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Wadada Leo Smith / Douglas R. Ewart / Mike Reed & Benoit Delbecq
by Maurice Hogue
The lineup for this edition of OMJ is like a menu in an ice cream shop: so many flavours to choose from. The AACM is alive and well in the excellent new release for Astral Spirits by Wadada Leo Smith, Douglas R. Ewart & Mike Reed, power guitar from Slovenia's Samo Salamon with a French quartet, prepared piano from Benoit Delbecq, Jorma Tapio and Rolling Thunder from Finland, and the Zoom-session created Some Kind Of Tomorrow by Jane Ira Bloom ...
Continue ReadingDeerhoof and Wadada Leo Smith: To Be Surrounded By Beautiful, Curious, Breathing, Laughing Flesh Is Enough
by Troy Dostert
When it comes to combining the anarchic spirit of punk rock with whip-smart musicianship and a penchant for unbelievably catchy grooves, few bands come close to Deerhoof. Since the 1990s, the group has been cherished by indie rock cognoscenti, and they've also earned the respect of a large swath of the non-rock community as well, working with an astonishing range of artists, from Questlove to Matana Roberts to Anthony Braxton. And on their latest release, it's Wadada Leo Smith who ...
Continue ReadingLeo Smith and New Dalta Ahkri
by Daniel Barbiero
Coming to New England: Emerson, Ives and Brown When trumpeter/composer Leo Smith returned to the United States after having spent 1969-1970 in Europe, he settled not in New York, as most jazz musicians might be expected to do, or even in Chicago, where he'd spent a fruitful several years in the 1960s. Instead, he chose to settle in New Haven, Connecticut.New Haven at the time was, as it largely still is, an economically straitened, post-industrial college town—on the ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs
by Giuseppe Segala
Un lavoro ambizioso, profondo e impegnativo, questo Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs di Wadada Leo Smith, dove il musicista affronta nuovamente con passione un capitolo della vicenda nero-americana per la dignità e i Diritti Civili negli Stati Uniti. Ricordiamo lo splendido lavoro, riunito in un cofanetto di quattro CD pubblicato nel 2012 dalla Cuneiform Records con il titolo Ten Freedom Summers, dove Wadada leggeva da un'angolazione artistica differente la stessa tematica. Già in ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith / Sabu Toyozumi: Burning Meditation
by John Sharpe
The Japanese concept of ma—a celebration of the space between things—is one to which trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith can readily subscribe. Space and silence are as important as sound in his conception. The weight given to the pauses between phrases stands out on this live recording from 1994 with Japanese drummer Sabu Toyozumi, which forms another winning installment in the Chap Chap series of archival recordings from Japan which see the light of day thanks to licensing to the Lithuanian ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Rosa Parks: Pure Love
by Jerome Wilson
Wadada Leo Smith has been on a roll in the 2010s, recording and composing in several formats, including ambitious, long-form works such as the Pulitzer-nominated Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform, 2012,) which dealt mostly with the history of race relations in America. His latest work concentrates on one specific figure mentioned in that suite, Rosa Parks, the woman whose defiance of racial segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama triggered a bus boycott that helped spark the civil rights movement from the mid ...
Continue ReadingWadada Leo Smith: Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs
by John Sharpe
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith's prolonged late career flowering shows no sign of abating with the creation of yet another epic work, following on the heels of his monumental Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform, 2012), Great Lakes Suite (TUM, 2014) and America's National Parks (Cuneiform, 2016). For his inspiration he takes the story of Rosa Parks, one of the heroines of the US Civil Rights Movement, famed for her role in the pioneering 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and draws on it as ...
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