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Wadada Leo Smith: 80 Years Strong
by Doug Collette
The celebration of trumpeter/composer Wadada Leo Smith's 80th birthday milestone year culminates with yet another four-CD box set plus a proportionately sumptuous single-disc package. Both sets include extensively-annotated booklets with background on the graphics of the package as well as the music itself, with a thorough attention to detail reflective of the Mississippi native's boundless drive to stretch his own limits and those of his collaborators. As with the three-CD sets issued that precede these titles—Trumpet (Tum Records, 2021) and ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday
by Mark Corroto
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith creates a new trio with Vijay Iyer and drummer Jack DeJohnette. While the pianist and drummer have never recorded together, like a Venn diagram, their orbits were destined to overlap. Both musicians have recorded duets with Smith and both were members of Smith's Golden Quartet, just not at the same time. This recording from 2016, by three master artists, was fated to occur. With each new release from Smith, we appoint it as his ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith, Vijay Iyer & Jack DeJohnette: A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday
by Dan McClenaghan
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith reconvenes his Golden Quartet (sort of) for A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday. It began back in 2000 with the group's eponymous Tzadik Records release, featuring pianist Anthony Davis, Malachi Favors Maghostut on bass and drummer Jack DeJohnette. More albums came about—The Year of the Elephant (Pi Recordings, 2002), Tabligh (Cuniform Records, 2008) and more. The cast of characters shuffled, and some of Smith's most beautiful and approachable music was made. This time around, ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith's Great Lakes Quartet: The Chicago Symphonies
by Karl Ackermann
The prolific virtuoso Wadada Leo Smith gave us two TUM Records box sets in the first half of 2021 and will end the year with two more, including the very ambitious The Chicago Symphonies. The four-disc collection features the trumpeter/composer's Great Lakes Quartet with saxophonist/flutist Henry Threadgill, bassist John Lindberg and drummer Jack DeJohnette. The final disc trades Threadgill for saxophonist Jonathon Haffner. Smith, who composed each of the movements, took his inspiration from Don Cherry 's Symphony ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Aesthetic Apex
by Doug Collette
It would be difficult to find a musician more loyal to his muse than Wadada Leo Smith. From projects with his Golden Quartet/Quintet such as America's National Parks (TUM Records, 2016) to the more expansive ensemble effort Najwa (TUM Records, 2017), then on to the stringent focus of Solo: Reflections and Meditations on Monk (TUM Records, 2017), it might be fair to say this eighty-year old trumpeter/bandleader/composer never found a challenge he did not relish confronting. And, most fortunately these ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith, The Red Microphone & Clean Feed Releases
by Maurice Hogue
Trumpet master and composer Wadada Leo Smith continues to produce astonishing original music. Zeroing in on the age of 80 seems to have no impact. There are two new releases from the Finnish Tum label to show Smith's creativity: Sacred Ceremonies with Bill Laswell and Milford Graves and the other a solo set. Some of Clean Feed Records' latest batch of new releases are sampled--the interesting Red Microphone from New York drops only its second album, And I Become Of ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Trumpet
by Karl Ackermann
In a half-century of recording, he has never stopped exploring the parameters of the form and instrument. Listening to composer/trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith is demanding but rewarding. His inspirations are classical in the small 'c' sense: the AACM, Persian music, August Wilson, Stravinsky, spirituals, and so on. Before the masses woke, Smith's music had incorporated political, cultural, spiritual, and environmental awareness. The elder statesman of new music continues his prolific output with TUM Records box sets for the first half ...
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