Henry Threadgill, Vijay Iyer, Dafnis Prieto - Fifteen Henry Threadgill, Vijay Iyer, Dafnis Prieto

‘Threadgill is a composer and bandleader of intense, unyielding originality, nobody’s idea of a compromise.’
– New York Times

‘One of the great musicians of his generation, Iyer resolves the contradictions of the world in beauty.’ – Der Spiegel

‘Prieto [is] one of the most multidimensional artists working today.’ – JazzTimes

‘The three share an approach that straddles adventurousness and accessibility – too stylistically ‘out’ for jazz traditionalists, and yet less deeply into discordant freedom than many of their fellow avant-gardists. That common aesthetic created music that felt organic and musically coherent.’ – All About Jazz

Fifteen, the first album from the collective trio of saxophonist and flutist Henry Threadgill, pianist Vijay Iyer, and drummer and percussionist Dafnis Prieto, is the label debut for all three musicians. The record takes its name from the number of years the trio has been performing together - first at a series of benefits for the New York City club the Jazz Gallery, a club they have since played at periodically, and then around the US and internationally. It comprises three compositions by Threadgill and Iyer and two by Prieto. Threadgill, Iyer, and Prieto return to NYC’s Jazz Gallery for two nights this week on June 19 and 20. Additional performances will be announced soon. 

Threadgill, Iyer, and Prieto are three of the most celebrated composer-performers of our time. Their collective project, informally dubbed “The Trio”, began in 2012 when Rio Sakairi from the Jazz Gallery called upon these three acclaimed musicians to participate in a fundraiser. Despite their preexisting musical ties, they all felt a unique spark in the mysterious flow of this musical encounter. They have steadily developed the project over the ensuing years, each musician serving as a composer and creative soloist, bringing each of their distinct backgrounds and strong personalities into the group dynamic. 

Their shared composer orientation gives the ensemble a special, continually evolving quality. These artists are not only electrifying performers, but also visionary creators and thinkers. As Threadgill states, “each time we come together to perform, it seems brand new… We’ve got three composers here. Every time the music changes, it holds up a different world, because it’s coming from a different place – because of each one of us, [and] our different approaches to composition.” 

NEA Jazz master Henry Threadgill is hailed by the New York Times as ‘perhaps the most important jazz composer of his generation.’ He has been celebrated for over forty years as one of the most original, forward-thinking composers and multi-instrumentalists in American music. His four-movement work, In for a Penny, In for a Pound, received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2016, one of only three jazz compositions to ever be so honoured. 

A Chicago native, Threadgill studied at the city’s American Conservatory of Music, majoring in composition, piano, and flute. A Vietnam veteran, he performed with the U.S. Army Concert Band. Threadgill is an early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), dedicated to the performance of its members’ original music. Threadgill has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Aaron Copland Award, and the Doris Duke Impact Award. DownBeat magazine’s International Jazz Critics Poll has five times distinguished him with its Best Composer Award. The Jazz Journalists Association honored him with its 2002 Composer of the Year Award and its Lifetime Achievement Award. Threadgill has released more than thirty critically acclaimed albums. 

Threadgill’s orchestral pieces, 1987’s Run Silent, Run Deep, Run Loud, Run and 1993’s Mix for Orchestra premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His many commissions include Mordine & Co. Dance Theater, Carnegie Hall, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Talujon Percussion Ensemble, Junge Philharmonic Salzburg Orchestra, the Biennale di Venezia, and the American Composers Orchestra. He has been composer-in-residence at University of California-Berkeley and the Atlantic Center of the Arts. Through the years, Threadgill has led, performed, and recorded with numerous groups, most recently Zooid and the Double Up Ensemble. In 2015, a two-day festival at New York’s Harlem Stage celebrated works spanning Threadgill’s career performed and reinterpreted by an all-star collection of musicians. 

Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. A composer and pianist active and revered across multiple musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last three decades, earning him a place as one of the leading music-makers of his generation. His honours include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, three Grammy nominations, the Alpert Award in the Arts, the Greenfield Prize, a Dutch Edison Prize, and two German Echo awards; he was also voted DownBeat magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times. He has been praised by Pitchfork as ‘one of the best in the world at what he does’, by the Los Angeles Weekly as ‘a boundless and deeply important young star’, and by Minnesota Public Radio as ‘an American treasure.’ 

His recent albums include Thereupon (Pi Recordings, 2025) by Fieldwork, featuring Iyer, saxophonist Steve Lehman, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey; Defiant Life (ECM, 2025), his second suite of duets with visionary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; Compassion (ECM, 2024), featuring his celebrated trio with Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh; Trouble (BMOP/sound, 2024), a composer portrait album comprising three of his orchestral works; and Love in Exile (Verve, 2023), his Grammy-nominated collaboration with Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily. Iyer is also a prolific composer for classical ensembles and soloists, with works premiered by London Philharmonic, Oregon Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Brentano Quartet, Imani Winds, Parker Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Silk Road Ensemble, Sō Percussion, International Contemporary Ensemble, and virtuosi Jennifer Koh, Matt Haimowitz, Mishka Rushdie Momen, Claire Chase, Inbal Segev, Sarah Rothenberg, and Shai Wosner. 

The New York Times observed, ‘Iyer’s music has always been both intelligent and unpretentious, complex without being opaque; [he] ponders a phrase with obsessive rumination, unveiling layers of shifting, subtle emotion, before letting it fly with joyous abandon.’ He is a professor at Harvard University. 

From Cuba, Dafnis Prieto’s revolutionary drumming techniques and compositions have had a powerful impact on the music landscape, nationally and internationally. His honors include a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship, a GRAMMY Award for Back to the Sunset (2018), two additional GRAMMY nominations, two Latin GRAMMY nominations (including Best New Artist in 2007), and the Jazz Journalists Association’s Up & Coming Musician of the Year in 2006. 

As a composer, Prieto has created music for dance, film, chamber ensembles, and most notably for his own bands, ranging from duets to big bands. He has received commissions, grants, and fellowships from organizations including Chamber Music America, Princeton University, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall/NYO Jazz, MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and New Music USA. 

Since arriving in New York in 1999 – a moment described by the New York Times as ‘an asteroid hitting the city’ – Prieto has performed at major venues and festivals around the world as a bandleader and collaborated with artists including Michel Camilo, Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Eddie Palmieri, Chico and Arturo O’Farrill, Dave Samuels and the Caribbean Jazz Project, Jane Bunnett, Roy Hargrove, Don Byron, Andrew Hill, and Chucho and Bebo Valdés, among others. A dedicated educator, Prieto served on the jazz studies faculty at New York University from 2005-14 and joined the faculty at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music in 2015. He is also the author of three books: A World of Rhythmic Possibilities (2016), Rhythmic Synchronicity (2020), and What Are the Odds (2025).