It’s been a long time in the making, but I’ve finally created a new theme and art for this blog. I’m certainly not an artist (or designer either), so don’t be surprised if I keep fiddling with this design, but I like this new look, and I hope you do too! Of course, writing is the focus of the blog – I’ll be working on more regular content, and I’m excited about continuing to share great music here with you. I’m especially excited about my next post, which will be the first interview I’ve done on this blog – check that out within the next week!
I also want to acknowledge the 82nd birthday of one of the great musical minds of the 20th and 21st centuries – composer, alto sax player, and flautist Henry Threadgill. Threadgill will turn 82 this Sunday, February 15th, 2026. Happy Birthday, Henry! To celebrate, I can’t recommend his amazing autobiography, Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music, highly enough. What makes jazz so great is its ability to convey human ideas through sound – when you hear a great improviser or composer, it’s more than music – you know them. So when you have a great biography of a master musician in their own words, it can be so illuminating about that connection between humanity and art. In Easily Slip into Another World, we learn about the 60s Chicago scene, the birth of the AACM, and the connection of Henry’s music with religion (he toured with an evangelical preacher),the blues, the 70s “downtown scene,” and with world music. The stories about his service in Vietnam are just unbelievable. It’s an incredible read and so illuminating if you appreciate Henry’s art – so check it out. I’ll be re-reading it this weekend.
Also, if you want to check out the latest episode of my radio show, “Where Is Brooklyn?” at 91.3 FM WVKR (Poughkeepsie, NY), I’ll be playing Henry Threadgill’s music for the second hour of my two-hour show. That airs on Henry’s birthday, 2/15/2026, from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m., at wvkr.org if you’re not in the Hudson Valley. Tune in!