Bill Dixon

Thoughts is a studio album by trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon, recorded on May 16, 1985 at the Paul Robeson House of Bennington College in Vermont, where Dixon taught from 1968 to 1995. Soul Note released it in 1987. Dixon controlled every part of it: he wrote all the music, produced the record, wrote the liner notes and took the cover photographs. The septet he gathered has three double bassists, a tuba and drums under his trumpet and a single alto saxophone, a low, heavy ensemble sound.

Dixon plays trumpet, flugelhorn and piano, with Marco Eneidi on alto saxophone, John Buckingham on tuba, Laurence Cook on drums and the bassists Peter Kowald, William Parker and Mario Pavone. Steve Schwartz recorded the session, which was mixed at the Sound Seller in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in November 1985. The title track opens at over eleven minutes, and For Nelson And Winnie is a suite in four parts, Time I, Essence, Transfiguration and Time II. A Song For Claudia's Children, Brothers and Points each run between eight and eleven minutes. In Burning Ambulance (2025), Phil Freeman wrote that Dixon's "frequent use of multiple bassists and low brass instruments like tuba" gives his pieces "an almost underwater depth", and he named Thoughts second only to Intents And Purposes as a way into Dixon's music.

This is the Soul Note CD 121111-2 of the album first released in 1987 as SN 1111.