Henry Threadgill — Dirt… And More Dirt

Alto saxophone in Henry Threadgill’s 14 or 15 Kestra: Agg, the 15-piece large ensemble he wrote Dirt… And More Dirt for. The instrumentation is wide and strange by design: guitar, bass, two drummers, cello, tuba, three altos, two flutes, two trumpets, two trombones, two pianos. The two suites continue Threadgill’s lifelong project of fusing written composition with collective improvisation, here through what he calls a system of preconceived intervals. From inside the saxophone section, the music is what the label calls it, complex forms, multi-layered counterpoint, rigorous polyphony, and timbral contrast wrapped in rhythmic convolution; from the player’s chair it is a counting exercise that has to feel like air.