TT 407.5: Henry Threadgill's "Theme for Thomas Cole"

Another discovery in the American Wing

In the previous post, I discuss Timo Andres’s Upstate Obscura, which was inspired by a major painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, John Vanderlyn’s Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles. While in the American Wing looking at the panorama, I also searched out the four paintings on display by Thomas Cole.

The only reason I know Cole’s name is Henry Threadgill: “Theme From Thomas Cole” is on You Know the Number from 1986.

His Sextett includes

Henry Threadgill, alto saxophone
Rasul Siddik, trumpet
Frank Lacy, trombone
Diedre Murray, cello
Fred Hopkins, bass
Reggie Nicholson and Pheeroan akLaff, drums

(The two drummers make for the double “T” in Sextett.)

There are not one but two themes in “Theme from Thomas Cole.” The first theme could almost be for television, not too far from Barrington Pheloung’s melody for Inspector Morse, sort of “classical” in a straight minor key. The second theme is highly chromatic, and eventually counterpointed by marching on-off quarter notes.

The two drummers play out as Siddik, Threadgill, and Lacy deliver beautiful bluesy commentary against the two themes.

Rasul Siddik sadly died in January 2023. I didn’t write anything at the time, nor did I see much online. But I know the Sextett records well and Siddik really sounds great on them.

For me “Theme from Thomas Cole” is indispensable. A must.

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Thomas Cole is “widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter.” [Wikipedia.] The most surprising Cole at the Met is the marvelous The Titan's Goblet, which might have a connection to the surreal music of Henry Threadgill. (Note tiny craft piloting inside the “lake.”)

The largest Cole canvas on display is the truly grand View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow. The painter puts himself in the frame (lower center a bit to the right).

For fun, I also put myself in the frame. (Partial view selfie is a technique pioneered by Shannon Cronin.)