Though the century-old Pulitzer prize – launched as a celebration of the craft and social necessity of good news reportage – was eventually expanded to include fiction and music by 1943, the US-born art of jazz has only been represented by Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis in their lifetimes, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk posthumously – and most recently Henry Threadgill, for his four-part suite In for a Penny, In for a Pound, in 2016.
Publisher Joseph Pulitzer once declared his dreams for his readership were “to arrest their attention, enlist their sympathy … stimulate their imagination, convince their reason, and awaken their conscience”. Contemporary-classical composer and flautist Threadgill has been doing all that with his music, his personal story, his internationalism and his charisma since the 1960s. Now 82, he releases Fifteen, joining him in a brilliant trio featuring pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and creative Cuban percussionist Dafnis Prieto.
