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Henry Threadgill Unedited
- Issue #309 (Nov 09) | In Writing
- By: Hank Shteamer | Featuring: Henry Threadgill
- Links: Pi Recordings
- Printable version
Read the full unedited transcript of Hank Shteamer's interview
The interview took place on 23rd August at DeRobertis Caffe & Pasticceria, NYC
[Initial discussion of The Wire and other magazines]
HS: So do you go online a lot?
HT: No, I'm not a computer person. I get some e-mail but I try to avoid doing that. I don't really need to do it that much. I prefer telephone calls or fax.
HS: Yeah, I was reading an article where you said when you were living in India [in the mid-to-late '90s], you preferred to communicate only through fax.
HT: Yeah, right. You know, I never had time to sit down and get technically capable at the computer, and at this point, I don't really have the time now to go back and do that. And all that it's for is basically to write music and I don't need it for that. It could be of help, I'm sure I could find a way to use it but at this point I don't really need it. It could save some time. Things have changed now, especially with copyists. People don't copy so much by hand anymore. My copyist, his hands are getting bad from arthritic problems, so he'll take the scores now and put it in the computer and it gets printed out. It used to be all done by hand. And I copy a lot of stuff anyway, for Zooid, myself. I don't have to go to a copyist.
HS: Do you have a routine, or a daily practice of composing? Is it on a schedule?
HT: Oh, you mean, do I get up at a certain time? No, not really. Not unless I go away to an art colony, because that's the only place I can really control that. If I go to Yaddo, MacDowell or [inaudible], then you're just dedicated to what you have to do. At home, the telephone rings, UPS is at the door, you know, somebody's tub flooded upstairs, my daughter's got a stomachache, somebody's dog is going crazy. When I'm writing, I'm generally writing as long as it takes to finish whatever I'm doing and then I get back to just practicing, 'cause I don't practice that much when I'm writing. That's the problem. That's a very difficult thing to balance. It's difficult to balance those two at the same time.
HS: So do you have a daily regimen of practicing your instruments?
HT: No, not a daily regimen. I practice as much as I can but it's not like a daily regimen. Sometimes it's daily, but then I fall out of that and it's today, day after tomorrow, next day, miss a day. Only way I stay up like that is when I know I'm getting ready to do something and I'm going to rehearsal, then I more than likely will be on an everyday, just for the warm-up aspect of it, so I don't go to rehearsals not warmed up.
HS: I got ahold of the new record, and I've listened to it a couple times. I wanted to talk about the concept of the band. Can you tell me about how Zooid started, and what you were going for?
HT: Let me think back. Well I was going for another sound with the strings—that was the first thing, 'cause the original band had guitar and oud and cello; it had three strings. And then when Tarik [Benbrahim] left, the oud player, I brought in another cello player for a while and then I kind of like got down to one cello player with the guitar, you know, and then I brought Stomu [Takeishi] back on bass guitar. And I still use [cellist] Chris Hoffman occasionally, and he'll play with us for this premiere piece in October too. So it'll be three strings on that. But it was basically more of an acoustic string sound, and less of an electric sound. That had to do basically with the sound of the group, and then it was about finding players. But then I was moving away from doing what I was doing with Make a Move. That period was over, so it's kind of a transition period. The last record of Make a Move [Everybodys Mouth's a Book, 2001], that was on Pi Records. Some of that material is actually part of the new language that I play now. But that new language was not on the Zooid record [Up Popped the Two Lips, 2001, Pi]—the musical language I'm talking about—it was not on the Zooid record, but part of it was on the end of the Make a Move record. The reason for that is the amount of time it took Zooid, that we had to incubate this material to learn the language, so it took us about a year of rehearsing to get the language down, and for me to have enough new compositions in that language.
[Initial discussion of The Wire and other magazines]
HS: So do you go online a lot?
HT: No, I'm not a computer person. I get some e-mail but I try to avoid doing that. I don't really need to do it that much. I prefer telephone calls or fax.
HS: Yeah, I was reading an article where you said when you were living in India [in the mid-to-late '90s], you preferred to communicate only through fax.
HT: Yeah, right. You know, I never had time to sit down and get technically capable at the computer, and at this point, I don't really have the time now to go back and do that. And all that it's for is basically to write music and I don't need it for that. It could be of help, I'm sure I could find a way to use it but at this point I don't really need it. It could save some time. Things have changed now, especially with copyists. People don't copy so much by hand anymore. My copyist, his hands are getting bad from arthritic problems, so he'll take the scores now and put it in the computer and it gets printed out. It used to be all done by hand. And I copy a lot of stuff anyway, for Zooid, myself. I don't have to go to a copyist.
HS: Do you have a routine, or a daily practice of composing? Is it on a schedule?
HT: Oh, you mean, do I get up at a certain time? No, not really. Not unless I go away to an art colony, because that's the only place I can really control that. If I go to Yaddo, MacDowell or [inaudible], then you're just dedicated to what you have to do. At home, the telephone rings, UPS is at the door, you know, somebody's tub flooded upstairs, my daughter's got a stomachache, somebody's dog is going crazy. When I'm writing, I'm generally writing as long as it takes to finish whatever I'm doing and then I get back to just practicing, 'cause I don't practice that much when I'm writing. That's the problem. That's a very difficult thing to balance. It's difficult to balance those two at the same time.
HS: So do you have a daily regimen of practicing your instruments?
HT: No, not a daily regimen. I practice as much as I can but it's not like a daily regimen. Sometimes it's daily, but then I fall out of that and it's today, day after tomorrow, next day, miss a day. Only way I stay up like that is when I know I'm getting ready to do something and I'm going to rehearsal, then I more than likely will be on an everyday, just for the warm-up aspect of it, so I don't go to rehearsals not warmed up.
HS: I got ahold of the new record, and I've listened to it a couple times. I wanted to talk about the concept of the band. Can you tell me about how Zooid started, and what you were going for?
HT: Let me think back. Well I was going for another sound with the strings—that was the first thing, 'cause the original band had guitar and oud and cello; it had three strings. And then when Tarik [Benbrahim] left, the oud player, I brought in another cello player for a while and then I kind of like got down to one cello player with the guitar, you know, and then I brought Stomu [Takeishi] back on bass guitar. And I still use [cellist] Chris Hoffman occasionally, and he'll play with us for this premiere piece in October too. So it'll be three strings on that. But it was basically more of an acoustic string sound, and less of an electric sound. That had to do basically with the sound of the group, and then it was about finding players. But then I was moving away from doing what I was doing with Make a Move. That period was over, so it's kind of a transition period. The last record of Make a Move [Everybodys Mouth's a Book, 2001], that was on Pi Records. Some of that material is actually part of the new language that I play now. But that new language was not on the Zooid record [Up Popped the Two Lips, 2001, Pi]—the musical language I'm talking about—it was not on the Zooid record, but part of it was on the end of the Make a Move record. The reason for that is the amount of time it took Zooid, that we had to incubate this material to learn the language, so it took us about a year of rehearsing to get the language down, and for me to have enough new compositions in that language.
Posted 03/11/09
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