Trumpet part (photocopied from an original in the composer’s hand) for a sixteen-measure melody. No other parts or score.
From Marty Ehrlich: The melody is mostly in eighth notes and has the rhythms and contours of a be-bop oriented line.
Ear
The first track on the Julius Hemphill Quartet’s album Flat-Out Jump Suite (1980).
From Marty Ehrlich: Although Hemphill was a prodigious composer of notated music, he chose at times to do an open improvisation with his colleagues on a given recording. In this case, Hemphill added titles to the improvised pieces: “Ear,” “Mind (1st part),” “Mind (2nd part)” and “Heart.” The piece Hemphill titled “Body” on this recording was a notated composition originally titled “Flat-Out Jump Suite.”
Found on: Flat-Out Jump Suite.
Dung
Fragmentary score for a quintet for clarinet, trumpet, alto saxophone, bass, and drums, found in Music Manuscript Notebook 5 (MMN5). One of the compositions in a list of pieces found in the notebook on circus-related themes. The archive also includes parts in holograph for clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet, and bass—as well as a partial score in holograph, with additional parts for tuba and guitar, along with alternate bass parts (four in total). There are numerous versions of this work in the archival audio collection, performed with diverse ensembles.
From Marty Ehrlich: The professionally copied guitar part doubles the melody line in the alto sax until the concluding phrases of the 1st and 2nd endings. (This part was surely used for the JAH Band, which in its first incarnation had one guitar.)
Amidst the multitude of different parts, the accompaniment figures change, but the piece’s melodic material, and its voicing among three horns (later two horns), stays consistent. What emerges from these documents, as well as from stories Hemphill’s side musicians have told me about watching him write out parts, is that Hemphill would sometimes compose parts in his head and notate them separately, without adding them to a score.
Don’t Go to Bed with Your Roof Afire
Hemphill’s arrangement of a composition by Bill Cole, one of seven arrangements Hemphill made for concerts with Cole in New York City and at Dartmouth College on September 26-27, 1986. Hemphill arranged the piece to be performed by Cole on winds, himself on saxophones, Olu Dara on trumpet, Joseph Daley on tuba and baritone horn, Abdul Wadud on cello, Gerald Veasley on bass, and Hafiz Shabazz and Warren Smith on drums/percussion.
Drunk on God
This is a multi-movement suite, written for the album Julius Hemphill Big Band (1988) and incorporating poetry written and performed by K. Curtis Lyle. It is scored for five saxophones, two trumpets, two French horns, two trombones, two guitars, bass, and drums. The seven movements in Hemphill’s score are as follows:
Nago: Testament
Maliaka: Drum/Woman
Pigskin (or “Motion as the Lang”)
Float
Bop Scene: KC Line
Anchorman
From Out of Nowhere: The Big Drum Speaks
On the album, there is an added introductory section of collective improvisation, titled “High on a Mountain in the Center of Mexico.” Some of the movements that follow have names that correspond to the autograph score, and others have been renamed to correspond to Lyle’s poetry. They are:
Nago: Testament
Mailika
Motion as the Terrible Language of the Future
Floating
Gates of Kansas City
Radiant Number
Cosmic Country Boy
Many of the suite’s individual movements were also performed in small group arrangements and may appear elsewhere in the Annotated Composition List. The Julius Hemphill Papers include Hemphill’s autograph score and full sets of instrumental parts.
Found on: Julius Hemphill Big Band.