Easily Slip into Another World

Informationen zum Autor HENRY THREADGILL was born in Chicago in 1944. In 2016, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for In For a Penny, In for a Pound, an album he composed for his sextet, Zooid. He lives in New York. BRENT HAYES EDWARDS is a Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and the Director of the Scholars-in-Residence Program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. Klappentext An autobiography of one of the towering figures of contemporary American music and a powerful meditation on history, race, capitalism, and art. Henry Threadgill has had a singular life in music. At 79, the saxophonist, flautist, and celebrated composer is one of three jazz artists (along with Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis) to have won a Pulitzer Prize. In Easily Slip into Another World , Threadgill recalls his childhood and upbringing in Chicago, his family life and education, and his brilliant career in music. Here are riveting recollections of the music scene in Chicago in the early 1960s, when Threadgill developed his craft among friends and schoolmates who would go on to form the core of the highly influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM); the year and a half he spent touring with an evangelical preacher in the mid-1960s; his military service in Vietnama riveting tale in itself, but also representative of an under-recognized aspect of jazz history, given the number of musicians in Threadgill's generation who served in the armed forces. We appreciate his genius as he travels to the Netherlands, Venezuela, Trinidad, Sicily, and Goa enriching his art; immerses himself in the volatile downtown scene in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s; collaborates with choreographers, writers, and theater directors as well as an astonishing range of musicians, from AACM stalwarts (Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Leroy Jenkins), to Chicago bluesmen, downtown luminaries, and world music innovators; shares his impressions of the recording industry his perspectives on music education and the history of Black music in the United States; and, of course, accounts for his work with the various ensembles he has directed over the past five decades. Leseprobe Chapter 1. Too Much Sugar No matter the season, Peyton Robinson always wore the same thing. Whether it was 110 degrees or 10 below zero, my great-grandfather used to walk around Chicago in a three-piece wool suit with long underwear beneath it, high lace-up leather shoes with wool socks up to his knees, an overcoat, and a top hat. His body temperature never changed. I used to watch the way he would sweat. It would be mid-August and he would be sitting there calmly with the sweat running down his neck in rivulets. He'd eat spicy food, toohe especially loved wild game: bear meat and raccoons and snakes and all kinds of rustic stuff. I figured that all these peculiar habits were the reason he lived so long and never seemed to catch a cold. Peyton Robinson didn't live with us. When I was young, I lived in a big and noisy apartment on 33rd and Cottage Grove near Groveland Park with my grandparents, my mother, my younger sister, and a number of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. But my great-grandfather lived in a rough neighborhood way out on the West Side. As I got older, I came to see Peyton Robinson as something approaching a creature of legend, the protagonist of a trove of family lore. It thrilled me when he came to visit, like some apparition from another century, or another planet. And I loved to think I came from such a singularityfrom an ancestor who seemed to move through the world entirely on his own terms. The stories were riveting. Years later my mother told me that once Peyton Robinson got into some trouble with ...

Auteur

Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards

Texte du rabat

"An autobiography of one of the towering figures of contemporary American music and a powerful meditation on history, race, capitalism and art"--

Résumé
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • An autobiography of one of the towering figures of contemporary American music and a powerful meditation on history, race, capitalism, and art.

Henry Threadgill has had a singular life in music. At 79, the saxophonist, flautist, and celebrated composer is one of three jazz artists (along with Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis) to have won a Pulitzer Prize. In Easily Slip into Another World, Threadgill recalls his childhood and upbringing in Chicago, his family life and education, and his brilliant career in music.

Here are riveting recollections of the music scene in Chicago in the early 1960s, when Threadgill developed his craft among friends and schoolmates who would go on to form the core of the highly influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM); the year and a half he spent touring with an evangelical preacher in the mid-1960s; his military service in Vietnam—a riveting tale in itself, but also representative of an under-recognized aspect of jazz history, given the number of musicians in Threadgill’s generation who served in the armed forces.

We appreciate his genius as he travels to the Netherlands, Venezuela, Trinidad, Sicily, and Goa enriching his art; immerses himself in the volatile downtown scene in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s; collaborates with choreographers, writers, and theater directors as well as an astonishing range of musicians, from AACM stalwarts (Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Leroy Jenkins), to Chicago bluesmen, downtown luminaries, and world music innovators; shares his impressions of the recording industry his perspectives on music education and the history of Black music in the United States; and, of course, accounts for his work with the various ensembles he has directed over the past five decades.

Échantillon de lecture
Chapter 1.

Too Much Sugar

No matter the season, Peyton Robinson always wore the same thing. Whether it was 110 degrees or 10 below zero, my great-grandfather used to walk around Chicago in a three-piece wool suit with long underwear beneath it, high lace-up leather shoes with wool socks up to his knees, an overcoat, and a top hat. His body temperature never changed. I used to watch the way he would sweat. It would be mid-August and he would be sitting there calmly with the sweat running down his neck in rivulets. He’d eat spicy food, too—he especially loved wild game: bear meat and raccoons and snakes and all kinds of rustic stuff. I figured that all these peculiar habits were the reason he lived so long and never seemed to catch a cold.

Peyton Robinson didn’t live with us. When I was young, I lived in a big and noisy apartment on 33rd and Cottage Grove near Groveland Park with my grandparents, my mother, my younger sister, and a number of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. But my great-grandfather lived in a rough neighborhood way out on the West Side. As I got older, I came to see Peyton Robinson as something approaching a creature of legend, the protagonist of a trove of family lore. It thrilled me when he came to visit, like some apparition from another century, or another planet. And I loved to think I came from such a singularity—from an ancestor who seemed to move through the world entirely on his own terms.

The stories were riveting. Years later my mother told me that once Peyton Robinson got into some trouble with a gang over on the West Side. One evening somebody said something rude to him and he said, “Fuck you.” The person was associated with the gang, and they conveyed a message that my great-grandfather had better watch his mouth if he didn’t want anything to happen to him.

Peyton Robinson went o…