During a career spanning over five decades Wadada Leo Smith has consistently made music that is as thought-provoking and emotionally charged as it is structurally inventive. An early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an essential hub for innovation in Chicago, Smith, who hails from Mississippi, has become part of the canon of great modern trumpeters, upholding the spirit of his trailblazing role models Miles Davis, Booker Little and Roy Eldridge. Yet of equal importance is his stature as a composer. He has developed his own language, figuratively and literally. Smith uses an original system of notation, Ankhrasmation, and writes pieces that take many forms and engage with a wide range of subjects.
His desire to experiment with orchestration comes vividly into play on The Flight of the Eagle: The Sonic Memorial of Jiddu Krishnamurti (16 November), his new work for eight trumpets performed by the Monochrome Project. It is an uncommon, stimulating kind of double brass section which enables Smith to extrapolate both the fiery energy and disciplined subtlety that have marked his numerous concerts as a trumpeter in quartets, trios, duos (with such as Anthony Braxton) and solo. Smith, who also sings and plays a selection of percussion, has always written for other instruments and his works for strings are featured on the second day of the residency, (17 November). String Quartet No 3 (Black Church: A First World Gathering of the Spirit) performed by Ligeti Quartet, is a piece with quicksilver movement, unforeseen changes of rhythm, and strange, stark timbres that speak of Smith’s gift for narrative complexity. Moreover, his use of silence and space lends to his scores an inherent drama, a sense of fleeting episodes that can be as disruptive as they are cohesive. The tantalising, swooning sounds sometimes have a vague country blues character that one might relate to the composer’s origins as the son of greater singer in that timeless American genre, but Smith has moved far from its patented harmony.
His music is excitingly Afro-diasporan but also universal in outlook and resonance.
Smith’s scores invariably have a probing, inquisitive character, in line with the ideas he broaches. String Quartet No 17 (The Capitol, Washington D.C: An American Experiment with Democracy and Capitalism) is part of the composer’s ongoing commentary on the turbulent political landscape of his country that includes previous compositions dedicated to civil rights icons Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and abolitionist David Walker. This new work, premiered here, reflecting on the violent insurrection in 2022, is particularly topical in this month of US elections.
Concluding the residency is Fire-Love Expanse (18 November), a group in which Smith is joined by an outstanding line-up of British players, drummer Mark Sanders, double bassist John Edwards and cellist Ashley Walters. Smith’s numerous recordings for labels such as ECM, TUM and Pi have documented his ability as a mercurial, lyrical improviser and his collaboration with these artists, who have worked with him on several prior occasions, promises a fitting climax to three days of glorious music.
Profile by Kevin Le Gendre
The 47th edition of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, hcmf// 2024, takes place Friday 15 – Sunday 24 November 2024. Tickets for the Monochrome Project and Ligeti Quartet plays Wadada Leo Smith are on sale now.