Bill McHenry: Roses

Status of copy at Case Memorial Library
Martin Johnson wrote in New York: "[T]he best new players are now assiduously trained in the full lineage of jazz history. … As a result, their style is a good deal gentler and more democratic than the Coltrane generation’s. Nowhere is this more evident than on the new discs by saxophonists Chris Byars, Ned Goold, Joel Frahm, and Bill McHenry. … The best and most distinctive among them is McHenry. … A native of Maine, he arrived in New York in 1992 to find a fairly enervated and unwelcoming scene. He did a tour of duty playing for lousy tips in East Village bars but couldn’t gain traction in the more serious local clubs. 'I was just weirding out in people’s basements,' McHenry says of his playing then. So he decamped to Barcelona for a year, where he found a more nurturing environment. By the late nineties he had hooked up with guitarist Ben Monder and bassist Reid Anderson (of the Bad Plus), who, along with drummer Paul Motian, now make up his quartet. Their years of playing together have given them that kind of telepathy that turns solos into duos and trios, and then takes entirely unexpected turns" (8/20/07).