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Wadada Leo Smith: America's National Parks
by Karl Ackermann
In the last half-decade of the inspirational forty-five year career of Wadada Leo Smith, he has generated one bona fide masterpiece after another, building and expanding on the qualities that consistently push his music to an apex with no apparent upper limit. With his four-and-a-half hours Pulitzer Prize finalist Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform Records, 2012) he unleashed a succession of projects, some of epic stature, such as Occupy The World (TUM Records, 2013), The Great Lakes Suite (TUM Records, 2015), ...
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by Dan McClenaghan
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith has a feel for the epic in his art, on recordings like: America (Tzadik Records, 2009), a duet set with drummer Jack DeJohnette; “America's Third Century Spiritual Awakening," from his first Golden Quartet (Tzadik Records, 2000) outing; Occupy The World (TUM Records, 2013), with the Finish big band, Tumo; The Great Lakes Suite (TUM Records, 2014), and his massive four disc master work, Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform Records, 2012), inspired by America's civil rights movement.
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith Golden Quartet at La Sala Rossa
by Mike Chamberlain
Wadada Leo Smith Golden Quartet La Sala Rossa Suoni Per Il Popolo Montreal, Quebec June 2, 2016 The Suoni Per Il Popolo, the annual June festival organized by the people at La Sala Rossa and Casa del Popolo, opened its Sala Rossa portion of the program with a concert by trumpeter/composer/teacher Wadada Leo Smith and his Golden Quartet of Anthony Davis, John Lindberg, and Pheeroan akLaff playing music from ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith, John Lindberg: Celestial Weather
by Alberto Bazzurro
Entrambi colonne dell'avanguardia jazzistica, sia pure con tempi, ruoli e modalità differenti, Wadada Leo Smith e John Lindberg dialogano in questo notevole album, la cui incisione risale al giugno 2012, dando da subito l'impressione di intendersi ottimamente. La suite che apre il disco (e che si deve al trombettista, come del resto la successiva, laddove la terza e ultima è opera di Lindberg) decolla con una bella vivacità, pur nell'ovvia economia di mezzi (tromba e basso puri, ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith, fenomenologia di un maestro
by Luca Canini
Non tutti i maestri sono uguali. C'è chi sceglie di farsi da parte, riducendo al minimo gli sconfinamenti, gli azzardi, i contatti con situazioni potenzialmente rischiose. E c'è chi invece si ostina a cercare, a condividere; tenendo fede a quella che del jazz è la suprema vocazione: la fisiologica tendenza a includere, in un continuo sovrapporsi e intrecciarsi di linguaggi, esperienze, generazioni. Wadada Leo Smith, trombettista, classe '41, appartiene di diritto a questa seconda categoria. Dall'alto di ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Red Hill
by John Sharpe
A first time meeting in the studio pitches avant-garde trumpet master Wadada Leo Smith against a crew of improvisers who cover diverse bases. All three of Smith's collaborators work together in Slobber Pup, what you might term a thinking man's noise band, as well as overlapping in a range of other outfits including Metallic Taste of Blood and Spanish Donkey. Best known in jazz circles will be Joe Morris, here on double bass, and keyboardist Jamie Saft who features in ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith/ Hardedge: The Nile
by Dan McClenaghan
Avant-garde trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith has crafted epic sets, like the four disc Ten Freedom Summers (Cunieform Records, 2012), inspired by the Civil Rights Movement. And then there are the near-epics: 2014's The Great Lakes Suite (TUM Records, 2014), a two disc celebration of North America's great waterway. And sometimes he offers up, in contrast, fairly modest records, like Organic Resonance, a live one disc duet set with reed man Anthony Braxton. And now we have a seemingly modest, but ...
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