Though the century-old Pulitzer prize – launched as a celebration of the craft and social necessity of good news reportage – was eventually expanded to include fiction and music by 1943, the US-born art of jazz has only been represented by Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis in their lifetimes, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk posthumously – and most recently Henry Threadgill, for his four-part suite In for a Penny, In for a Pound, in 2016.
Publisher Joseph Pulitzer once declared his dreams for his readership were “to arrest their attention, enlist their sympathy … stimulate their imagination, convince their reason, and awaken their conscience”. Contemporary-classical composer and flautist Threadgill has been…