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Wadada 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, ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith at Cafe Oto in London
by John Sharpe
Wadada Leo SmithCafé OtoLondonJuly 24, 2010Following the unprecedented acclaim for AACM trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith's appearance at London's Freedom of the City Festival in May, Cafe Oto had quickly invited him back to town for a two night residency in north London. Unable to replicate Smith's celebrated set with twin drummers, tonight he was scheduled to perform first in a duo with Mark Sanders behind the trapset, and second as part of a quintet. However ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Abbey Road Quartet; Spiritual Dimensions & Spirit Catcher
by Marc Medwin
Wadada Leo SmithAbbey Road QuartetTreader2009 Wadada Leo SmithSpiritual DimensionsCuneiform2009 Wadada Leo SmithSpirit CatcherNessa2009 There are few players that continue to be as adventurous in maturity as they were in youth. Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith's work is as uncategorizable as his sound is unique. This trio of ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: A Vital Life Force
by Lyn Horton
“To teach and create and not expect or demand anything in return."--Wadada Leo Smith, quoted in an article printed in The Houston Chronicle, November 4, 2006
On the nine-by-eleven inch cover of the February, 2010, issue of Wire magazine is a full-page photo of trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. Only the upper half of his body is pictured. He is wearing a dark blue, nearly black, Mandarin collar jacket, which stands out against the dimly lit, grey stucco wall that acts ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Spirit Catcher
by Clifford Allen
Wadada Leo Smith Spirit Catcher Nessa Records 2009
Certainly, composition in jazz has gone well beyond head arrangements that bracket solos and group playing--sometimes approaching areas that sound so open as to seem free-form. Multi-instrumentalist, trumpeter and composer Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith is one of a number of figures in this music whose work has long sought to explore and expand the blurred lines between composition and improvisation; one of the structural/notational ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions
by Nic Jones
Wadada Leo SmithSpiritual DimensionsCuneiform2009 Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith's journey into music is now so far advanced that every record of his is akin to a report from a new place, a musical equivalent of a space probe sending information back from the surface of an alien planet. The other worldly implications of this are well defined over the course of this two disc set in which Smith features in two different group ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions
by Raul d'Gama Rose
Every note trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith blows on his exquisite brass instrument brings a whole world of joy. The sound of the Earth and the Heavens in every echo and ululation of the notes that flow out of his trumpet, dancing the interminable dance of lovers in unison, like sunrise and sunset, day and night. Each is an element of a cosmic double-helix intertwined and waltzing sensuously around each other. Oh, the joy of Spiritual Dimensions, in the studio with ...
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