Home » Jazz Articles » Wadada Leo Smith
Jazz Articles about Wadada Leo Smith
Wadada 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 ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions
by Jakob Baekgaard
For a long time, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith has pushed the boundaries of experimental jazz. The records he made during the seventies for his own Kabell label have become a richly treasured legacy of the avant-garde. Spiritual Dimensions, a two-CD set dedicated to his working bands, The Golden Quintet and Wadada Leo Smith's Organic, finds him exploring two different pathways: meditative free music and electrifying experimental funk. What the two approaches share is a deeply spiritual bent, and the fact ...
Continue ReadingLeo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions
by AAJ Italy Staff
Bene ha fatto Leo Smith a intitolare questo poderoso compendio del suo lavoro più recente Spiritual Dimensions, perché pochi improvvisatori sulla scena possono oggi vantare la forza e la profondità spirituali che lo caratterizzano. Spiritual Dimensions esemplifica, in due diverse sedute di registrazione, le apparentemente diverse strade che oggi percorre il trombettista: da un lato il Golden Quintet, squisitamente acustico, dall'altro il gruppo Organic (alla sua prima incisione), che esplora e rilegge, con risultati di straordinario impatto, la scura opera ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions
by Dan McClenaghan
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith blows in two different directions on this two-CD set, Spiritual Dimensions. The recording is comprised of two live sets, one by Wadada Leo Smith's ongoing Golden Quintet, the second by his new Wadada Leo Smith's Organic. The Golden Quartet, recently expanded to quintet, changes players with time. The line-up that recorded The Year of the Elephant (Pi Recordings, 2002) included drummer Jack DeJohnette, pianist Anthony Davis and bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut. Two of the ...
Continue Reading
