“As long as I can talk, I can be Julius Hemphill. As long as I can run my mouth I can be Julius Hemphill. Somehow, I discovered I could write this music and play the saxophone. All that stumbling around and stuff, I ended up finally being able to play it a little bit. I ain’t the greatest by any means, not even close—but I think I’ve got depth, a broadness of my musical sensibility, that a lot of soloists don’t have, because they focus on that one thing, soloing. I want to develop the whole backdrop, the scenery. Once I found out that was possible, that I could collaborate with people, I came alive musically.”
Over three nights here in Seattle, we will be performing Julius Hemphill’s compositions in the context of horns and rhythm section, Saxophone Sextet, and Jazz Orchestra. We will become part of the scenery Julius mentions above, along with you as the listener. Each of these works is a character in a play, or a dance concert or poetry reading, and each are full of character.
On the first night we will be playing three pieces from his first recording Dogon A.D., a recording that still sounds as startling as when it first came out. The title cut is a wonder, a work that starts as a blues strut of celebration and defiance, but soon pivots into new worlds of possibility. The Ancient and the Future, as the AACM artists said, is gyrating in this work. If you have not heard the music of Julius Hemphill, please start with this one recording, where Julius’ alto sax solo extols and pleads, as if all is at stake.
The second night brings us to the music for saxophone choir. From early works for seven saxophones, to the seminal collective The World Saxophone Quartet, to his final group The Julius Hemphill Saxophone Sextet, Julius wrote endlessly for his beloved instrument. His brilliant sense of harmony and his mastery of musical form, along with his at times spirited wit followed by a sober understanding of the tragic, are all at play in these works.
“I grew up in the “Hot End” of Fort Worth. The Hot End is where people came for entertainment, such as it was, and to drink and carry on. It was musically rich. I could hear Hank Williams coming out of the jukebox at Bunker’s, the white bar. And Louis Jordan, Son House, and Earl Bostic from the box at Ethel’s, the black bar across the street. Texas gets hot, you know. Winter is an afterthought. We had all the window’s raised. So right across the street, these two jukeboxes were blaring. I had a great childhood. I mean, I was right down there with the action. It helped formulate some ideas, you know what I mean.”(Smithsonian Institution Jazz
(Oral History Project. Interview by Katea Stitt. 1994)
The last night we will present works of Julius for Jazz Orchestra. These works point much to his roots in Ft. Worth Texas, home to extraordinary saxophonists, his older cousin Ornette Coleman, King Curtis, Dewey Redman, John Carter and others. Julius loved his piece “Border Town”, which describes Saturday night in San Antonio. “Leora” is one of so many musical portraits Julius composed, this one for an aunt . C/Saw is a be-bop blues, now started deep in the Funk, by this masterful composer of the Blues continuum. At Harmony takes Charlie Parker a next or next to next step. The title is yet another example of Julius’ word play at work. Ferociously leaping, it bursts with energy of possibility.
Julius’ friendship meant the world to me. We talked often, and it just seemed to keep on going, an ongoing improvisation. In the last six years of his life, Julius was my main employer, when the Saxophone Sextet toured the world with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company. To watch Julius and Bill work together was one of the highlights of my life. At varied intervals of the process, we would be called in to play Julius’ pieces for Bill and the company. We’d get the score from Julius at the rehearsal, copy out our parts, and the process would start. I don’t have words for the feelings that came about as the blending of these two brilliant minds happened before our eyes and ears.
I know now from my work putting together the Julius Hemphill archive that I first worked with Julius in a filming in St. Louis when I was 18, in which Malinke Elliott, Julius’ closest theatrical collaborator, plays a character who is a ghost, trying to get into his coffin so he can fully die. But he cant make his last payments on the coffin, so he is in purgatory. Julius had me wear a cowboy hat, and I am actually the band leader trying to teach him the music. We all ignore Malinke, who implores the heavens. A Black Theatre of the Absurd, a take on life like so much of Julius work, defiant, celebratory, playful, deeply aware of loss and tragedy, Saturday night and Sunday morning.
In my writings for the archive, I concluded an overview with this passage.
“There is no one Julius Hemphill. He did as much as any artist I am aware of to create new spaces in the world as he found it , by way of his artistic vision and creative engagement. There are many doors with which to enter into his work, and in the end, they are all one. In what was to be his final live performance, Julius conducted us in the Saxophone Sextet from his wheelchair, contributing solo introductions on his gold alto that were as pure invention and beauty as I can imagine. He would conduct with a look of glee, deep satisfaction, as his compositional designs were brought to life. There was so much more for him to do, but what we do have is a protean creative life. There is much to celebrate.”
Marty Ehrlich
Marty Ehrlich is the chief researcher of the Julius Hemphill Archive at New York University, and the editor of the Hemphill’s compositional work available through Subito Music. Ehrlich performed with Hemphill over a twenty- year period, as a member of the Julius Hemphill Big Band and the Julius Hemphill Saxophone Sextet, along with numerous theatrical contexts. He continued the work of the Sextet for a decade after Hemphill’s death in 1995, keeping these seminal compositions before the public. He has produced a 7 CD box set recording of unreleased music from the Hemphill Archive entitled “The Boye Multi-National Crusade for Harmony” on New World Records. Ehrlich is a distinguished composer and instrumentalist based in New York City.