The Latest Breaking News from Wadada Leo Smith

The 10 best jazz albums of 2024

A Mercury prize winner, a host of fresh collaborations and a posthumous release of a much-lauded live performance are all among the year’s standouts

The Guardian - UK · Dec 10, 2024

Wadada Leo Smith and Amina Claudine Myers review – an elegiac homage to New York’s green lung

In their album Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens the two musical soulmates impressionistically reflect on John Lennon, Albert Ayler and more

The Guardian - UK · May 10, 2024

Ambrose Akinmusire: Owl Song review – quietly joyous jazz grooves

The California-raised trumpet virtuoso provides a balming trio album to counter our information overload

The Guardian - UK · Dec 1, 2023

Wilco guitar ace Nels Cline shines with band and on his own: 'I'm not sure I have a style,' he says

Wilco guitarist Nels Cline has long been hailed for his skill and stylistic diversity, as befits a six-string master who has collaborated with such varied artists as Rickie Lee Jones, Phil Lesh, Mike Watt, Anthony Braxton, Yoko Ono, Rufus Wainwright and Wadada Leo Smith.

Tribune News Service · Sep 19, 2022

Commentary: Raven Chacon’s ‘Voiceless Mass’ magnifies unsung voices into the realm of the sacred

Raven Chacon’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Voiceless Mass” is a mass without sung voices in the guise of an organ concerto. Written for the large organ in Minneapolis’ Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, where the instrumental ensemble can be spread over a grand space, the concerto gives individuality to instrumental…

Los Angeles Times · May 10, 2022

The world lost 6 revolutionary composers within a year. How LA, and only LA, is paying tribute

LOS ANGELES — When Harrison Birtwistle died last week at 87, he became the sixth pioneering composer who came to prominence in the 1960s that we lost in less than nine months. This uncompromising British modernist, along with Holland's most important composer, Louis Andriessen, and Americans Frederic Rzewski, George Crumb,…

Los Angeles Times · Apr 26, 2022