#Wadada Leo smith

[garadinervi]

Wadada Leo Smith, Koral Reef, [from Kosmic Music], n.d. [Kadist, Paris and San Francisco, CA. © Wadada Leo Smith]

[dustedmagazine]

Sylvie Courvoisier — Chimaera (Intakt)

Duration can be a double-edged sword. When it’s handled wrong, longer-form music can just feel long. And in an age when a preponderance of music is served up in three or four minute-long bites, a tune doesn’t need to be too long to feel like a bit of a chew. But duration can justify itself by allowing a listener to untether the listening experience from recognizing structural elements and marking their repetitions. That’s certainly the case with the music on Chimaera, the debut album by a combo led by Sylvie Courvoisier that bears the same name. 

Chimaera is an outgrowth of Courvoisier’s trio with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wolleson. To their number she added Nate Wooley, who brings a deep bag of extended trumpet techniques and an even deeper interrogative spirit, and Christian Fennesz, whose application of electronics can transform the sound of his guitar beyond recognition. And for this session, she added another trumpeter, Wadada Leo Smith.

One might expect a band named after a fire-breathing, two-headed beast to singe some ear hairs, but that’s not really the case. It’s more likely that the Swiss-born pianist and composer, who has been based in Brooklyn since the late 1990s, chose it for its mythological dimension. The album’s compositions were inspired by the paintings of Odilon Redon, a direct predecessor of surrealism. Their length permits the listener to be simply be present as the music manifests in diaphanous layers of color and forms that are perceptible, but not always recognizable. Gress begins “Le Pavot Rouge,” the album’s opening track, with a questioning, bluesy figure introduction. In short order, he parts a veil of shimmering piano and vibraphone (Wollesen plays vibraphone as drum kit much of the time, which substantially shifts the weight and character of sound away from piano trio conventions), and then takes up a spare, abstracted tango rhythm. Over the next 20 minutes, musicians enter and exit the action. One trumpet takes up the querying vibe, and the other resolves it. The guitar floats dubby echoes over the pulse. Courvoisier darts out of the vibes at double speed, or complicates some brass harmonies with spare dissonant notes.

In other settings, such as her duo with Mary Halvorson, Courvoisier favors abruptness and density. Chimaera’s music is no less eventful. But it drifts instead of bursting, inviting the listener to surrender to a sequence of dissolutions, reconstitutions, and surprising elaborations across six compositions and 87 minutes of dream-like music.

Bill Meyer

[joshhaden]

My father played bass on the track "Spirituals: The Language Of Love" from trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith's LP Divine Love (1979, ECM).

[burlveneer-music]

Wadada Leo Smith and Orange Wave Electric - what a lineup!

Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith with Orange Wave Electric, an all-star electric band including guitarists Nels Cline, Brandon Ross and Lamar Smith; bassists Bill Laswell and Melvin Gibbs; electronic musician Hardedge; percussionist Mauro Refosco; and drummer Pheeroan akLaff. Throughout 2022, Wadada Leo Smith celebrated his 80th birthday with one of the most prolific and creative year’s worth of releases in his – and perhaps anybody’s – history to date. Lest anyone should imagine that this breathtaking run was in any way valedictory, the now 81-year-old Smith returns with his first of several planned releases for 2023. The exhilarating Fire Illuminations, due out March 31, 2023 on Smith’s own Kabell Records label, features his newly assembled ensemble Orange Wave Electric.

Ever innovative in his quest for new methods of composing, guiding, and creating improvised music, Smith crafted the five expansive compositions on Fire Illuminations in the studio from a series of recording dates conducted and edited over the course of nearly four years. He cites such precedents as the groundbreaking work of Jamaican reggae and dub innovator Lee “Scratch” Perry and Miles Davis classics like Bitches Brew and On the Corner. Album Cover Image by Einar Falur Ingólfsson

[musicollage]

Vijay Iyer + Wadada Leo Smith – A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke.   2016 : ECM.

! acquire the album ★ attach a coffee !

[aquariumdrunkard]

[sivavakkiyar]

this album is one of my favorite jazz albums released in my lifetime, it’s very beautiful and powerful, lotta range

[soundgrammar]

Listen/purchase: Le pavot rouge by SYLVIE COURVOISIER feat. Wadada Leo Smith, Christian Fennesz, D. Gress, N. Wooley, K. Wollesen

[mrdirtybear]

Wadada Leo Smith (born 1941) is an American ‘free jazz’ composer and musician. His discography started in 1972 and only took a break for Covid, which Smith could surely afford with surely over fifty albums by the artist available across different platforms. He has been equally prolific in his contributions to other artists work as a guest on their albums too.   

[eraseer]

wadada leo smith "notes (8 pieces) source a new world music: creative music"

[donospl]

Co w jazzie piszczy [sezon 2 odcinek 19]

premierowa emisja 29 maja 2024 – 18:00 Graliśmy: Luke Stewart Silt Trio “The Slip” z albumu “Unknown Rivers”  – Pi Recordings Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers  “The Harlem Meer” z albumu “Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens”  – Red Hook Records Wadada Leo Smith & Joe Morris “March Opus M. Rainey” z albumu “Earth’s Frequencies” – Fundacja Słuchaj Alexander…

[garadinervi]

Wadada Leo Smith, Jaya, 2010 [«Bomb» Magazine. Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, IL. © Wadada Leo Smith]

[dustedmagazine]

Christian Carey’s 22 Recordings from 2022 in no particular order

Oneida

Like 2021, 2022 was a year that was full of extraordinary recordings. In part, it is Bandcamp that has given a new lease on life to independent records, somewhat obviating the hegemony of paltry stream income. Touring, on the other hand, is costing far too much, resulting in a group as big as Animal Collective canceling a tour, pleading finances. When major labels are starting to ask for a percentage of the gate, one can see the numbers crunching into nonviability. In the meantime, instead of masking and risking shows, I enjoyed the following 22 recordings (and many more). 

Oneida — Success (Joyful Noise)

Heiner Goebbels and Ensemble Modern  — House of Call (ECM)

Wadada Leo Smith — String Quartets 1-12 (TUM)

Carla dal Forno — Come Around (Kallista)

Nina Berman and Steve Beck — Milton Babbitt:Complete Songs for Treble Voice (New Focus)

Hugi Guðmundsson — Windbells (Sono Luminus)

Christopher Fox — Trostlieder (Kairos)

Barre Phillips and ​​György Kurtág Jr. — Face á Face (ECM)

Whit Dickey Quartet — Root Perspectives (TUM)

Matthew Shipp Trio — World Construct (ESP Disk)

Kirk Knuffke Trio — Gravity Without Airs (TAO Forms)

Richard Causton — La Terra Impareggiabile (NMC)

Pedro de Cristo; Magnificat — Cupertinos (Hyperion)

Andrew Mcintosh, Yarn/Wire — Little Jimmy (Kairos)

Sophia Subbayya Vastek — In Our Softening (Self-released)

Tyondai Braxton — Telekinesis (Nonesuch/New Amsterdam)

Julia Hülsmann Quartet — The Next Door (ECM)

James Romig — The Complexity of Distance (New World Records)

Gity Razaz — The Strange Highway (BIS)

Bryn Harrison, Quatuor Bozzini — Three Descriptions of Place and Movement (Huddersfield Contemporary Records)

Jenny Hval -Classic Objects (4AD)

Steven Schick — A Hard Rain (Islandia Music Records)

Christian Carey

[diyeipetea]

Satoko Fujii: Hyaku One Hundred Dreams (Libra Records, 2022) Por Pachi Tapiz [Grabación de jazz]

Satoko Fujii: Hyaku One Hundred Dreams (Libra Records, 2022) Por Pachi Tapiz [Grabación de jazz]

Satoko Fujii: Hyaku One Hundred Dreams (Libra Records, 2022) Las celebraciones de la pianista Satoko Fujii siempre han sido memorables. El año en que cumplió 50 años, lo celebró publicando media docena de grabaciones. Al llegar a los 60 fueron doce: cada uno de los meses de ese año publicó un nuevo disco. En 2022 publica su grabación número 100 (hyaku en japonés), y con tal motivo publica Hyaku…

[jpbjazz]

Wadada Leo Smith

[kosmik-signals]

Wadsworth Jarrell of AfriCOBRA took this photo for the AACM in his backyard, probably in 1968. Left to right, on the ground: Wadada Leo Smith, Sarnie Garrett, Wadsworth Jarrell Jr., Muhal Richard Abrams, Wallace McMillan, Douglas Ewart, John Stubblefield, Steve McCall, and Henry Threadgill. On the stairs: Buford Kirkwood, John Shenoy Jackson, Lester Lashley, and Martin "Sparx" Alexander. Credit: Courtesy of George Lewis

(via Why the AACM and AfriCOBRA still matter - Chicago Reader)