Jazz Articles
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Wadada Leo Smith: Fire Illuminations
by Mike Jurkovic
Eighty-one year old trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith comes out flaring like Bitches Brew era Miles Davis, as Fire Illuminations jumps the funk rock from the break of the muscular conflagration “Ntozake." And the grunge jazz clips along as guitarists Nels Cline, Brandon Ross, and Lamar Smith vie, bite, sting, and quarrel over an insistent bass drum power-groove courtesy of bassists Bill Laswell and Melvin Gibbs, percussionist Mauro Refosco, drummer Pheeroan aKlaff, and the deep space electronics of Hardedge.
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Fire Illuminations
by Dan McClenaghan
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith fronts lots of different bands and puts out lots of albums. After a busy period when he released five boxed sets, totaling 27 CDs, here he debuts his new all-star ensemble Orange Wave Electric, with the download-only offering, Fire Illuminations. As the band name implies, the sound is electric, featuring three electric guitarists, two electric bassists and an electronicist, joining the leader's horn, percussionist Mauro Refosco and drummer Pheeroan aKLaff. For comparison's sake--and using ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith / Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer
by Clifford Allen
Since the Ornette Coleman Quartet's The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic, 1959), the trumpet's historical bar in creative music has been set in great part by Don Cherry. Not that Cherry's way was the only way and, in fact, the work of Bill Dixon, Donald Ayler, Lester Bowie, and a few others certainly paved significant directions for the instrument's place and growth in the ensuing decades. But Cherry, even as his language was a condensed, rambunctious and decidedly expansive ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith / Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer
by Dan McClenaghan
The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer is a set full of brash, in-your-face spontaneity, which is a meeting of expectations when the musicians at hand are trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist Wadada Leo Smith and the late drummer, Ed Blackwell. Smith's contribution to the free jazz cannon stretches back to his days with Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), while Blackwell rose to prominence as a member of Ornette Coleman's legendary quartet.The set, recorded live at Brandeis University in 1986, ...
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