Fifteen Henry Threadgill, Vijay Iyer, Dafnis Prieto

• 1 Trio Piece 06:10
• 2 Last Night 05:16
• 3 I Wanted a Map 04:41
• 4 Where Coconuts Fall 07:05
• 5 Gently Trapped 05:13
• 6 Fire City 07:19
• 7 Perfect Victims 05:26
• 8 On the Way 06:31
• Total Runtime 47:41

Info zu Fifteen

„Fifteen“, das erste Album des Trios bestehend aus dem Saxophonisten und Flötisten Henry Threadgill, dem Pianisten Vijay Iyer und dem Schlagzeuger Dafnis Prieto, erscheint am 21. August 2026 bei Nonesuch Records und kann hier vorbestellt werden. Es ist das Label-Debüt aller drei Musiker. Der Titel des Albums leitet sich von der Anzahl der Jahre ab, die das Trio bereits gemeinsam auftritt – zunächst bei einer Reihe von Benefizkonzerten für den New Yorker Club „Jazz Gallery“, in dem sie seitdem regelmäßig spielen, und anschließend in den USA und international. Es umfasst drei Kompositionen von Threadgill und Iyer sowie zwei von Prieto. Der Albumtitel „I Wanted a Map“, geschrieben von Iyer, ist ab heute erhältlich, zusammen mit einem Video, das während der Aufnahmesession entstanden ist. Threadgill, Iyer und Prieto kehren diese Woche für zwei Abende, am 19. und 20. Juni, in die Jazz Gallery zurück. Weitere Auftritte werden in Kürze bekannt gegeben.

Threadgill, Iyer und Prieto gehören zu den renommiertesten Komponisten und Interpreten unserer Zeit. Ihr gemeinsames Projekt, das informell als „The Trio“ bezeichnet wird, begann 2012, als Rio Sakairi von der Jazz Gallery diese drei gefeierten Musiker bat, an einer Benefizveranstaltung teilzunehmen. Trotz ihrer bereits bestehenden musikalischen Verbindungen spürten sie alle einen einzigartigen Funken in dem geheimnisvollen Fluss dieser musikalischen Begegnung. In den folgenden Jahren haben sie das Projekt stetig weiterentwickelt, wobei jeder Musiker als Komponist und kreativer Solist fungierte und seinen ganz eigenen Hintergrund sowie seine starke Persönlichkeit in die Gruppendynamik einbrachte.

Ihre gemeinsame Ausrichtung als Komponisten verleiht dem Ensemble eine besondere, sich ständig weiterentwickelnde Qualität. Diese Künstler sind nicht nur mitreißende Interpreten, sondern auch visionäre Schöpfer und Denker. Wie Threadgill sagt: „Jedes Mal, wenn wir zusammenkommen, um aufzutreten, fühlt es sich ganz neu an … Wir haben hier drei Komponisten. Jedes Mal, wenn sich die Musik verändert, eröffnet sie eine andere Welt, weil sie aus einer anderen Perspektive entsteht – aufgrund jedes Einzelnen von uns [und] unserer unterschiedlichen Herangehensweisen an die Komposition.“

Henry Threadgill, Altsaxophon, Flöte
Vijay Iyer, Klavier
Dafnis Prieto, Schlagzeug

Aufgenommen am 15.–16. November 2025 bei Oktaven Audio, Mt. Vernon, NY
Toningenieur: Ryan Streber
Abgemischt von Ryan Streber bei Oktaven Audio, Mt. Vernon, NY
Mastering: Mike Fossenkemper im TurtleTone Studio, Washington, UT
Produziert von Vijay Iyer

Henry Threadgill
NEA Jazz master Henry Threadgill is hailed by the New York Times as “perhaps the most important jazz composer of his generation.” He has been celebrated for over forty years as one of the most original, forward-thinking composers and multi-instrumentalists in American music. His four-movement work, In for a Penny, In for a Pound, received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2016, one of only three jazz compositions to ever be so honored.

A Chicago native, Threadgill studied at the city’s American Conservatory of Music, majoring in composition, piano, and flute. A Vietnam veteran, he performed with the U.S. Army Concert Band. Threadgill is an early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), dedicated to the performance of its members’ original music. Threadgill has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Aaron Copland Award, and the Doris Duke Impact Award. DownBeat magazine’s International Jazz Critics Poll has five times distinguished him with its Best Composer Award. The Jazz Journalists Association honored him with its 2002 Composer of the Year Award and its Lifetime Achievement Award. Threadgill has released more than thirty critically acclaimed albums.

Threadgill’s orchestral pieces, 1987’s Run Silent, Run Deep, Run Loud, Run and 1993’s Mix for Orchestra premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His many commissions include Mordine & Co. Dance Theater, Carnegie Hall, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Talujon Percussion Ensemble, Junge Philharmonic Salzburg Orchestra, the Biennale di Venezia, and the American Composers Orchestra. He has been composer-in-residence at University of California-Berkeley and the Atlantic Center of the Arts. Through the years, Threadgill has led, performed, and recorded with numerous groups, most recently Zooid and the Double Up Ensemble. In 2015, a two-day festival at New York’s Harlem Stage celebrated works spanning Threadgill’s career performed and reinterpreted by an all-star collection of musicians.

In 2024, The Big Ears Festival presented a total of five Henry Threadgill concert programs including Zooid, The Henry Threadgill - Vijay Iyer - Dafnis Prieto Trio, and three repertory bands: Air, Make A Move, and Very Very Circus. Threadgill will also be releasing Cut You Where You Was with his long-running band Zooid on August 28 on Pi Recordings.

Vijay Iyer
has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. A composer and pianist active and revered across multiple musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last three decades, earning him a place as one of the leading music-makers of his generation. His honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, three Grammy nominations, the Alpert Award in the Arts, the Greenfield Prize, a Dutch “Edison” Prize, and two German “Echo” awards; he was also voted DownBeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times. He has been praised by Pitchfork as “one of the best in the world at what he does,” by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.”

His recent albums include Thereupon (Pi Recordings, 2025) by Fieldwork, featuring Iyer, saxophonist Steve Lehman, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey; Defiant Life (ECM, 2025), his second suite of duets with visionary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; Compassion (ECM, 2024), featuring his celebrated trio with Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh; Trouble (BMOP/sound, 2024), a composer portrait album comprising three of his orchestral works; and Love in Exile (Verve, 2023), his Grammy-nominated collaboration with Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily. Iyer is also a prolific composer for classical ensembles and soloists, with works premiered by London Philharmonic, Oregon Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Brentano Quartet, Imani Winds, Parker Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Silk Road Ensemble, Sō Percussion, International Contemporary Ensemble, and virtuosi Jennifer Koh, Matt Haimowitz, Mishka Rushdie Momen, Claire Chase, Inbal Segev, Sarah Rothenberg, and Shai Wosner.

The New York Times observed, “Iyer’s music has always been both intelligent and unpretentious, complex without being opaque; [he] ponders a phrase with obsessive rumination, unveiling layers of shifting, subtle emotion, before letting it fly with joyous abandon.” He is a professor at Harvard University.

Dafnis Prieto
From Cuba, Dafnis Prieto’s revolutionary drumming techniques and compositions have had a powerful impact on the music landscape, nationally and internationally. His honors include a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, a GRAMMY Award for Back to the Sunset (2018), two additional GRAMMY nominations, two Latin GRAMMY nominations (including Best New Artist in 2007), and the Jazz Journalists Association’s Up & Coming Musician of the Year in 2006.

As a composer, Prieto has created music for dance, film, chamber ensembles, and most notably for his own bands, ranging from duets to big bands. His ten distinctive recordings as a leader include About the Monks, Absolute Quintet, Taking the Soul for a Walk, Sí o Sí Quartet: Live at Jazz Standard NYC, Dafnis Prieto Proverb Trio, Triangles and Circles, Back to the Sunset, Transparency, Cantar, and 3 Sides of the Coin.

In 2022, Prieto premiered Tentación, a new work for Latin band and string orchestra, performed by People of Earth with the Louisville Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony, and Britt Festival Orchestra. He has also received commissions, grants, and fellowships from organizations including Chamber Music America, Princeton University, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall/NYO Jazz, MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and New Music USA.

Since arriving in New York in 1999—a moment described by the New York Times as “an asteroid hitting the city”—Prieto has performed at major venues and festivals around the world as a bandleader and collaborated with artists including Michel Camilo, Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Eddie Palmieri, Chico and Arturo O’Farrill, Dave Samuels and the Caribbean Jazz Project, Jane Bunnett, Roy Hargrove, Don Byron, Andrew Hill, and Chucho and Bebo Valdés, among others.

A dedicated educator, Prieto served on the jazz studies faculty at New York University from 2005-14 and joined the faculty at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music in 2015, where he directs the Frost Latin Jazz Orchestra. He is also the author of three books: A World of Rhythmic Possibilities (2016), Rhythmic Synchronicity (2020), and What Are the Odds (2025).

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet