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Henry Threadgill, aside from being a remarkable alto saxophone player, is one of the most imaginative of jazz composers today. “He seems to be deliberately challenging the audience: My lyricism and mastery come complete with thorns and spikes, and I promise to yank the props out from under you,� quoted John Litweiler, longtime Down Beat jazz critic, in an article he wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times. Threadgill was one of the founding members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a Chicago group that was free-form, you might say, in its philosophy and approach. Not long ago Peter Watrous of the New York Times described Threadgill as “perhaps the most important jazz composer of his generation.� Recent concerts in Chicago have led the local critics to speak of him as a revolutionary figure, altering the manner in which jazz itself is going. Said Howard Reich, jazz critic of the Chicago Tribune, “It would be difficult to overestimate Henry Threagill’s role in perpetually altering the meaning of jazz..…He has changed our underlying assumptions of what jazz can and should be.�
– An excerpt from a chapter on Henry Threadgill from And They All Sang (published 2005) by late Pulitzer winning author and disc jockey Studs Terkel – a book about “forty of the greatest and most deeply human musical figures of our time�.

Henry Threadgill, is both a composer and multi-instrumentalist. He studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. He co-majored in piano and flute, along with composition. He has had a music career for over forty years as both a leader and as a composer.

Threadgill’s music has been performed by many of his long lasting instrumental ensembles, including the trio Air, the seven-piece Sextett, Very Very Circus, twenty- piece Society Situation Dance Band, X-75, Make a Move, Aggregation Orb, and his current group Zooid. He has recorded many albums as a leader of various ensembles.

Henry Threadgill’s works for large orchestras, such as ˜Run Silent, Run Deep, Run Loud, Run High� (conducted by Hale Smith), and “Mix for Orchestra� (conducted by Dennis Russell Davies) were both premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1987 and 1993 respectively.

Henry Threadgill is an artist in a state of constant change, and views his creative process as an ever-evolving one.