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Wadada 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 ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith, Bill Laswell, and Milford Graves: Sacred Ceremonies & Trumpet
by Mike Jurkovic
The 1960's and '70s held such promise, but many artists settle for what is handed down. Two new box sets featuring Wadada Leo Smith with Bill Laswell and Milford Graves show three visionaries willing to build on those promises without compromise. Wadada Leo Smith with MIlford Graves and Bill Laswell Sacred Ceremonies TUM Records 2021 Recorded in three days during three separate sessions at Laswell's West Orange, New Jersey studio in the foreboding ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith with Milford Graves and Bill Laswell: Sacred Ceremonies
by Karl Ackermann
As he approached his eightieth birthday, Wadada Leo Smith could have been content to sit out the year of nothingness that Covid-19 brought in 2020 and beyond. With his 2013 Pulitzer Prize nomination, a 2016 Doris Duke Award, and nearly one-hundred recording credits, the trumpeter & multi-instrumentalist has landed at the top of countless polls throughout his distinguished career. But, stepping away from the music, if only for a brief respite, is not part of the improviser's plan so, in ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith / Douglas Ewart / Mike Reed: Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light
by John Sharpe
Three significant forces spanning two generations of the forward-thinking Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians meet in a poised recital on Sun Beans Of Shimmering Light. Although recorded in 2015 at drummer Mike Reed's Constellation arts space in Chicago, the concert's genesis lies some five years earlier and 700 miles to the east. When Reed's band People, Places & Things played the 2010 Vision Festival in NYC on the same evening as Wadada Leo Smith, the ...
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