One of the movements of the theatrical work “Ralph Ellison’s Long Tongue,” which was later adapted for “Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera.” In the score for “Ralph Ellison’s Long Tongue,” “Sketch #4” is subtitled “The New Theme.”
Compositions S-Z
Sketch #3
One of the movements of the theatrical work “Ralph Ellison’s Long Tongue,” which was later adapted for “Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera.” In the score for “Ralph Ellison’s Long Tongue,” “Sketch #3” is subtitled “The Old Man,” which was one of the characters performed by Malinké Elliott in the performance.
Sketch #2
One of the movements of the theatrical work “Ralph Ellison’s Long Tongue,” which was later adapted for “Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera.”
Sketch #1
One of the movements of the theatrical work “Ralph Ellison’s Long Tongue,” which was later adapted for “Long Tongues: A Saxophone Opera.”
Sixty/Sixty
Composition for alto saxophone, guitar, bass, and drums. In the Julius Hemphill Papers, there is a holograph score for this instrumentation, along with professionally copied parts for alto saxophone, bass, and drums. There is also a score for soprano saxophone, trumpet, and tenor saxophone, which includes spaces for material from the parts to be inserted, although there are no extant parts for this setting of the piece. This is evidently the scored Hemphill used in a recorded performance of the piece from 1985, present in the archive. There is also a guitar part in the collection, donated by Nels Cline.
From Marty Ehrlich: There are professionally copied instrumental parts for this piece by two different copyists. One copyist made the early works like “Dogon A.D.” The other is James “Jabbo” Ware, who did the majority of Hemphill’s copying from the mid-1970’s on. On the alto sax part, Hemphill has written out the form A-B-C-Improv-A-B-C-Tag. The archival audio collection includes a performance of this work by the JAH band.