Julius Hemphill, undisputed leader of the World Saxophone Quartet and then of a thousand other projects, for the posthumous release of the wonderful box set The Boye Multi National Crusade for Harmony.
The Hemphill Stringtet album has just been released, which collects some compositions rearranged for string quartet. A nice article appeared on Burning Ambulance that tells the behind the scenes of this valuable work, and I thought it was so interesting that I translated it and republished it.
A reed player originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Hemphill moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1968, where he co-founded the Black Artists Group. In the mid-70s he moved to New York, where he co-founded the World Saxophone Quartet with fellow BAG members Oliver Lake and Hamiet Bluiett, and Californian David Murray.
Hemphill also led groups of various sizes, from trios to big bands; performed solo and with poets; and composed chamber music. He died 30 years ago, on April 2, 1995.
Hemphill had a unique compositional voice and a knack for rich, Ellington-like arrangements. But his songs are mostly on his own records; they are not often recorded by other artists. A new album embraces his legacy as a composer and arranger in a fascinating way. The Hemphill Stringtet is a string quartet co-led by violinist Sam Bardfeld and cellist Tomeka Reid, with second violinist Curtis Stewart and violist Stephanie Griffin, and their debut album, Plays The Music Of Julius Hemphill, is exactly what the title suggests.
The album opens with a version of “Revue,” a piece Hemphill wrote for the World Saxophone Quartet; it appears on their 1982 self-titled album. The next three tracks are Mingus Gold, a three-part reworking of Charles Mingus’s “Nostalgia in Times Square,” “Alice’s Wonderland,” and “Better Git Hit in Your Soul,” which Hemphill created for the Kronos Quartet.
An earlier recording, by the Daedalus Quartet, appears on Hemphill’s box set The Boyé Multi-National Crusade For Harmony, released in 2021.
The album concludes with a medley of “My First Winter” and “Touchic,” both from WSQ’s Live In Zurich, and “Choo Choo,” from At Dr. King’s Table, a posthumous collection of pieces recorded by a saxophone sextet led by Marty Ehrlich.
I emailed Sam Bardfeld and Tomeka Reid to get the lowdown on the project: how it started, how they chose and arranged the music, and whether it’s a one-off or an ongoing project.
“The origin of the quartet was a bit of a fluke,” Bardfeld told me. “I met Marty Ehrlich at a concert in Brooklyn and he told me he had just released the World Saxophone Quartet’s music in a string edition and suggested I play it. I reached out to Tomeka—she and I were already big Hemphill fans—who told me Peter Margasak had just asked her to put together a group to play Mingus Gold at the 2022 Frequency Festival in Chicago.
We agreed to invite Curtis and Stephanie to join us. In addition to being great improvisers, they each lead a string quartet that focuses heavily on contemporary classical music: Curtis with the Publiq Quartet and Stephanie with the Momenta Quartet. We all had a great time playing together and playing this music, so we kept going.”
Reid added: “This is the perfect context for me to explore traditional string quartet instrumentation through the compositions of amazing creative jazz artists like Julius Hemphill. Sam Bardfeld had also become familiar with these pieces and we decided to ask Curtis and Stephanie to join us as they are both stellar improvisers. We also threw in some World Saxophone Quartet pieces that we enjoyed playing to round out the programme.”
One of Hemphill’s most important creative relationships has been with cellist Abdul Wadud. They have recorded several of Hemphill’s key albums together, including Dogon AD, ‘Coon Bid’ness, Raw Materials And Residuals and the duo album Live In New York, and the Boyé box set features a full disc of undated saxophone/cello duets. (And don’t miss his solo album, By Myself , re-released in 2023.)
A little over a decade ago, Reid and Joel Wanek interviewed Wadud for Point of Departure . I asked Reid how his playing on Hemphill records might have inspired his own work.
“Abdul was an excellent cellist and inspired me to really use the full range of the instrument,” he responded. “He has a fantastic sound and a great rhythmic feel, and that’s something I aspire to in my own playing.”
In the album’s liner notes, he adds, “Abdul Wadud, what can I say? A true giant and a deep voice in this music. (And the synergy between him and Hemphill was truly magical.) His technique was impeccable, with the bow or the pizzicato—you could hear the whole history of the music in his playing and he could weave in the styles effortlessly.”
Mingus Gold was indeed written for string quartet by Hemphill, but I was curious how the arrangements of the other songs worked. Were they simply transposing melodies from the saxophones to the strings, or was there something more to it?
Bardfeld explained, “The four World Saxophone Quartet pieces we played are master scores. Marty Ehrlich, who is in charge of the Hemphill Archive at NYU, edited three volumes of Julius’ saxophone quartets and then published the same volumes for string quartet through Subito Publishing. I think the only difference is the key signatures. We created the arrangements ourselves. There’s a lot of improvised polyphony in the World Saxophone Quartet, which is one of the things I love about them. A lot of multiple solos at the same time.
So we tried to preserve some of that spirit. ‘Revue,’ the opening piece, starts with the melody, followed by a little group improvisation, short off-the-cuff statements from everyone in the group, and then more group playing. We created a medley of ‘My First Winter’ and ‘Touchic.’ ‘Winter’ is a ballad with Curtis taking a free melody, followed by my solo on the changes. I continue to play alone as the group dissolves into a free transition into “Touchic.”
Then there’s Stephanie improvising on a free ostinato in odd time. This turns into a collective moment before we pick up the theme again. On “Choo-Choo,” we play the melody and then it’s all collective, moving outward from the central riff.”
Mingus Gold was fully composed, but Hemphill pointed to a space at the end of the second movement, where Reid creates an improvised cadenza for the cello.
In the third movement, he wrote a duet passage for the two violins, but Bardfeld said, “Curtis and I are both improvisers, [so] we left the writing and improvised our duet. Tomeka and Stephanie join us at the end for a brief collective moment before we return to the written part.”
Reid added, “In some of the pieces, we rearranged the double chords to make them more playable in certain passages, and even spread them out over three voices instead of two when it made more sense to do so.” He also said that they initially listened to the Daedalus Quartet’s version of Mingus Gold for reference.
Bardfeld said: “Daedalus is a pure classical band, whereas we are a sort of hybrid jazz-classical quartet, so our interpretation is naturally different. It was certainly helpful to have a recording of it, though.”
There is a lot of Hemphill material that could be rearranged for the Stringtet, so a second album is certainly possible. Bardfeld said: “Marty Ehrlich recently sent us an arrangement of [Billy Strayhorn’s] ‘Lush Life’ to consider.
I think we would be open to exploring other World Saxophone Quartet pieces when we have a bit more time to get together and work on new material.”
Reid added: “Hemphill has written a piano quintet for the great pianist Ursula Oppens (his partner) and a string quartet called One Atmosphere . We’ve had some preliminary conversations with Ursula about that. Ursula is lovely and has been very supportive of our work. There are many more World Saxophone Quartet pieces to play, both published and unpublished… There’s also the possibility of arranging something iconic like “Dogon AD” for the ensemble. There’s so much beautiful music that Julius has written. I think we’d be open to hearing some of Julius’ contemporaries. It’s all up for discussion!”
In the cover photo: The Hemphill Stringtet: L-R Curtis Stewart, Sam Bardfeld, Stephanie Griffin, Tomeka Reid.
A legendary Hemphill piece from those fertile years, and probably the most well-known and admired.
