Henry Threadgill, with Steph Richards, Mark Dresser and the UC San Diego Graduate Improvisers Forum
How rare are San Diego concerts by Henry Threadgill, the visionary jazz-and-beyond composer, saxophonist, flutist and band leader, who won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for “In for a Penny, In for a Pound,” his constantly shape-shifting double-album?
Threadgill has not played here here since his 2001 duo appearance with poet Sapphire as part of the Quincy Troupe-curated “Artists on the Cutting Edge” series. It was Threadgill’s first area concert since his very memorable 1991 La Jolla gig with his band, Very Very Circus, at Elario’s.
This, in turn, was his first concert here since 1984 when he played in the San Diego Jazz Festival’s “Foreign Exchange” series at the former Sherwood Auditorium, where the festival first presented him in 1979. This comes out to four San Diego area performances in 45 years.
So, the news that Threadgill is returning for a free Tuesday concert at UC San Diego inspires excitement. Ditto the fact it will team him with two widely acclaimed musicians, trumpet innovator Steph Richards and bass great Mark Dresser, who are both music UCSD faculty members.
They will be joined by drummer Andrew Munsey, Richards’ husband and longtime musical partner, and an 11-piece ensemble of accomplished UCSD graduate students that Threadgill will conduct. The lineup includes bassoonist Joy Guidry, cellist Peter Ko, pianists Jonny Stallings Cardenas and Boris Acosta Jaramillo, tuba player Jonathan Piper and alto saxophonist and flutist Lyra Montoya.
Together, they will perform Threadgill’s 2018 opus, “Dirt… And More Dirt,” a nearly 40 minute-long piece created specifically to combine his finely calibrated composing with a new system of improvising based on a preconceived series of intervals.
One would expect no less from this singular artist, whose work is equal parts jazz and contemporary classical, cutting-edge and traditional, the foreign and familiar. Or, as Threadgill told me in a 2001 Union-Tribune interview: “The only way to make a discovery is to go to the limit of what you know. Then you have to go over that line, to what you don’t know.”
6 p.m. Tuesday. Conrad Prebys Music Center’s Experimental Theater, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla. Admission is free, but an online RSVP is required: music.ucsd.edu/tickets. The concert will also have a free livestream at: music-cms.ucsd.edu/concerts/live.html
On Monday at 6 p.m. Threadgill will discuss his music with fellow Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis and Jonny Stallings Cárdenas in the Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Theater. Admission is free, but an RSVP is required: http://music.ucsd.edu/tickets
The Blind Boys of Alabama, with Bobby Rush
Is this the most inspired double-bill of the year?
Gospel music legends The Blind Boys of Alabama was formed in 1937 at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind. The group’s latest album, “Echoes of the South,” is up for three Grammy Awards Sunday and is its last to feature lead singer Jimmy Carter, who retired from touring last year at the age of 91.
Blues-soul vocal dynamo Rush, 90, is also vying for a Grammy this weekend. Between them, these two acts have won a dozen previous Grammys. The opportunity to hear his proudly secular — and sometimes bawdy — music on the same stage as the Blind Boys’ rousing songs of devotion should not be missed.
7:30 p.m. Wednesday. Belly Up, 143 South Cedros Ave., Solana Beach. $55-$97 (must be 21 or older to attend). (858) 481-8140; bellyup.com
Delfeayo Marsalis & The Uptown Jazz Orchestra
Don’t fret if you can’t make it to New Orleans next week for Mardi Gras. Big Easy trombone mainstay Delfeayo Marsalis — the brother of jazz greats Wynton and Branford Marsalis — will bring the celebration here.
His brassy, 17-piece band includes such notable musicians as former “Tonight Show” drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith and San Diego sax ace JP Balmat. You can expect the audience to be dancing in the aisles and rocking in their seats.
7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Price Center Ballroom East, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla. $19-$38. artpower.ucsd.edu/