Category: Wadada Leo Smith

Wadada Leo Smith & Vijay Iyer :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

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Composers Wadada Leo Smith and Vijay Iyer are inveterate collaborators. Compile their past work together and you’re staring down a list that includes Bill Frisell, Jack DeJohnette, Pauline Oliveros, DJ Spooky, John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, and more. But something singular and deeply special happens when they work one on one, as they do on the recently released Defiant Life. “We just create,” Smith says. “You could call it ‘composition’ or ‘spontaneous composition’ or ‘spontaneous improvisation’ or some kind of stuff like that. But the truth is, all the serious documents about humans on this planet refer to creation.”

Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers :: Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens

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Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens, the first recorded collaboration between long-time AACM musicians Wadada Leo Smith and Amina Claudine Myers, produces imaginary soundscapes to the concrete landscapes of Manhattan’s largest open area. This delicate psycho-cartography, a miniature model of what is already supposed to be a microcosm of nature itself, is weaved through the slow erosion of the geology of the piano by the crying winds of the trumpet.

Wadada Leo Smith :: Fire Illuminations

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Late last year Wadada Leo Smith turned 81. The trumpeter and composer has been making records since the late 1960s when he was part of Chicago’s AACM, and he’s recorded for everyone from ECM to Tzadik, doing everything from solo trumpet records to string quartets. But as he gets to an age when most slow down, Smith’s been even more prolific than ever. Last year saw seven discs of string quartets, plus another five of duos between him and musicians like Jack DeJohnette and Andrew Cyrille. And now there’s another set: Fire Illuminations, a digital only release coming out via Smith’s own Kabell Records on March 31.