The Other One

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The Other One is the musical dimension of a large multimedia work by composer, bandleader, and multi-instrumentalist Henry Threadgill. Comprised of a three-movement, 19-part composition titled Of Valence, the music was inspired by percussionist Milford Graves. A theorist and musician, Graves devised ways of continually integrating the rhythm of the human heartbeat into his work. The Other One was performed by a 12-piece ensemble with three saxophones, two bassoons, two cellos, violin, viola, tuba, percussion, and piano. Threadgill conducted. Its title is due to following "One," the opening evening's live performance at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, New York, in 2022. The personnel include pianist David Virelles, tubist Jose Davila, violinist Sara Caswell, and tenor saxophonist Peyton Pleninger. Virelles introduces the first two sections solo in movement one. The pianist has shown consummate control over his career and applies it with sustained, pedaled single notes prefacing dense tonal clusters that resolve into resonant spaces. In contrast, "Section 3" emerges from post-bop with saxophones, bassoons, tuba, and drums winding around a funky theme. Halfway through, the string quartet introduces counterpoint before fading. "Sections 6A-7A" commence with Virelles playing the through-composed lyric pattern that welcomes Pleninger, who plays unaccompanied before piano, plucked cello, and syncopated percussion create a fluid jazz body expanded by strings and reeds. "Movement I"'s finale in "Sections 9-11" is a fleet exercise in contrapuntal post-bop with glorious modal interplay between Virelles and Christopher Hoffman's pizzicato cello in lieu of a double bass. "Section 10" is the entirety of the second movement and, at over 16 minutes, the longest piece here; its placement is twofold: First, it is a suite-like composition that stands on its own, and second, it's the hinge piece between movements. Formally classical, its first third is an intimate dialogue between string players before Pleninger enters to join the interplay. Violin and viola offer twinned-octave voices (recalling Sofia Gubaidulina) as the saxophonist plays the blues as a lyric. The bassoons, Davila, and alto saxophonists engage in striated harmonic and rhythmic exchanges between plucked cello and percussion, balancing the deliberate tension between jazz and classical. While "Section 13" is a dissonant dirge, "Section 14" weds tarantella, blues, bop, and big-band swing in a four-minute tour de force. Davila's tuba engages Craig Weinrib's electronics, ride cymbal, and snare. Viola and cello enter, adding movement and texture, and introduce the rest of the winds and reeds which offer a staccato form of swing. The "Finale" echoes the abundantly creative mischief Threadgill gets up to with Zooid, offering short phrases in varying tonalities among groups of instrumentalists that dovetail, interweave, counter, and complement one another before delivering a final dramatic statement together. The Other One is singular in timbre, musical color, texture, use of space, and its juxtaposition of composition and improvisation. Appearing a week after the publication of Easily Slip Into Another World, Threadgill's brilliant autobiography, the 79-year-old musician seems to be hitting another creative peak.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo