# New CD 2025: Review: The Hemphill Stringtet Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill – Videos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2025/04/15/new-cd-2025-review-the-hemphill-stringtet-plays-the-music-of-julius-hemphill-videos/
- Published: 2025-04-15T00:03:46+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**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.

![](https://i0.wp.com/f4.bcbits.com/img/a1839988487_16.jpg?resize=674%2C674&ssl=
1)

“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.

![](https://i0.wp.com/traccedijazz.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/f945c34c-aed7-
489c-be2c-63ab5cbd4912_1000x601.webp?w=640&ssl=1)

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