Threadgill’s Search for the Right Ingredients

The best way to get Henry Threadgill, the highly acclaimed composer and reed artist, to discuss his music is to get him talking about cooking.

Threadgill, who makes his first Los Angeles appearances in more than five years tonight and Saturday at Marla’s, resists questions that attempt to get him to define or even describe his musical approach.

But once the New Yorker gets onto the subject of “creative cooking, which is much different from cookbook cooking,” you also get insights into his method on stage or in the studio.

To Threadgill, many of the same experimental elements are involved in cooking and music.

“When you fashion something new (musically), you’re searching for a sound that you’re hearing in your head . . . looking for the right ingredients (to express it),” he says. “Then you have to taste it, use bits of this and that until you fashion what you’re searching for.”

That’s the way Threadgill approached the music for his new band, Very Very Circus, a septet--two tubas, two guitars, trombone, reeds and drums--that recently debuted on the Black Saint album “Spirit of Nuff . . . Nuff” and which includes anything from European cabaret sounds to blues shouts.

“I knew I had two tubas in there, but I wasn’t sure about the two guitars, or if it was a steel guitar and bandoneon (a large concertina),” he says, referring to creating the sound he was hearing in his head. “So I got a couple of people together (on the latter instruments) and realized I wanted the guitars. Then I recorded the album with a trombone but switched to a French horn when we started this (current) tour.”

His music continues to change as he plays it, says Threadgill, known for his contributions to the free-wheeling groups Air (from 1972-1985) and Sextett (from 1985-1990.) “You never know when the prototype is through. It changes every night. Some of the music we’re playing is totally different than what’s on the record.”

On the Air: Will Thornbury, first heard on Los Angeles airwaves in 1959, has returned to radio after a three-year hiatus. Thornbury, a mainstream jazz expert, is on KLON-FM (88.1) Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“It’s a wonderful shift with a lot of freedom to do what I want,” says Thornbury, most recently heard on KCRW-FM (89.9) from 1977-1988.

Thornbury is one of 12 KLON announcers who will be heard soon in Europe via an agreement between Pacific Public Radio, which operates KLON, and Eurojazz, a cable radio service in the Netherlands.

“The programs--22 hours a day that will originate in our studios--will be up-linked via satellite in Germany and will initially be carried by cable systems in Holland, Belgium and Norway, with plans to expand to England and the rest of Europe,” says Ken Borgers, KLON’s program director.

“It’s exciting but a little bit scary,” Borgers says. “We’re talking about programming two radio stations (simultaneously).

In another event, KLON’s Chuck Niles will emcee a live music broadcast on the station Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Emanating from the Sports & Entertainment Gallery in Venice, the show celebrates the opening of “Jazz Legends,” an exhibition of photo-generated art by Paula Ross that spotlights the likenesses of such jazz notables as Joe Williams and Dizzy Gillespie.