Jazz Icon Henry Threadgill Wins Pulitizer Prize

  I  
Image

Henry Threadgill

(Photo: Courtesy Pi Recordings)

Composer and reedist Henry Threadgill has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music for his 2015 album In For A Penny, In For A Pound, which was recorded with his ensemble Zooid and released by the Pi Recordings label.

On the album, Threadgill (saxophones, flutes) is accompanied by Liberty Ellman (guitar), Jose Davila (trombone, tuba), Elliot Humberto Kavee (drums, percussion) and Christopher Hoffman (cello, violin).

Threadgill joins an elite group of jazz musicians who have received the honor, including trumpeter Wynton Marsalis (whose oratorio Blood On The Fields won a Pulitzer in 1997) and the late saxophonist Ornette Coleman (whose album Sound Grammar won in 2007).

Threadgill’s new album, Old Locks And Irregular Verbs (Pi), will be reviewed in the June issue of DownBeat, which arrives on newsstands on May 17.

To read more about In For A Penny, In For A Pound, visit the Pi Recordings website.

To see the complete list of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize honorees, click here.



  • Zakir_Hussain_2011_Symphony_Center_copy.jpg

    “Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.

  • ART7087_Mike_Stern_by_Sandrine_Lee_72dpi_RGB_PR8391_copy.jpg

    “I love doing ballads,” Mike Stern says. “It’s just a part of me, some part of emotionally how I feel sometimes.”

  • KennedyCenter.jpg

    Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.

  • Jernberg_Photo_Jon_Edergren_2_copy.jpg

    “With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.

  • herb1.jpeg

    Robertson had a penetrating, pliant sound with a remarkable softness at its center.


On Sale Now
January 2025
Renee Rosnes
Look Inside
Subscribe
Print | Digital | iPad