American, New York-based alto sax player and master composer Henry Threadgill turned eighty-one years old last February, but does not show signs of slowing down. His latest composition, Listen Ship, is a 17-movement suite that highlights his idiosyncratic sonic architectures. It was composed for six acoustic guitars, with their rapid tonal decay – Brandon Ross on soprano, Bill Frisell and Miles Okazaki on archtops, Greg Belisle-Chi on flat top, and the two in the bass register – Jerome Harris and Stomu Takeishi, two pianists – Maya Keren and Rahul Carlberg, and Thredgill as the conductor of this string ensemble. It premiered in this year’s Bang On A Can Long Play festival at Roulette Intermedium in May and was recorded shortly afterwards at the Power Station studio.
Listen Ship’s expands Threadgill’s singular, subtle intervallic syntax corresponds and revisits Threadgill’s music for guitars and piano ensemble, first explored on the album Song Out of My Trees (Black Sint, 1994), and in particular its second piece, «Over the River Club» (with three guitars, one played by Ross, two bass guitars, one played by Ross, and a piano). The new suite, with its elastic, elusive time feel, its shifting instrumental configurations, and unpredictable timbres, focuses on the clarity of the rich yet fractured counterpoint and the odd-meter rhythmic asymmetry of the string ensemble and experiments with mysterious, kaleidoscopic resonating sonic universes.
This suite acts as a roadmap for the string ensemble and demands that the eight musicians be immersed within Threadgill’s challenging and intricate intervallic system and harmonic language, and bring their own insights, so the expressive music will flow naturally. Threadgill himself says that the Listen Ship suite is «like the universe: the more you track it, the further out it goes». It is clearly one of Threadill’s greatest works, articulated masterfully by the string ensemble, and reveals more and more sonic wonders in each listening.
Eyal Hareuveni
Henry Threadgill (conductor), Brandon Ross (acoustic soprano guitar), Bill Frisell (acoustic guitar), Gregg Belisle-Chi (acoustic guitar), Miles Okazaki (acoustic guitar), Jerome Harris (acoustic bass guitar), Stomu Takeishi (acoustic bass guitar), Maya Keren (piano); Rahul Carlberg (piano)
