by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Foundation, which has brought more than eighty international artists to Cleveland since 2008 under the auspices of its Creative Fusion program, has partnered with the Cleveland Museum of Art to commission six new works to be premiered over the next two seasons.

Launching the series, composer and multi-instrumentalist Henry Threadgill will bring his Zooid ensemble to the Museum’s Performing Arts Series on Friday, January 11 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium to join Tim Weiss’s Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble in the world premiere of Threadgill’s Pathways, a partly improvisatory, partly pre-determined work.

Threadgill, now 74, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his recording In for a Penny, In for a Pound, which the awards jury described as a “highly original work, in which notated music and improvisation mesh in a sonic tapestry that seems the very expression of modern American life.”

Although he has been been characterized as a jazz musician, Threadgill objects to being hedged in by that branding. [Read more…]