Henry Threadgill
American jazz musician (born 1944)
Henry Threadgill (born February 15, 1944) is an American composer, saxophonist and flautist. He came to prominence in the 1970s leading ensembles rooted in jazz but with unusual instrumentation and often incorporating other genres of music. He has performed and recorded with several ensembles: Air, Aggregation Orb, Make a Move, the seven-piece Henry Threadgill Sextett, the twenty-piece Society Situation Dance Band, Very Very Circus, X-75, and Zooid.
He was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his album In for a Penny, In for a Pound, which premiered at Roulette Intermedium on December 4, 2014.
In 2023, he published his autobiography, written with Brent Hayes Edwards: Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music. The book was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, along with being a Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker.
Career
Threadgill performed as a percussionist in his high-school marching band before taking up baritone saxophone, alto saxophone, and flute. He studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, majoring in piano, flute, and composition. He studied piano with Gail Quillman and composition with Stella Roberts. He was an original member of the Experimental Band, a precursor to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in his hometown of Chicago, and worked under the guidance of Muhal Richard Abrams, before leaving to tour with a gospel band.
“Henry Threadgill” enters the record as american jazz musician (born 1944). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Henry, Threadgill and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q354158. VIAF identifies the subject as 265040297. The Library of Congress control number is n79085262. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 2016, 2014 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry Threadgill” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.