Jazz Articles about Wadada Leo Smith

About Wadada Leo Smith

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith & Louis Moholo-Moholo: Ancestors

Read "Ancestors" reviewed by Jeff Dayton-Johnson

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
December 17, 2012

Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo are grand old men in the annals of adventurous jazz, having played in a dizzying variety of settings through more than five decades. More to the point, both have amply shown a capacity for nuanced playing in demanding, interactive improvisational formats. An intimate duet performance by the pair, featured on Ancestors--sensitively recorded by Suikki Jääskä in Finland in February 2011--is thus a sure thing. The question is whether the result will exceed ...

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith - Louis Moholo-Moholo: Ancestors

Read "Ancestors" reviewed by AAJ Italy Staff

by AAJ Italy Staff
December 17, 2012

Mai titolo fu più centrato di questo: ancestrale, storico e ampiamente storicizzato, è il ruolo giocato dai due protagonisti di questo bellissimo album nell'evolversi di un jazz di ricerca degli ultimi quarantacinque anni o giù di lì, e ancestrale è il tono stesso del disco, con quel misto di solennità e ritualismo che magistralmente si addice al contesto. I due brillanti settantenni, l'uno tra i capi carismatici dell'AACM, l'altro della colonia sudafricana che a metà anni Sessanta andò a irrorare ...

Album Review

Zen Widow – Wadada Leo Smith: Screaming in Daytime (Makes Men Forget)

by AAJ Italy Staff
November 9, 2012

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 ...

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith & Louis Moholo-Moholo: Ancestors

Read "Ancestors" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 3, 2012

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 ...

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith & Louis Moholo-Moholo: Ancestors

Read "Ancestors" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 26, 2012

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) ...

Album Review

Wadada Leo Smith / Louis Moholo-Moholo: Ancestors

Read "Ancestors" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
October 23, 2012

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 ...

Live Review

Wadada Leo Smith: London, England, August 27, 2012

by John Sharpe
September 12, 2012

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 ...