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Zen Widow – Wadada Leo Smith: Screaming in Daytime (Makes Men Forget)
by AAJ Italy Staff
Quel giramondo di Gianni Gebbia, compone ormai da diversi anni, fra i tanti, un gruppo con i californiani Matthew Goodheart e Garth Powell denominato Zen Widow, che in questo lavoro ha la ventura di ospitare un'icona come Wadada. Ne vien fuori un quartetto ottimamente coeso, in cui l'illustre ospite non si comporta affatto come tale, entrando nelle maglie della musica come solo un grande artista che non la pretende mai da primadonna è in grado di fare. Fin dall'iniziale “Gifts ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith & Louis Moholo-Moholo: Ancestors
by Eyal Hareuveni
The title of this remarkable album says it all. American trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo are two forefathers of modern jazz, innovative musicians who redefined the practices of their instruments and the connections between the Afro-American, African and European jazz legacies-- creative composers and esteemed bandleaders for nearly five decades and role models for generations of musicians. So, this musical meeting between these two masters, their first as a duo, was bound to happen. Thanks ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith & Louis Moholo-Moholo: Ancestors
by Mark Corroto
The Theology of the Body is an integrated vision of the human person as body, soul, and spirit. Attending the church of jazz, this amalgamation can be best illustrated+ with improvisation and, if so, this duo of trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo is a sacred meeting.Following the previous releases of Smith's duos with drummers Günter “Baby" Sommer on Wisdom In Time (Intakt, 2007), Adam Rudolph on Compassion (Meta/Kabell, 2006), Jack DeJohnette with America (Tzadik, 2007) ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith / Louis Moholo-Moholo: Ancestors
by John Sharpe
There is a natural fit between drums and trumpet. It stretches back all the way into prehistory, with the shamanistic combination of animal horns and percussive devices, persisting up until the early twentieth century in military drum and bugle corps who passed signals and directed troop movement. That synergy continues to bear artistic fruit to the present day in jazz, nowhere more so than in the work of distinguished trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. He already numbers four such meetings in ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: London, England, August 27, 2012
by John Sharpe
Wadada Leo SmithCafé OtoLondonAugust 27, 2012As if searching for the perfect setting, for the second night of his two-day residency at north London's Café Oto, legendary AACM trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith was pitched against two contrasting ensembles drawn from the capital's reservoir of improvising talent. First up was a brass trio, supplemented by the electronics and melodica of Spring Heel Jack impresario, erstwhile guitarist John Coxon, while the second was a percussion threesome. Although Smith's ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: More Than Moments in Time
by Nic Jones
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith has been pursuing his muse for decades now; that pursuit has yielded music as singular as anything out there, as his now abundant discography testifies. The release of Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform, 2012) earlier this year amounts to something monumental, however, and not merely because the music pans out across four discs. Smith's music has never had about it the air of culmination, and accordingly no release of his amounts to anything other than a facet ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers
by Eyal Hareuveni
Wadada Leo SmithTen Freedom SummersCuneiform Records2012Music--protest songs or extended compositions--have long been to be an integral part of human rights struggles. Suffice to mention such canonical musical statements as drummer Max Roach's We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1960) and Lift Every Voice and Sing (Atlantic, 1971), saxophonist John Coltrane's “Alabama" from Live at Birdland (Impulse!, 1963) or bassist Charles Mingus' “Meditations on Integration (or for a Pair of Wire-Cutters)" and “Fables ...
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