving and expanding systems take time to get under the fingers. Last winter he told me that Zooid rehearsed several times a week for a solid year before it gave a public performance. I once ran into Henry on the corner of First and A, and I told him how incredibly interesting it was to see his charts that my friends were working on. I said something like, “You should be teaching this at Harvard!” to which Henry laughingly replied, “That would KILL the music!”
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Henry Threadgill in the greenroom after Celebrating Henry: A Threadgill Festival, McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center, February 15–16, 2019. Photo: Jayme Halbritter. Walker Art Center Archives.
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A view backstage with Henry Threadgill (visible in reflection of framed drawing by Ralph Lemon) and others after the performance Celebrating Henry: A Threadgill Festival, McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center, February 15–16, 2019. Photo: Jayme Halbritter. Walker Art Center Archives.
Lucky for us, instead of succumbing to the threat of “death by academia,” Henry’s music is alive and kicking. It forms a long human chain of parties to the cause, and requires total commitment from each player to breathe life into his prophetic vision. It’s the crossroads of individual human endeavor and divine inspiration that one hears in Threadgill’s work. The community is called upon to rise up and dare to trust one another in this unprecedented conversation. And born of innovation, resilience, and resistance, the labor of its continued survival remains one of love.
Michelle Kinney, “Remembering My Time Spent with Henry Threadgill and His Music,” in Creative Black Music at the Walker: Selections from the Archives, ed. Simone Austin and Danielle A. Jackson, Vol. IV of the Living Collections Catalogue (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2020).
Cellist and composer Michelle Kinney has pursued her interest in nontraditional and interdisciplinary contexts for the cello over decades, collaborating with a range of musicians, theater artists, filmmakers, and choreographers around the world. The Twin Cities–based artist performs often as a leader with her own projects as well as in collaboration with several other bands. Kinney has received awards from New Music USA, the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, Meet the Composer, American Composers Forum, Minnesota State Arts Board, and others. In 2019, she curated the Minnesota musicians’ performance as part of Celebrating Henry: A Threadgill Festival at the Walker.
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