The core group - keyboardist Mitch Henry, bassist Kyle Miles, and drummer Charles Haynes - first came together on 2016’s Nihil Novi, and worked together again on 2018’s People Of The Sun, both of which were released on Blue Note. The album features his band Twi-Life and a few guests, like guitarist Lionel Loueke and vocalists Christie Dashiell and Ras Stimulant. But a lot of his work has come out on his own Strick Muzik imprint, including his latest release, The Universe’s Wildest Dream. And Strickland has had a wide-ranging career, releasing albums on Fresh Sound, Criss Cross, and Blue Note. Dillard has only made a couple of albums as a leader, which is a shame, but he’s an ace session player and sideman all around New York.
He releases an album a year, and each one is worth your attention. Allen is one of my favorite jazz musicians, period he’s the first artist featured in my book Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century. I’d been listening to Allen, Dillard, and Strickland for almost a decade before that night. They played two sets each night, and at the show I caught, Strickland began things with a short discussion of the history of the tenor saxophone and a roll call of legends, including Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Don Byas, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, and paying special tribute to Jimmy Heath, who had died less than two weeks earlier, on January 19.
They were structured like the three-headed monster that was their namesake, with bassist Eric Wheeler and drummer Rodney Green in back and a trio of tenor saxophonists (with one or another occasionally doubling on soprano or bass clarinet) up front: JD Allen, Stacy Dillard, and the man who put the project together, Marcus Strickland. One of the last live jazz performances I attended, on February 1, 2020, was by a one-off group called Ghidorah that appeared at the Jazz Gallery for two nights and has to my knowledge never reconvened since.
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