Wadada's upcoming performance dates can now be seen on Facebook here.
Wadada will be performing with his Golden Quartet at FIMAV (Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada on Saturday, May 19, 2012. FIMAV is North America’s premier festival of avant-garde music. Also performing in the same concert will be BLIXT (Bill Laswell / Raoul Björkenheim / Morgan Ågren).
Wadada is interviewed and the cover feature in InSound magazine (Italy) and Jazz PT (Portugal):
Wadada's Organic Heart's Reflections double CD release on Cuneiform Records has received much critical acclaim.
Southwest Chamber Music Society (Pasadena, CA) is awarded a Multi-Arts Production Fund grant and a National Endowment for the Arts Access to Artistic Excellence grant to support Ten Freedom Summers, a recording and national performance tour of a new work by composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith inspired by the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1964. Ten Freedom Summers is a three-evening musical composition by Wadada Leo Smith, which will be performed by Smith’s dynamic Golden Quartet, joined by Southwest Chamber Music and conducted by Grammy Award–winner Jeff von der Schmidt. This large multimovement work is inspired by the activity of the civil rights movement from 1954–1964. The composition is in suite form and reflects the spiritual condition and attitude surrounding many incidents that changed American social history.
The music of Ten Freedom Summers is a psychological interpretation of the events pertinent to the struggle for civil rights, not a pictorial or cinematic treatment that musically describes each event or situation. The trajectory of the three-concert experience is: Concert One—America Part 1 & Part 2, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party 1964, Rosa Parks, and The Freedom Riders Ride; Concert Two—Dred Scott 1857, Democracy, Buzzsaw: The Myth of the Free Press, September 11, 2001, and People of the Shahada; Concert Three—Brown v. Board of Education 1954, Little Rock Nine 1957,Freedom Summer 1964, LBJ Civil Rights Act 1964, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—Memphis Prophecy and Assassination. The world premiere will take place October 28–30, 2011, at REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California. Wadada's new CD release The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer has received wide acclaim.
This recording documents the first duo performance of two towering figures in American creative music: trumpeter-composer Wadada Leo Smith and the late drummer Ed Blackwell, best known as a member of free-jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman's quartet. A beautifully recorded radio broadcast from October 1986, this concert between two major figures from two generations of cutting edge American music, brilliantly weds sound, silence and rhythm into a lyrical and swinging performance. It's been selected on many Top Albums of the 2010 lists, including The Village Voice and Jazz Journalists's Association. read more ...
Two new digital releases of Yo Miles! - Shinjuku and Lightning, featuring new studio recordings and live performances. Yo Miles! is the celebrated collaboration of Wadada Leo Smith and Henry Kaiser formed in 1998 to explore, expound and expand on Miles Davis’ mid-70s electric music. The all-star personnel is culled from both the jazz and rock communities.
New Reviews of Wadada's Golden Quartet performance at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, and some new interviews and articles.
New Reviews and Interviews with Wadada from Spain
Chamber Music America has awarded Wadada Leo Smith and Golden Quartet a 2010 New Jazz Works: Commissioning, Ensemble Development, with an extended Life of the Work grant.
Wadada Leo Smith will compose Ten Freedom Summers for Golden Quartet, a large work inspired by the activity of the civil rights movement from 1954-1964. It will be a suite in three movements, “Brown v. Board of Education”- 1954, “Little Rock Nine”- 1957 , and “Freedom Summer”-1964 . The Ten Freedom Summers is commissioned by Chamber Music America with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
The Brooklyn Public Library concert of Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet October 28, 2010.
This performance is the world premiere of the music Wadada composed while a 2009/2010 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. As a Fellow he composed five compositions: Dred Scott- 1857; September Eleventh - 2001; Democracy; Buzzsaw: The Myth of the Free Press; and People of the Shahada. These compositions are part of a larger compositional collection, America. America is a music that is the result of his research and reflection on the philosophical, social and political history of United States of America.
A great artist profile of Wadada by Lyn Horton at allaboutjazz.com:
Wadada Leo Smith: A Vital Life Force -  (.pdf) Wadada is featured on the cover of both the January, 2010 issue of Jazziz and the February, 2010 issue of The Wire !
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