{"id":9004,"date":"2018-01-19T21:37:38","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T05:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=9004"},"modified":"2018-01-19T21:37:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T05:37:38","slug":"recent-listening-in-brief-two-from-wadada-leo-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2018\/01\/recent-listening-in-brief-two-from-wadada-leo-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Listening In Brief: Two From Wadada Leo Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

The music of trumpeter, composer and resolute individualist Wadada Leo Smith is absorbing. It often has a demanding density even when he is the only player\u00e2\u20ac\u201das he is in one of these albums. It can bring rewards to the listener who accepts Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s free jazz heritage and listens to him with open ears and open mind. As in his recent tribute to America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s national parks<\/a>, his paean to Miles Davis<\/a>, duets with pianist Vijay Iyer<\/a> and a succession of other albums over the years, Smith has a vision that embraces Lennie Tristano, Ornette Coleman, Chicago\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s AACM movement and John Coltrane, among other artists who as early as the late 1950s began liberating their work from standard jazz approaches.<\/p>\n

\"\"In Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s album of music by and about Thelonious Monk he is alone with his trumpet. That creates a conceptual challenge for the player of an instrument incapable of harmonic accompaniment. He compensates by employing passing tones to fill in or imply harmonies. The canny Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s familiarity with chord substitutions and his formidable trumpet technique make for thrills and occasional amusement, as when he leaps high above the staff to nail precisely the only note that would work at a certain point in his variations on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ruby, My Dear.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As in most of his albums, Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nicely crafted liner essay answers questions about his titles. He explains that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Monk And His Five Point Ring At The Five Spot Caf\u00c3\u00a9,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for instance, was inspired by a clip from a documentary about Monk. The occasion that titled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Monk and Bud Powell at Shea Stadium\u00e2\u20ac\u009d may never have happened in real life, but in a dream that Smith remembers. Nothing in his playing directly evokes either pianist. Some titles need no explanation; it tends to be general knowledge among Monk followers that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Crepuscle With Nellie\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was for his wife. Smith gives the melody a loving late-evening interpretation ending on a lingering high B-flat. When Smith uses his Harmon mute, as he does on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Adagio: Monk, the Composer in Sepia,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d his inner Miles Davis emerges. The influence is pronounced. Earlier in the album, essentially the same piece with an altered title is without the mute. Smith also caresses \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Round Midnight\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on open horn, playing it slowly. The mood is not unlike those that Davis often created on ballads. When Smith plays the occasional note with cracked edges, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s natural to wonder who he was thinking of.<\/p>\n

There is little question about that in Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Najwa<\/em>. The album features the electric bass\"\" and production skills of Bill Laswell, a veteran of the Downtown movement in New York City in the 1970s. Like Smith, Laswell is partial to the electronic Miles Davis. Their fondness for that idiom helps determine Najwa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/em> atmosphere. Smith has a long history with three of the guitarists here, Michael Gregory Jackson, Brandon Ross and Henry Kaiser. He has a newer, family, relationship with the fourth guitarist, Lamar Smith, his grandson, who has performed with him since 2009, been a member of Wadada Leo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Organic Ensemble and Silver Orchestra and was on the Yo Miles!<\/em> album. From the first track, evocative of Ornette Coleman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s harmolodics, much of the album\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s power rides on Laswell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bass lines, often in harness with the drumming of Pheeroan akLaff, a Detroit native with a forty-year history in the free jazz sphere. In its titles as well as its music, Najwa<\/em> constitutes tributes to Coleman, John Coltrane, the late drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and Billie Holiday. The ten-minute Holiday track is entitled, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Empress, Lady Day: In a Rainbow Garden, with Yellow-Gold Hot Springs, Surrounded by Exotic Plants and Flowers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The other titles, in Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poetic way with words, are nearly as long. Throughout, Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s playing is infectious even in his muted work in the slow title tune. By far the shortest piece in the album, its mystery and languor and the melancholy of Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s muted solo keep me going back to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The music of trumpeter, composer and resolute individualist Wadada Leo Smith is absorbing. It often has a demanding density even when he is the only player\u00e2\u20ac\u201das he is in one of these albums. It can bring rewards to the listener who accepts Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s free jazz heritage and listens to him with open ears and open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}