The OGJB Quartet – Ode to O (January 21, 2022 TUM Records)

Ode To O is the second release by the OGJB Quartet that features four leaders in their own right, saxophonist Oliver Lake, cornetist Graham Haynes, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Barry Altschul. As with their first release, Bamako, each member has contributed compositions to the new recording which also features two collective improvisations.

Ever since its first performance at the Winter Jazz Festival in 2016, the OGJB Quartet has been highly acclaimed as one of the most creative collaborative groups working today. Two of its members, Lake and Altschul, are pioneers of modern improvised music going back to its origins in the 1960s, while each of the other two, Haynes and Fonda, have been a strong presence on the improvised music scene since the late 1970s.

The group’s name, an acronym of each musician’s first name, reflects its status as a true collaborative unit. Each member of the OGJB Quartet is also a composer in his own right and a master on his chosen instrument. Accordingly, their second recording together, which follows the highly acclaimed Bamako released in 2019, again features original compositions by all four of its members and two collective improvisations.

The album is named after Barry Altschul’s composition dedicated to the late Ornette Coleman. According to Altschul, “Ode to O” is a melody that came to him in a dream after hearing of the passing of Ornette Coleman in 2015. The recording also features “Da Bang,” a composition originally dedicated by Altschul to the violin great Billy Bang and designed to stimulate improvising.

Whereas Bamako was fully acoustic, Ode To O introduces a new element with Graham Haynes incorporating the use of live electronics on one of his two compositions on the new recording, “The Other Side,” and on one of the collective improvisations, “OGJB #4.” “Graham’s use of electronics took the quartet into a totally new zone,” says Fonda. “It opened up the music to new and fresh possibilities.”

Oliver Lake contributed two compositions, “Justice” and “Bass Bottom.” “Each of them is unique and quite different from the other,” says Fonda. “Whenever anyone gets the opportunity to play Oliver’s music, they are transported into the Lake universe of sound. That is where the OGJB Quartet again went when we recorded his two pieces.”

“This second recording by the OGJB Quartet draws from a wide range of musical influences that exist inside the quartet,” say Fonda. “On this recording, we pulled out all the stops.”

“Ode To O represents the huge data set that is the collective experiences of Oliver Lake, Graham Haynes, Joe Fonda and Barry Altschul, representing a wide swath of what remains vital in jazz,” says Bill Shoemaker in his liner notes. “Each performance spools out like a quintuple helix, each strand containing the humanity of music that cries, hollers and sings.”

TUM Records is a Finnish record label that began operations in May 2003. TUM produces high-quality music recordings and selectively organizes concerts and events, such as the TUMfest in Helsinki. The focus of TUM is on improvised, jazz-based music, placing particular emphasis on free expression and the performing artists’ own music. In addition to providing younger musicians with exposure and a musical platform, TUM promotes more experienced musicians whose work is not favored by the commercial trends of our time. TUM covers feature works by leading Finnish artists.         

Oliver Lake (b. 1942) is an accomplished saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet and visual artist. Lake was born in Marianna, Arkansas, but grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He began drawing at the age of 13 and started playing the drums soon after, but only picked up the saxophone in high school at the age of 18. In his hometown of St. Louis, Lake first worked in R&B and soul bands with the likes of trumpeter Lester Bowie, then formed, in 1967, his first group as a leader, the Oliver Lake Art Quartet. During the 1960s, Lake was also one of the founders of the Black Artists Group (BAG) in St. Louis. After living briefly in Paris in the early 1970s, Lake settled in New York City and has led his own groups ever since. In 1977, he co-founded the World Saxophone Quartet with David Murray, Julius Hemphill and Hamiet Bluiett. It quickly became one of the most highly acclaimed groups in modern creative music and held that position for three decades, recording a total of 20 albums He is also a co-founder, with bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille, of Trio 3, a cooperative group that has over time become one of the main performing vehicles for all three of its members, recording more than 10 albums with several of the later ones also featuring a visiting pianist. Lake is known as a broadminded musician who is comfortable moving across musical genres. In the early 1980s, he led the reggae-influenced Jump Up, a group that attained considerable popular success with its two albums. Currently, Lake continues to lead his own groups, including the Oliver Lake Organ Quartet, as well as perform with Trio 3 and the OGJB Quartet, among others.   

Graham Haynes (b. 1960) grew up in Queens, New York. He first became known as an experimental musician and composer looking for new directions in nu jazz, fusing jazz with elements of hip-hop and electronic music. With aspirations to push jazz beyond its traditional boundaries, Graham Haynes’ first foray into electronic music came in 1979 upon meeting alto saxophonist Steve Coleman. Together, they formed a band called Five Elements, which launched an influential group of improvisers called M-Base Collective in the 1980s. Soon, Haynes was also leading and recording with his own groups. Haynes has studied a wide range of African, Arabic and South Asian music and, after a move to Paris in 1990, incorporated these far-flung influences into his next releases. Haynes returned to New York City in 1993 to take advantage of the flourishing hip-hop scene and, a bit later, the emerging drum ‘n’ bass. Since 2013, Haynes has been a member of the Vijay Iyer Sextet and was featured on its debut recording in 2017. Haynes also performed over a period of several years with the late American cornetist, composer and conductor Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris (1947- 2013), originator of the Conduction method, and has begun working with various ensembles utilizing Conduction. Haynes has also composed works for classical ensembles and has worked on several critically acclaimed multimedia projects and composed music for films. 

OGJB / photos by ©Enid Farber

Joe Fonda (b. 1954) was born in Amsterdam, upstate New York, and played guitar and bass guitar in his youth. At Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts (1973-75), he studied composition and arranging while also focusing on the double bass as his main instrument. After Berklee, he settled in New Haven playing and recording with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, among others. Soon after moving to New York City in the early 1980s, Fonda participated in the collaborative group Mosaic Sextet that both increased his prominence on the New York scene and served as a basis for some key relationships that continue today. In 1992, Fonda and Michael Jefry Stevens co-founded the Fonda/Stevens Group that became the longest lasting and perhaps the hardest working of all the collaborative groups in which Fonda has participated. Between 1993 and 2003, Fonda became particularly well known for his collaboration with Anthony Braxton and was Braxton’s bassist of choice during that period. In 1996, Braxton appeared on Fonda’s From The Source recording that served as a blueprint for the group From The Source, which Fonda continued to lead. Since that time, Fonda has toured and recorded with the FAB Trio, the 3dom Factor, The NU Band, Bottoms Out, Conference Call, Off Road Quartet, Trio Generations, Eastern Boundary Quartet, Dreamstruck and The J. & F. Band, among many others.  

Barry Altschul (b. 1943), was born and raised in New York City. He began playing the drums at the age of 11 after having earlier played the piano and the clarinet. In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Altschul was involved in the local hard bop scene playing in jam sessions in the Bronx and in other New York City boroughs with his contemporaries. However, his first “proper” gig was with the Paul Bley Trio in 1964 resulting in Altschul working regularly with pianist Paul Bley for the remainder of the 1960s and sporadically during the next three decades. Altschul’s work with Paul Bley drew the attention of others active on New York’s free jazz scene of the 1960s and resulted in tours and/or recording sessions with many of the genre’s notables, while his familiarity with the tradition also led to performances with many mainstream musicians. Soon, Altschul was performing and recording with some of the most influential groups of the period, including those led by pianist Chick Corea and saxophonists Anthony Braxton, and Sam Rivers in the 1960s and the 1970s. Altschul has also led several groups of his own, particularly in the 1970s and the 1980s, recording some of the finest “freebop” albums of the period. After living in Europe for a decade and then focusing mostly on teaching following his return to New York City in 1993, Altschul returned to active playing in the new millennium establishing the FAB Trio (History Of Jazz in Reverse, TUM CD 028) with violinist Billy Bang and Joe Fonda in 2003. Since 2013, Altschul has led the 3dom Factor with saxophonist Jon Irabagon and Joe Fonda (The 3dom Factor, TUM CD 032, and Tales of the Unforeseen, TUM CD 044).  

01 Ode to O (Barry Altschul) 06:52

02 Justice (Oliver Lake) 05:22

03 Me without Bela (Joe Fonda) 12:24

04 Da Bang (Barry Altschul) 09:06

05 The Other Side (Graham Hyanes) 06:55

06 Caring (Barry Altschul) 04:56

07 OGJB #3 (Lake, Haynes, Fonda & Altschul) 03:53

08 Bass Bottom (Oliver Lake) 02:37

09 OGJB #4 (Lake, Haynes, Fonda & Altschul) 05:10

10 Apaixonado (Graham Hyanes) 05:10

Oliver Lake alto saxophone

Graham Hyanes cornet, electronics

Joe Fonda double bass

Barry Altschul drums, percussion

TUM Records

Andrew Cyrille / William Parker / Enrico Rava - 2 Blues for Cecil (January 21, 2022 TUM Records)

2 Blues For Cecil brings together three legends of modern improvised music, drummer Andrew Cyrille, bassist William Parker and flugelhornist Enrico Rava, in a tribute to the late, great pianist and bandleader Cecil Taylor (1929-2018). Although the three played together for the first time as members of this trio, they share a common bond through their separate time spent performing and recording with Taylor.

Enrico Rava and Andrew Cyrille are among the elders of improvised music with their careers going back to the 1960s. William Parker rose to prominence during New York’s loft jazz era of the 1970s. The three musicians share one major link in their respective careers. Namely, they all have at different times been members of Cecil Taylor Unit or other ensembles of the legendary late pianist and bandleader Cecil Taylor.

Rava, Parker and Cyrille first performed together as a trio in a tribute to Cecil Taylor, with Taylor himself present, at the Whitney Museum in April 2016 as part of an exhibit/program under the heading “Open Plan: Cecil Taylor.” 2 Blues For Cecil was recorded on February 1 and 2 at Studio Ferber in Paris following the trio’s concert on December 31, 2020 under the heading “Tribute to Cecil Taylor” as part of the Sons d’hiver festival in Paris.

While 2 Blues For Cecil features compositions by all three of its members and even a standard, the emphasis is on improvisation. Four of the ten tracks are extended collective improvisations, including two versions of “Blues for Cecil.” The trio does not seek to emulate Cecil Taylor’s approach to creating music but rather draws on all the experiences, separate and shared, of its members.

“Cecil was a spokesman for individuality, a musical warrior always operating on a high level,” says Parker. “He was not avant-garde, he was a human being who loves life as music. He would not be boxed in by the music world’s value system that asks artists to conform to their standards.”

Although Andrew Cyrille was already an accomplished young musician at the time, his international breakthrough came with his membership in the Cecil Taylor Unit, which lasted for over a decade (1964-75), during which he established his position as one of the leading drummers in freely improvised music and participated in some of Taylor’s most legendary recordings. More than five decades later, Cyrille is still considered to be one of the most creative and versatile percussionists in modern jazz, equally at home in a modern mainstream setting as with more avant-garde music.

Similarly, William Parker first recorded with Frank Lowe, Billy Bang and many others in the 1970s but became internationally recognized when performing with the Cecil Taylor Unit in 1980-91 and participating in more than ten recordings led by Taylor. Parker is now best known for the many groups he has led or co-led over the past four decades. As well as being an improviser, writer and poet, Parker is a prolific composer and has composed everything from operas, oratorios, ballets and film scores to soliloquies for solo instruments. To date, he has participated in approximately 500 recordings with well over 50 albums under his own leadership.

Enrico Rava began his career in his native Italy in the mid-1960s but his work with saxophonists Gato Barbieri and Steve Lacy led to years spent living in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s and working with many of the musicians then active on the New York improvised music scene. Soon, Rava began recording under his own name. With more than 50 recordings as a leader or coleader, he is one of the most internationally known Italian jazz musicians and one of the best known in all of Europe. Although Rava met Cecil Taylor in the late 1960s in New York City, the two performed together for the first time almost two decades later, first in Taylor’s Orchestra Of Two Continents in 1984 and then in the Cecil Taylor European Orchestra in 1988.

Andrew Cyrille (b. 1939) was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a family with Haitian parents. He was mentored in the art of drumming by the great Philly Joe Jones circa 1958 and began recording and performing with the likes of Walt Dickerson, Coleman Hawkins, Roland Kirk and Mary Lou Williams when barely 20 years of age. However, Cyrille truly made his mark through his membership in the Cecil Taylor Unit, which lasted for over a decade (1964-75), during which time he established his position as one of the leading percussionists in the then emerging freely improvised music. Cyrille soon became one of the most respected drummers in modern jazz through both of his own recordings as a leader and through his collaborations with virtually every important name on the contemporary scene. Since the 1970s, Cyrille has led or co-led a number of ensembles, including Maono, The Group, the percussion quartet Pieces Of Time and Haitian Fascination that pays homage to his Haitian roots. In 1992, Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman and Cyrille founded Trio 3, a cooperative group that has over time become one of the main performing vehicles for all three of its members, recording more than 10 albums with several of the later ones also featuring a visiting pianist. Altogether, Cyrille has released more than 30 recordings as a leader or co-leader and countless others as a sideman. His most recent recordings as a leader are The Declaration Of Musical Independence (with Richard Teitelbaum, guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Ben Street) in 2014, Lebroba (with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and Bill Frisell) in 2017 and The News (with pianist David Virelles, Bill Frisell and Ben Street) in 2019. In 2020, Cyrille received the Doris Duke Artist Award.

Photos ©Luciano_Rossetti

William Parker (b. 1952) is a composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, writer and poet born in the Bronx in New York City. He entered the music scene during New York´s loft jazz era in the early 1970s and quickly became a much sought-after bassist playing primarily with fellow improvisers, such as Billy Bang, Don Cherry, Milford Graves, Khan Jamal, Frank Lowe, Jemeel Moondoc, Charles Tyler and Frank Wright, among many others. Parker became internationally recognized when playing in the Cecil Taylor Unit from 1980 through 1991. Parker´s key collaborators have also included his spouse, dancer Patricia Nicholson, as well as Roy Brown, Peter Brötzmann, Rob Campbell, Cooper-Moore, Hamid Drake, Charles Gayle, Peter Kowald, Joe Morris, Matthew Shipp and David S. Ware. Since the early 1990s, Parker has increasingly led his own ensembles, including In Order To Survive, The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra and the William Parker Quartet. Parker’s special projects have featured the music of Duke Ellington, Curtis Mayfield and Fats Waller, among others, and he has released several solo bass recordings as well as several duo recordings with fellow bass players. To date, Parker has participated in approximately 500 recordings, including well over 50 albums under his own leadership. Parker is a prolific composer and has composed everything from operas, oratorios, ballets and film scores to oliloquies for solo instruments. He is also a theorist and the author of several books as well as volumes of poetry.

Enrico Rava (b. 1939) was born in Trieste, Italy. Rava began playing the trombone in Dixieland bands when he was 15 but switched to the trumpet at 18 after hearing Miles Davis perform in Turin. Soon Rava was participating in local jam sessions and, in 1963, the Argentine saxophonist Gato Barbieri, who was then living in Rome, convinced Rava to join him there. Rava’s first recordings were in the mid-1960s with Gato Barbieri, Giorgio Gaslini and Steve Lacy. After Barbieri moved to Paris, Rava joined Steve Lacy's quartet, which led to extended stays in London, South America and eventually New York City. After moving to New York City in 1967, Rava soon played with many of the local musicians then active on the improvised music scene, such as Carla Bley, Lee Konitz, Jeanne Lee, Paul Motian and Roswell Rudd. Rava traveled back and forth between the United States and Europe and began making records both in New York City and in Europe with increasing frequency.

Rava’s first albums as a leader were with the Enrico Rava Quartet in 1972 and 1973. His first album for ECM Records was The Pilgrim And The Stars in 1975 and thus began a relationship that still continues today and has resulted in a total of 15 albums with the most recent being Edizione Speciale in 2021. Rava has also continued to work with many other European improvisers, including concerts and recordings with a number of large ensembles, such as ICP Orchestra, Globe Unity Orchestra and Italian Instabile Orchestra. Altogether, Rava has participated in more than 200 recordings with more than 50 of those as a leader or co-leader.Although Rava met Cecil Taylor in the late 1960s in New York City, the two did not perform together until almost two decades later. Rava participated in the recording of Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants) in Milan in 1984 by Taylor’s Orchestra Of Two Continents as well as the European tour that followed. In 1988, Rava was a member of Cecil Taylor’s European Orchestra.

01 Improvisation No. 1 (Cyrille, Parker and Rava)

02 Ballerina (Enrico Rava)

03 Blues For Cecil No. 1 (Cyrille, Parker and Rava)

04 Improvisation No.2 (Cyrille, Parker and Rava)

05 Top, Bottom and What’s in the Middle (Andrew Cyrille)

06 Blues For Cecil No. 2 (Cyrille, Parker and Rava)

07 Enrava Melody (Andrew Cyrille)

08 Overboard (Enrico Rava)

09 Machu Picchu (William Parker)

10 My Funny Valentine (Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart)

Enrico Rava flugelhorn

William Parker double bass

Andrew Cyrille drums

TUM Records

TUM RECORDS CONTINUES THE CELEBRATION OF WADADA LEO SMITH'S 80th ANNIVERSARY WITH TWO OUTSTANDING NEW RELEASES: Wadada Leo Smith's Great Lakes Quartet - "THE CHICAGO SYMPHONIES" and Wadada Leo Smith / Jack DeJohnette / Vijay Iyer - "A LOVE SONNET FOR BILLIE HOLIDAY" November 19, 2021 via TUM RECORDS

© Dominik Huber

TUM Records releases two stunning new projects on November 19, 2021 from iconic trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith as he approaches his 80th birthday. They include his Great Lakes Quartet (Smith, Threadgill, Lindberg, DeJohnette) in The Chicago Symphonies (4 CDs), and Smith, Iyer and DeJohnette in A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday.  These are the second batch of TUM releases celebrating Smith’s birthday. All together there are six projects totaling 22 CDs.

Wadada Leo Smith's Great Lakes Quartet - THE CHICAGO SYMPHONIES TUM BOX 004 (4 CDs) November 19, 2021 TUM RECORDS

Wadada Leo Smith, Jack DeJohnette & Vijay Iyer - A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday (November 19, 2021 TUM RECORDS)

TUM RECORDS

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Wadada Leo Smith's Great Lakes Quartet - THE CHICAGO SYMPHONIES TUM BOX 004 (4 CDs) November 19, 2021 TUM RECORDS

The Chicago Symphonies represents another magnificent four-disc collection of extended compositions by composer, musician, artist and educator Wadada Leo Smith leading his Great Lakes Quartet in a celebration of Chicago and the rich contributions of the Midwestern artistic, musical and political culture to the United States of America. The first three symphonies, “Gold,” “Diamond” and “Pearl” are performed by Smith with three other contemporary masters of creative music, saxophonist/flutist Henry Threadgill, bassist John Lindberg and drummer Jack DeJohnette. The fourth, “Sapphire Symphony – The Presidents and Their Vision for America,” features saxophonist Jonathon Haffner with Smith, Lindberg and DeJohnette.

“The idea of a symphony composed for a sextet was first presented by composer/performer Don Cherry in his classic recording Symphony For Improvisers in 1966,” says Wadada Leo Smith. “I have broadened this idea to include the social, political and psychological dynamic into the creative space. My Chicago Symphonies are intended to illustrate and preserve the powerfully unique cultural contribution that the Midwesterners made in helping to shape the American society.”

© Dominik Huber

Don Cherry’s classic recording Symphony For Improvisers on Blue Note Records featured Cherry on the cornet with saxophonists Gato Barbieri and Pharoah Sanders, vibraphonist Karl Berger, bassists Henry Grimes and Jean-François Jenny-Clark, and drummer Ed Blackwell. In The Chicago Symphonies, Wadada Leo Smith has expanded his idea of using symphonic form to showcase some of the Midwest’s creative composers/performers, poets, thinkers and political visionaries inside that symphonic form. In particular, The Chicago Symphonies celebrate the historical contributions of creative music in Chicago culture starting with Louis Armstrong and his contemporaries through Sun Ra and others onto the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) as well as, in the case of “Sapphire Symphony,” two great presidents hailing from Chicago, Abraham Lincoln and Barack Hussein Obama.

Each disc of The Chicago Symphonies includes one of the four symphonies composed by Wadada Leo Smith specifically for the Great Lakes Quartet. The first three symphonies, “Gold Symphony,” “Diamond Symphony” and “Pearl Symphony,” are performed by the original Great Lakes Quartet of Wadada Leo Smith with saxophonist/flutist Henry Threadill, bassist John Lindberg and drummer Jack DeJohnette whereas the fourth, “Sapphire Symphony – The Presidents and Their Visions of America,” features Smith with a representative of a younger generation of creative musicians, saxophonist Jonathon Haffner, as well as Lindberg and DeJohnette.

The Chicago Symphonies follows the release by the Great Lakes Quartet of The Great Lakes Suites (TUM CD 041-2, a double-CD with Smith, Threadgill, Lindberg and DeJohnette) that featured six extended compositions dedicated by Smith to Lake Michigan, Lake Ontario, Lake Superior, Laker Huron, Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair. In 2014, The Great Lakes Suites was broadly hailed as one of the top albums of the year.

Disc 1: GOLD SYMPHONY

01 – 05 Movements 1 –5 39:48

Disc 2: DIAMOND SYMPHONY

01 – 04 Movements 1 –4 36:38

Disc 3: PEARL SYMPHONY

01 – 05 Movements 1 –5 38:45

Disc 4: SAPPHIRE SYMPHONY

01 – 05 Movements 1 –5 49:13

Wadada Leo Smith trumpet, flugelhorn

Henry Threadgill alto saxophone, flute and bass flute (Discs 1–3)

Jonathon Haffner alto and soprano saxophones (Disc 4)

John Lindberg double bass

Jack DeJohnette drums

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Wadada Leo Smith, Jack DeJohnette & Vijay Iyer - A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday (November 19, 2021 TUM RECORDS)

A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday by Wadada Leo Smith, Jack DeJohnette and Vijay Iyer brings the three artists together for the first time in this meeting of creative giants. The recording is a unique artistic collaboration featuring compositions by all three of its participants.

Wadada Leo Smith first met and played with Jack DeJohnette in the late 1960s and the two have collaborated with increasing frequency since DeJohnette participated in the first recording of Smith’s Golden Quartet more than two decades ago. Smith’s and Iyer’s first collaboration, in a later edition of the Golden Quartet, also goes back almost two decades. Nevertheless, the recording of A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday marks the first time these three unique artists have participated in the same project and also the first time DeJohnette and Iyer have played together.

In a true collaborative spirit, A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday features compositions by all three participants. The album opens with Smith’s composition that gave the album its title. “Billie Holiday: A Love Sonnet” is the latest in a line of Smith’s compositions dedicated to Billie Holiday that previously has included the title composition of Dark Lady Of The Sonnets by Wadada Leo Smith’s Mbira (TUM CD 023) as well as “The Empress, Lady Day: In a Rainbow Garden, with Yellow-Gold Hot Springs, Surrounded by Exotic Plants and Flowers” on Najwa (TUM CD 049), among others. Smith’s other contribution, an extended composition titled “The A.D. Opera: A Long Vision with Imagination, Creativity and Fire, a dance opera” is dedicated to his long-time collaborator, pianist Anthony Davis, who already played with Smith in his important early group, New Dalta Akhri, in the mid-1970s, then joined the same first edition of the Golden Quartet that also featured DeJohnette and also participated in numerous other projects by Smith over the years.

© R.I. Sutherland-Cohen

Jack DeJohnette brought to the session his composition “Song for World Forgiveness,” a powerful plea for peace and sanity that has received a number of different treatments on his own recordings ranging from solo piano and saxophone/piano duo to a quartet, whereas Iyer contributed “Deep Time No.1,” which utilizes electronics and includes an excerpt of Malcolm X making his speech “By Any Means Necessary.” Finally, the closing piece “Rocket” was created collectively in the studio.

“A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday was a dream project to work on with Jack and Vijay where the idea of composition and instrumentation would play a vital part in how the music sounded,” says Wadada Leo Smith. “The keyboards, drum-set/percussion and trumpet would create their own sonic ranges, and with no bass at the ‘bottom’ of the music, Vijay, Jack and Wadada’s instruments could realize wider horizontal sonic fields and emotional ranges. Therefore, the performers could reveal a complete and complex melodic and harmonic spectrum in a clear musical exposition.”

01. Billie Holiday: A Love Sonnet (Wadada Leo Smith) 11:52

02. Deep Time No.1 (Vijay Iyer) 09:20

03. The A.D. Opera: A Long Vision with Imagination, Creativity and Fire, a dance opera (For Anthony Davis) (Wadada Leo Smith) 18:11

04. Song for World Forgiveness (Jack DeJohnette) 13:50

05. Rocket (Wadada Leo Smith, Jack DeJohnette and Vijay Iyer) 04:29

Wadada Leo Smith trumpet

Vijay Iyer piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond B-3 and electronics

Jack DeJohnette drums and percussion

“Deep Time No. 1” includes an excerpt from the “By Any Means Necessary” speech by Malcolm X

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Wadada Leo Smith - NAJWA (TUM RECORDS October 20, 2017)

International release: October 20, 2017

Wadada Leo Smith’s new album Najwa features four compositions in tribute to past masters of creative music, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Ronald Shannon Jackson and Billie Holiday, as well as the title composition ”Najwa” in remembrance of a love lost. Compared to Smith’s prior recordings, the presence of four guitarists and Bill Laswell’s electric bass create a unique sound world and fluidity for the music.

The first two extended compositions that open the album are dedications to two great masters of creative music, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, and each takes the form of a mini-suite. “Each has a second movement within the context of the overall shape,” says Smith. “They’re shaped like miniature suites within the context of a single album. And then the whole album has the shape of a tribute. It’s all about people and, therefore, it’s also organically unified, based around these people who I respect.” Next is the brief but touching “Najwa,” followed by a dedication to the sometime drummer of Smith’s Golden Quartet, Ronald Shannon Jackson.

The CD closes with the achingly beautiful “The Empress, Lady Day,” one of Smith’s several compositions dedicated to Billie Holiday. “I’ve written more compositions for Billie Holiday than maybe any other person,” Smith says. “She was a great performer/composer.” Although Wadada Leo Smith has worked with electric guitars in the past, including in his Organic ensemble and in Yo Miles! which he co-led with Henry Kaiser, Najwa puts the guitar in an even more central role. All four guitarists have worked with Smith before; Michael Gregory Jackson since Smith’s early years in New Haven in the 1970s, Henry Kaiser in Yo Miles!, and Brandon Ross and Lamar Smith (Smith’s grandson) in Organic.

In addition to the guitars, Bill Laswell’s electric bass takes a central role in the sonic world of Najwa and Laswell also played an important part in the post-production and mixing of the music on the album. Smith says that he enjoyed “the idea of making this session and then going back and re-recording some of the areas and then sitting down with Bill and allowing him to tweak it in certain ways and re-reference it in a whole different way. I very much like that notion, that idea or that philosophy.” This was the first time Smith and Laswell recorded together but their collaborations have continued both live and in the recording studio.

Wadada Leo Smith - SOLO: REFLECTIONS AND MEDITATIONS ON MONK (TUM RECORDS October 20, 2017)

International release: October 20, 2017

Wadada Leo Smith’s new album Solo: Reflections And Meditations On Monk features his solo trumpet on four classic Thelonious Monk compositions and four new compositions by Smith inspired by Monk, the artist that Smith feels closest to in the historic continuum of creative music. “Most people would never realize that I am closer to Thelonious Monk than to any other artist,” says Smith. “What connects us is a vision of composition and its forms, music psychology, and our articulation of the ensemble as a trashing field for new information.” From the time he listened to the early masters of modern jazz as a teenager, Smith felt that “ It was Monk, his ideas of a band and composition, that were the closest to what I dreamed of being as an artist.

His history of composition and his knowledge of how to use sound were a prime motivator, really, for me wanting to be a composer. I would go back and forth between him and Duke Ellington on this, but Monk had the upper hand in the end.”  Smith’s fascination with Monk’s solo recordings began more than five decades ago, when he purchased the recording Thelonious Monk Alone In San Francisco.

“The essence of Monk is, I believe, in his solo performances” says Smith. “All those pieces, the solo music, follow the primary formula of the compositions, but they all stray, they all lead to expansions and further explorations allowing the compositions to grow and become renewed each time he plays them.

The way in which I play Monk’s melodies on this recording, they are all personal: they are not based on chord progressions, they evolve essentially by proportion – long notes, short notes. Each of them is played, they move, in a way in which I can celebrate his melody, but seen through my expression of it.”  In addition to four classic Monk compositions, “Ruby, My Dear,” “Reflections,” “Crepuscule With Nellie” and “'Round Midnight,” the album includes four new compositions by Smith inspired by Monk and his personal history whether real, imagined or dreamed.

Together, the pieces form a unique collection wherein the two composers seem to communicate with each other through Smith’s solo performances. Smith’s first recording as a leader was also a solo album (Creative Music–1 in 1971). Since that time, he has continued to perform solo concerts and record additional solo albums (Solo Music/Ahkreanvention in 1979, Kulture Jazz in 1992 and Red Sulphur Sky in 2001). Solo: Reflections And Meditations On Monk is, however, Smith’s first solo recording that includes another composer’s music. Smith has also begun performing Monk’s compositions live for the first time. Wadada Leo Smith (b. 1941), who was part of the first generation of musicians to come out of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), has established himself as one of the leading composers and performers of creative contemporary music.

In the late 1960s, Smith formed the Creative Construction Company together with saxophonist Anthony Braxton and violinist Leroy Jenkins and, since the early 1970s, he has mostly led his own groups, which currently include the Golden Quartet, the Great Lakes Quartet, Mbira, Organic and the Silver Orchestra, among others. In 2012, Smith released his most extensive recording to date, Ten Freedom Summers, a fourCD collection which was one of three finalists for Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2013. In 2013, he released Occupy The World (TUM CD 037-2), a two-CD recording of six extended compositions performed by Smith with TUMO, a 22member improvising orchestra. The Great Lakes Suites (TUM CD 041-2, a double-CD with Henry Threadgill, John Lindberg and Jack DeJohnette) was broadly hailed as one of the top albums of the year in 2014 as was the duo recording with bassist John Lindberg, Celestial Weather (TUM CD 046), in 2015. In 2017, Smith received awards for Jazz Artist of the Year, Jazz Album of the Year (for America’s National Parks) and Trumpeter of the Year in DownBeat’s 65th Annual Critics Poll and was named Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association.