Credits:

Wadada Leo Smith ,Bill Laswell ,Milford Graves

Description:

Since 2012, Finlands venerable TUM label has been releasing new work by Wadada Leo Smith. To celebrate his 80th birthday, they are issuing five multi-disc sets of new, unissued work over the course of 2021. The first entries in the program are Trumpet, a three-disc set of solo pieces, and Sacred Ceremonies, a series of duos and trios Smith cut with Milford Graves and Bill Laswell recorded over three days in 2015. The project is dedicated to Graves, who passed on in February 2021. Disc one features Smith and Graves. The two men knew one another for more than 50 years, and shared interests outside music. An innate sense of spontaneity governs the disc. The crackling energy in the three-part suite Nyoto: Parts 1-3 offers waves of compelling tonal, textural, and rhythmic ideas. Smith waxes his most lyrical with Graves. As the drummer erects, evolves, and transforms rigorous yet dynamically restrained pulses, accents, and fills, Smith improvises directly at his rhythms, quoting from folk songs, blues standards, and nursery rhymes, while engaging athletic trills and multi-note runs. In Baby Dodds in Congo Square, Graves uses a hollowed-out snare laying down circular polyrhythms that Smith responds to with modal improvisation and loping phrases. Disc two pairs Laswell and the trumpeter. It opens with Ascending the Sacred Waterfall, a slow, brooding meditation framed by the bassists tonally assonant, sonically sculpted shapes and shadows, that Smith responds to with resonant emotion and grace. Prince - The Blue Diamond Spirit erects a modal corridor where Smiths overdubbed horn plays clean and through a wah-wah pedal to meet Laswells winding overdubbed, minimal funk lines, creating a wall of rhythm and tone. Donald Aylers Rainbow Summit is more abstract. Laswell adds a hovering, subtle synth treatment atop his wandering bassline. He finds Smiths sonically altered horn in the ether and the pair engage in free improvisation. Contrast this with Tony Williams, where, sans those overdubs, they approach post-bop. The final disc places all three men in musical dialogue. As Laswell and Graves play against each other on Social Justice - A Fire for Reimagining the World, they create a compelling, entwined soundscape of rhythm and striated harmony as a textural and harmonic foundation for Smith. His soloing is interplay: He addresses his collaborators singly and collectively with authority, nuance, and empathy. Laswell finds room to solo inside the spaces created by the drummer and trumpeter. His treated bass introduces Truth in Expansion quietly; he explores various combinations of four stated notes before Graves enters and prods him on with tom-tom rim shots, rumbling, low-tuned snare, and a whispering high hat. Laswell begins running scales that transform into spidery funk vamps before Smith enters with a solo, winding through the bumpy labyrinth created by his collaborators. On Sacred Ceremonies this trio used their mutual respect as the creative impetus for an abundance of musical discovery. The box is adorned with moody paintings by Leena Luostarinen, biographical essays, and photos. ~ Thom Jurek

Tracklisting:

1.Nyoto, Parts 1 - 3
2.Baby Dodds In Congo Square
3.Celebration Rhythms
4.Poetic Sonics
5.The Poet: Play Ebony, Play Ivory (For Henry Dumas)
6.Earth - A Morning Song
7.Minnie Riperton - The Chicago Bronzeville Master Blaster