After ducking into side alleys like a guitar-heavy octet and a twelve-member orchestra, Henry Threadgill had landed back into familiar territory. The widely celebrated composer, reedist and bandleader is restarting his quarter-century old Zooid quintet to engage in new musical adventures with old cohorts.
Cut You Where You Was (August 28 2026, PI Recordings) marks a continuation of Threadgill’s longest-running of his various projects going back to the Air trio he co-founded in the early 70s. It’s a stable lineup that still has the original guitarist Liberty Ellman and tuba/trombone player Jose Davila. The drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee has been there since nearly the beginning and cellist Christopher Hoffman has been a fixture in the band for the past fifteen years. The kind of continuity brings familiarity but also given them ever more confidence to apply their own flourishes to Threadgill’s written scores, a freedom that he’s always encouraged in his band members past and present.
There’s something else that keeps Zooid from going stale even some twenty-five years later. As long as we’ve been hearing the combination of sax, guitar tuba, cello and drums, the confluence of these sounds continues to sound fresh and novel. Each of these are heard in sharp relief on “Fluoroscope,” like peering into the inner workings of an elaborately constructed machine to marvel how it hums together so well. Threadgill’s piece is at once elaborately constructed and broadly defined, achieving the daunting feat of being both chamber music and improvised music.
Moving from alto sax, Threadgill lands on flute for “Bingo Part 1,” and each member is performing on parallel paths, each offering their own take on the same song. Ellman’s slide is the standout feature of the otherwise-similar “Bingo Part 2” and Davila’s move to trombone takes away the bottom end. The band plays deliberately more together for “Bingo Part 3” as Threadgill puts down his flute and picks up the alto again. They improvise alongside each other (or seem to be) and yet do so in sync.
Hoffman takes center stage for “Red Admiral Red Moon Rising” with a handsome recital in the classical vein. Threadgill, Davila and Ellman chime in at random moments with single-note bursts that provide tantalizing hints of the underlying melody, then the full band enters five minutes in to completely solve the mystery. The cellist continues to plug away, though, playing in Kavee’s funky pocket and then the leader takes his turn on alto in his signature style.
The remaining five tracks are sub-two minute etudes. These miniatures demonstrate how Threadgill can still pack a lot of creatively in short passages while blurring lines between jazz and classical but still sounding only like himself. It also forces more conciseness from each musician, drawing out different responses from them than they might offer within longer pieces.
Henry Threadgill goes back to his typical routine of producing a new Zooid album but since this band is typically atypical, it hasn’t come close to running its course. Pre-order/order Cut You Where You Was from Bandcamp.
- Henry Threadgill Zooid – ‘Cut You Where You Was’ (2026) - August 20, 2026
- Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe – ‘After The Storm’ (2026) - August 17, 2026
- Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, William Parker + Bobby Kapp – ‘Synthesthesia’ (2026) - August 10, 2026
