Jazz Articles about Wadada Leo Smith

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Wadada Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions

by Nic Jones
February 5, 2010

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 ...

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Wadada Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions

by Raul d'Gama Rose
January 22, 2010

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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Wadada Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 18, 2010

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 ...

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Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions

by AAJ Italy Staff
December 14, 2009

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 ...

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Wadada Leo Smith: Spiritual Dimensions

by Dan McClenaghan
November 30, 2009

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 ...

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Wadada Leo Smith

by Marc Medwin
May 24, 2009

“Since 2007, I see America changing, becoming not a divided multi-cultural society, but a pluralistic cultural society where everybody has a chance. Creative music announced the change in the '60s, but the music had been democratic since New Orleans, with its collective improvisation., where the collective had value and every individual had equal value. This is a unique moment in this country's history, so now I call the music I make American music." It is a momentary shock ...

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Wadada Leo Smith / Jack DeJohnette: America

by Troy Collins
May 10, 2009

Originally proposed to ECM Records in 1979, the collaboration of trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and drummer Jack DeJohnette has finally found new life in America. Recorded last year in Bill Laswell's New Jersey studio (but without his heavy-handed production aesthetic), this unadorned acoustic session documents two of the world's most versatile and virtuosic improvisers working through a set of six new compositions written by Smith.

Legendary veterans whose seminal innovations can be traced to the late '60s, Smith ...