Henry Threadgill Is Up For A Challenge

I haven’t always connected with the work of certain avant-garde jazz musicians right away. Ornette Coleman’s music clicked for me instantly; I heard his 1960 album Change Of The Century in about 1992 and loved it from the first notes of the opening track, “Ramblin’.” When I saw the David S. Ware Quartet live in 1998, it was like being blown over by a hurricane, and I just knew that I had to hear as much of that music as possible. Matthew Shipp — who was in Ware’s band — did that for me, too. I heard what he was doing, and instantly thought, Yeah, that’s for me, responding to it on the exact same visceral level as Slayer and Motörhead.