Audiences who saw artist-in-residence Henry Threadgill at Big Ears in 2024 were enthralled with five performances, each featuring a different configuration, and left eagerly anticipating the artist’s next move. Listen Ship (Pi, 2025), like many of Threadgill\u2019s recent works, finds the eighty-one-year-old NEA Jazz Master conducting rather than participating instrumentally. The ensemble under his direction – six acoustic guitars and two grand Steinway pianos – is, in all likelihood, the only configuration of its kind. It is an octet of the type only Threadgill could devise. Listen Ship, perhaps the most complex presentation of the intervallic system Threadgill has been developing for the last quarter century, captures a grand suite wherein different elements of the ensemble interact with one another. Each of the sixteen tracks of the album makes up a different movement, each simply titled as a letter of the alphabet. Across the recording, different elements of the ensemble interact with one another in each piece. The work\u2019s title seems to be a play on \u201clistenership,\u201d breaking syllables apart to perhaps suggest listening to these parts that form the whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Threadgill has obviously given deep thought to how guitar tones and overtones can blend to create one beautifully textured, holistic sound, further colored by the two pianos. However, this is not his first foray into this space. He first explored the guitar and piano concept on Song Out of My Trees (Black Saint, 1994) and two musicians from that project, Brandon Ross and bass guitarist Jerome Harris, return here. Joining Ross\u2019 soprano guitar are Bill Frisell and Miles Okazaki on archtops and Gregg Belisle-Chi on a flat top. Harris is joined on acoustic bass guitar by Stomu Takeishi, who had played with Threadgill decades ago in both Zooid and Make a Move. The pianists are Maya Keren and Rahul Carlberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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