Says Bill Meyer of visionary composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, he “uses his magisterial instrumental voice, his inspirational leadership and his command of classical, jazz, and blues forms to remind us of what has gone down and what’s still happening.”
For 38 years, bassist John Lindberg has performed with Smith, in Smith’s Pulitzer Prize nominated “Ten Freedom Summers” suite, with his Golden Quartet, and in duet, producing a deep knowledge and understanding of each other’s artistic voices, sharing a dedication to creating vital musical structures and systems that provide compelling starting points for spontaneous development and improvisational journeys.
Together they released “Celestial Weather” on TUM Records in 2015, an album of vigor and daring, imagining, with inventive scores and stunning improvisations, the weather of the cosmos. The album also celebrates the great bassist from the Art Ensemble of Chicago with a suite called “Malachi Favors Maghostut – A Monarch of Creative Music,” and includes John Lindberg’s two part composition “Feathers and Earth.”
The “Underground Series” presents a season of 4 concerts, one in October, February, March and April, on Sunday afternoons at 3. Dedicated to the exploration of unique live music, this concert series thrives with you.
Tickets are $20 in advance, $10 for students with a student I.D. and $25 at the door. Advance tickets available only from www.adventuremusic.org. The phone number at the LaFontsee Galleries is (616) 451 – 9820. The LaFontsee Galleries are wheel chair accessible. To find LaFontsee Galleries please see, www.lafontsee.us/.
This concert series is curated, in part, by Lazaro Vega, Jazz Director, Blue Lake Public Radio.
Trumpeter, composer and musical visionary Wadada Leo Smith has received the Hammer Museum 2016 Mohn Award for Career Achievement “honoring brilliance and resilience.” The $25,000 Award was announced August 16 by the museum and presented in conjunction with the exhibition Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, through, only, organized by Hammer curator Adam Moshayedi and Hamza Walker, director of education and associate curator, Renaissance Society. Dancer and choreographer Adam Linder also received a Mohn Award for artistic excellence and Kenzi Shiokava received the Public Recognition Award.“The jury wants to acknowledge Wadada Leo Smith’s outstanding achievements as a musician, his influential work as a teacher and a mentor for younger artists in Los Angeles, and the decades-long expansion of an inventive, completx and layered system of notation simultaneously interrogating the picotral and the performative,” stated Juse Luis Blondet, curator, Special Initiatives, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.”I’m so honored to have won this award,” said Smith. “I’m so happy that my scores are being viewed as works of art. That means the world to me.”Smith, who turns 75 in December 2016, recently received a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award and received an honorary doctorate from CalArts, where he was honored as Faculty Emeritus. He maintains an active touring and recording schedule. His latest epic recording America’s National Parks will be released October 14, 2016 on Cuneiform Records. A six-movement suite inspired by the scenic splendor, historic legacy, and political controversies of the country’s public landscapes the recording features Smith with pianist Anthony Davis, bassist John Lindberg, drummer Pheeroan akLaff and cellist Ashley Walters. Later this year TUM Records will release Wadada Leo Smith: Nagwa featuring Smith with guitarists Michael Gregory Jackson, Henry Kaiser, Brandon Ross and Lamar Smith, plus Bill Laswell on electric bass, Pheeroan akLaff on drums and Adam Rudolph on percussion. Coming on TUM in early 2017 will be Alone: Reflections and Meditations on Monk, a solo recording.Smith’s 2016 schedule includes performances at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Berlin Jazz Festival, Molde Jazz Festival, Pittsburgh International LiveJazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Vision Festival, Festival Suoni Per il Pipolo, Summer Stage, NYC and the premiere of his opera /cantata Rosa Parks at the FONT Festival, among others (see full schedule at end of this release.)
