Henry Threadgill, Vijay Iyer, Dafnis Prieto: Fifteen review – Pulitzer winner stirs gorgeous improv patterns

(Nonesuch) By turns gleeful, sensitive, urgent and ruminative, this is a brilliant set that plays to the trio’s formidable strengths Though the century-old Pulitzer prize – launched as a celebration of the craft and social necessity of good news reportage – was eventually expanded to include fiction and music by 1943, the US-born art of jazz has only been represented by Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis in their lifetimes, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk posthumously – and most recently Henry Threadgill , for his four-part suite In for a Penny, In for a Pound , in 2016.

Publisher Joseph Pulitzer once declared his dreams for his readership were “to arrest their attention, enlist their sympathy … stimulate their imagination, convince their reason, and awaken their conscience”.

Contemporary-classical composer and flautist Threadgill has been doing all that with his music, his personal story , his internationalism and his charisma since the 1960s.

Now 82, he releases Fifteen, joining him in a brilliant trio featuring pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and creative Cuban percussionist Dafnis Prieto.

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