Jazz Articles about Wadada Leo Smith

like

Wadada Leo Smith - Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer

by AAJ Italy Staff
February 21, 2011

C'è voluto un quarto di secolo perchè questo meraviglioso lavoro venisse pubblicato, ma mai come in questo caso l'attesa è stata premiata dalla combinazione tra un esito artistico di grande emozione e una collocazione storico/cronologica ancora più definita. È un incontro magico quello fra la tromba di Wadada Leo Smith e la batteria di Ed Blackwell [complice la Radio della Brandeis University di Boston, eravamo nel 1986], un incontro fatto di spazi e di ritmi, di respiri e di tradizioni, ...

like 320

Wadada Leo Smith / Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer

by Clifford Allen
December 22, 2010

Since the Ornette Coleman Quartet's The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic, 1959), the trumpet's historical bar in creative music has been set in great part by Don Cherry. Not that Cherry's way was the only way and, in fact, the work of Bill Dixon, Donald Ayler, Lester Bowie, and a few others certainly paved significant directions for the instrument's place and growth in the ensuing decades. But Cherry, even as his language was a condensed, rambunctious and decidedly expansive ...

like 312

Wadada Leo Smith / Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer

by Dan McClenaghan
December 12, 2010

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, ...

like 377

Wadada Leo Smith at Cafe Oto in London

by John Sharpe
September 28, 2010

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 ...

like 295

Wadada Leo Smith: Abbey Road Quartet; Spiritual Dimensions & Spirit Catcher

by Marc Medwin
June 12, 2010

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 ...

like 1,442

Wadada Leo Smith: A Vital Life Force

by Lyn Horton
May 12, 2010

“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 ...

like 324

Wadada Leo Smith: Spirit Catcher

by Clifford Allen
May 12, 2010

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 ...