Possibly fragmentary composition for saxophone, guitar, and bass. It appears in one of Hemphill’s composition notebooks (MMN6). There are also parts in Hemphill’s hand for bass and guitar.
Compositions A-E
Echo 2 (Evening)
Duet for alto saxophone and cello, recorded by Hemphill with Abdul Wadud on the album Live in New York (1978). “Echo 2 (Evening)” was likely a collective improvisation; there is no known score.
Found on: Live in New York.
Echo 1 (Morning)
Duet for alto saxophone and cello, recorded by Hemphill with Abdul Wadud on the album Live in New York (1978).
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: “Echo 1 (Morning)” and “Echo 2 (Evening).”
Found on: Live in New York.
Collected Poem for Blind Lemon Jefferson, The
Composition recorded for the album The Collected Poem for Blind Lemon Jefferson (1971), the first release on Hemphill’s Mbari Records label. The album features Hemphill on flute and saxophone, with spoken word poetry by K. Curtis Lyle (who wrote the text) and Malinké Kenyatta. No known score.
Found on: The Collected Poem for Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Exotica
Compositional provenance uncertain. Music Manuscript Notebook 1 (MMN1) in the Julius Hemphill Papers includes a piece by this title; it is a part for cello, not in the composer’s hand, with instructions for improvisation.
From Marty Ehrlich: The cellist for this part would surely have been Abdul Wadud. I have wondered if this could be a composition of his. The notebook also indicates that two more pieces are to be performed in conjunction with this one. One is a ten-bar, B flat-blues, with the chord progression of II, V, I, IV, probably referring to Hemphill’s “Kansas City Line.” The other is Hemphill’s “The Hard Blues” in E-flat. (It is not the John Coltrane composition of the same name.)