Roulette TV: Henry Threadgill

Roulette TV is a cable access television program produced by the experimental music institution Roulette in New York City. Roulette TV captures the creative process of live performance, giving viewers a unique window into Roulette’s distinctive programming through in-depth artist-driven features including studio visits, performance footage, and interviews.

Henry Threadgill's Zooid performs “All The Way Light Touch,” commissioned by Roulette with the Baisley Powell Elebash Fund.

Henry Threadgill (born February 15, 1944) is a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer, saxophonist, and flautist, who came to prominence in the 1970s by leading ensembles with unusual instrumentation and often incorporating a range of non-jazz genres. He studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago co-majoring in piano and flute, along with composition. He studied piano with Gail Quillman and composition with Stella Roberts (1899-1988). He has had a music career for over forty years as both a leader and as a composer. He was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition, “In for a Penny, In for a Pound,” which premiered at Roulette Intermedium on December 4, 2014.

Threadgill's music has been performed by many of his long-lasting instrumental ensembles, including the trio Air with Fred Hopkins and Steve McCall, the seven-piece Sextet, Very Very Circus, the twenty-piece Society Situation Dance Band, X-75, Make a Move, Aggregation Orb, and his current group, Zooid. He has recorded many critically acclaimed albums as a leader of these ensembles with various record labels namely Arista/Novus, About Time, Axiom, Black Saint, Columbia and Pi Recordings.

Aired on rTV: April 14, 2010
Performance: Oct. 25, 2009

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Founded in 1978, Roulette’s mission is to support artists creating new and adventurous art in all disciplines by providing them with a venue and resources to realize their creative visions and to build an audience interested in the evolution of experimental art.

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