Who is Hemphill?

“Much was made of a four-horn group [Julius Hemphill’s World Saxophone Quartet] working the turf of jazz without a rhythm section. Hemphill insightfully replied that he did not know what all the fuss was about. Nobody pointed to a string quartet to marvel at how well they got along with no rhythm section.”

On October 18, the Gardner will kick off this season’s Composer Portraits series with a concert of music by Julius Hemphill. If you’re a jazz fan, you may know him from the St. Louis-based Black Artists Group, or the revolutionary World Saxophone Quartet. But you may not know that he wrote classical music, too, for string quartet and piano. We’ll be playing it all in the concert at the next After Hours, but until then, a few words about his music from program annotator Ben Young:

Hemphill’s impact and legacy offer different things to different audiences. His identity as a fiery, constructive-minded alto saxophonist powered a substantial part of his recorded output, on which he appears as an improviser but not composer or arranger… Hemphill’s long-form writing for ensemble, with or without his participation as a player, is maybe the hardest subset of his writing to grasp..But the enduring benchmark of Hemphill’s identity as a music-maker is his craftsmanship and style as a jazz composer–arranger, the last giant in the 20th century to make an unmistakably new contribution to the field. This dimension of music making was neglected in the oeuvre that Hemphill entered when he moved to New York in 1973. Only the early work of Butch Morris suggested that there was anyone on the scene paying as much attention to the modernist precepts of beauty, ballad, close harmony, and tight execution.

The principal vehicle to showcase his writing talents through the middle part of his recording career was the initial formation of the World Saxophone Quartet, which debuted in 1976. Hemphill was on board for the prototype recording, an Anthony Braxton record using Julius, Bluiett, and Lake, and then months later in New Orleans and St. Louis for the launch of the band with David Murray completing the front line. A decade later, he left to pursue other interests. Between those poles, the group became an in-demand concert sensation and a celebrated emblem for what was new and valuable in post-Coltrane jazz constructions. All four players contributed arrangements, and all four virtuoso improvisers were indispensable, but the sonic identity of the WSQ was defined by Hemphill’s copious writing. Isolating the saxophone choir was the latest step in a Jazz lineage developed by arranger Don Redman’s foundational work for the Fletcher Henderson orchestra in the 1920s, Benny Carter’s writing for saxophones, the prominent identities of reed sections in the bands of Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, and Oliver Nelson’s touch in the 1960s. For Hemphill, it was a high point but not an end point.

The Julius Hemphill Sextet stands as his last will and testament—a fruitful extension beyond the quartet configuration. The group was created in 1987 to perform the re-orchestration of older compositions in Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera. It then made two records with Hemphill on board as musical director and a playing member, and after his death in 1995 resolved to continue playing and recording his music. Three distinct pools of Hemphill literature in the Sextet’s active repertoire are represented tonight. One of its first official acts was touring Hemphill’s score in collaboration with the Bill T. Jones Company; from the several pieces out of that work to have been recorded, tonight’s performance includes Opening. Hemphill’s literature written expressly for the Sextet informs most of their first two recordings, Fat Man and The Hard Blues and Five Chord Stud. The first Sextet recording without Hemphill, 1997’s At Dr. King’s Table, broadened the scope to encompass earlier pieces like JiJi Tune and the outright thrust of his writing with no soloists in Impulse.

In the novelty of the WSQ’s emergence, much was made of a four-horn group working the turf of jazz without a rhythm section. Hemphill insightfully replied that he did not know what all the fuss was about. Nobody pointed to a string quartet to marvel at how well they got along with no rhythm section. Tonight’s concert brings forward evidence on both sides, with all-saxophone groups and string groups setting up some of the pivotal pieces from his oeuvre.

– Ben

More to come soon, including some of Ben’s notes on the pieces we’ll be playing, and thoughts from some of the musicians playing them.