Tonight we feature a patriarch of the modern avant-garde – an artist who appears so rarely in the UK that when we found out he was coming over, we knew we had to record him for the programme: composer, saxophonist and flautist Henry Threadgill.
Zooid is a sextet that has been Threadgill's main outlet for the last decade, and it shows – there's an ease to the way they straddle free playing and Threadgill's spiky composed ideas, swept along by Kavee's beats and the throbbing tuba/trombone of José Davila.
In the interval, Threadgill aficionado Alex Hawkins talks me through Threadgill's career. Like last week's headliner Archie Shepp, Threadgill is steeped in both the Chicago AACM movement and gospel – but the outcome is strikingly different, as illustrated perfectly by an amazing clip of Threadgill's Very Very Circus band.
You'll have to wait until the second half of the programme to hear Threadgill's legendary searing saxophone, but it bursts forth in the opening piece, Sap. There's then a beautiful sequence of quieter solo sections begun by Christopher Hoffman's cello that shows off the band's wonderful range of instrumental colours, before they finish off by funking it up – though as ever with Threadgill, it's never that straightforward!
Zooid is a sextet that has been Threadgill's main outlet for the last decade, and it shows – there's an ease to the way they straddle free playing and Threadgill's spiky composed ideas, swept along by Kavee's beats and the throbbing tuba/trombone of José Davila.
In the interval, Threadgill aficionado Alex Hawkins talks me through Threadgill's career. Like last week's headliner Archie Shepp, Threadgill is steeped in both the Chicago AACM movement and gospel – but the outcome is strikingly different, as illustrated perfectly by an amazing clip of Threadgill's Very Very Circus band.
You'll have to wait until the second half of the programme to hear Threadgill's legendary searing saxophone, but it bursts forth in the opening piece, Sap. There's then a beautiful sequence of quieter solo sections begun by Christopher Hoffman's cello that shows off the band's wonderful range of instrumental colours, before they finish off by funking it up – though as ever with Threadgill, it's never that straightforward!
what a dynamic close to any jazz festival! 
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