The Jazz Institute of Chicago is thrilled to host the 2021 NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert on its website!
The livestream will be available on this page on Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 7PM CT.
CLICK HERE for more information.
The Jazz Institute offers exclusive content to enrich the NEA Jazz Masters webcast: 2021 Jazz Master and Chicago native Henry Threadgill's radio play "Bedghosts, Or I'll Be All Over You Like a Cheap Suit." Click below to listen:
Henry Threadgill with tenor sax by Lona Foote
This rarity, from 1989 and not heard since then, has Threadgill on alto sax and fellow AACM violinist Leroy Jenkins improvising a score as actors Robert Wisdom (Ballers, Prison Break and The Wire, Motherless Brooklyn), Cassandra Wilson, Alva Rogers and David Garland perform a dark comedy about a hospital orderly gone mad -- or come to life! Script by Thulani Davis from Threadgill's original story, produced by Howard Mandel for the series Improvisers Unlimited, with support from the National Endowment of the Arts and NPR's Satellite Program Development Fund.
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Composer Henry Threadgill, Class of 2021 NEA Jazz Master and 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner, is also well known for music from the Chicago era of his early career. He emerged in the late 1960s as a multi-instrumentalist active in the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and leader of the trio Air. Upon moving to the New York City, he sustained AACM contacts, gained many new collaborators, and expressed himself with diverse instrumentation -- having two drummers in his seven-person Sextett, for instance, two electric guitarists and two tubas in Very, Very Circus, or chanting Venezulean hand drummers to open his album Carry the Day.
Leroy Jenkins by Lona Foote
In 1989, Threadgill conceived three stories he intended for different media in an "imaginary theater." "Bedghosts, or I'll Be All Over You Like a Cheap Suit," was realized as a radio play, with a script by Thulani Davis. The WindString Ensemble -- which Threadgill led playing alto saxophone, with violinist Leroy Jenkins (also an AACM stalwart), cellist Akua Dixon, violist Patmore Lewis, and tubaist Marcus Rojas -- improvised a score for several complete run-throughs by actors Robert Wisdom (now well-know for tv and film roles), singer Cassandra Wilson (who had recorded with Threadgill's band New Air), performance artist Alva Rogers, and David Garland, who became a longtime program host at WNYC, as well as a sui-generis singer-songwriter-composer.
"Bedghosts" was produced by Howard Mandel, at the time a Manhatttan-based writer, editor and NPR arts reporter, for his series Improvisers Unlimited. It was supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through National Public Radio' Satellite Program Development Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and WNYC Am/FM of New York. Mandel, who also produced the series Jazz Chicago, is now on the board of the Jazz Institute of Chicago.
Art on the Beach, photo by Lona Foote (Ted Daniels, trumpet_ Henry Threadgill, alto sax)
Alva Rogers by Lona Foote