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| Wadada Leo Smith Duo Album w. Vijay Iyer, Tour Dates, Duo album w. Sylvie Courvoisier Angel Falls, Wadada's duo album with pianist/composer Sylvie Courvoisier will be released in September 2025 via Intakt Records • Wadada Leo Smith Performances/Events Ongoing – July 3, 2025 – American Academy of Arts and Letters – Kosmic Music exhibition March 21 - NYC, NY - MOMA - Wadada + Vijay Iyer March 27 - 30 – Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival in Create Curated by Wadada Leo Smith June 9 - Moers, Germany - Moers Festival - Wadada + Vijay Iyer June 27 - Chicago, IL – Constellation - Wadada + Vijay Iyer June 28 - Montreal – Montreal International Jazz Festival - Wadada + Vijay Iyer September 13 - Minneapolis, MN – Walker Art Center with Amina Claudine Myers October 9 - Macedonia - Scorpio - with Sylvie Courvoisier October 29 - Esslingen, Germany - Esslingen Jazz Festival - Wadada + Vijay Iyer October 31 - London, UK - Wigmore Hall - Wadada + Vijay Iyer November 8 - Berlin, Germany - Pierre Boulez Saal with Jakob Bro November 9 - Antwerpen, Belgium - De Singel with Jakob Bro November 10 - 12 - Copenhagen - Hotel Cecil & Bremen Theater with Jakob Bro November 16 - Wroclaw, Poland - Jazztopad Festival with Jakob Bro Vijay Iyer, Wadada Leo Smith Defiant Life Vijay Iyer: piano, Fender Rhodes, electronics; Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet. ECM 2840 Release: March 21, 2025 CD 6024 753 0980 2 LP 6024 756 0493 8 This recording session was conditioned by our ongoing sorrow and outrage over the past year's cruelties, but also by our faith in human possibility. – Vijay Iyer Defiant Life, Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith's second duo recording for ECM after 2016's A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke, is a profound meditation on the human condition, reflecting both the hardships and acts of resilience it entails. But at the same time, it also proves a testament to the duo's unique artistic relationship and the boundless forms of musical expression it yields. For when Vijay and Wadada meet in music, they simultaneously connect on multiple levels: "Our time together, from the moment we meet right until the moment we play, is most often spent talking about the state of the world, studying histories of liberation, and sharing readings and historical references, as a means of grounding ourselves purposefully in our present." In his liner note, Iyer has transcribed such a conversation between himself and Smith at length, revealing a closer glimpse at the individual themes that inspired the album and the term "defiant" in particular. Two of the songs on the album are dedicated to significant figures from the more and slightly less recent past – Wadada's "Floating River Requiem" to the Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba, assassinated in 1961, and Vijay's "Kite" to Palestinian writer and poet Refaat Alareer, killed in Gaza in 2023. It is within this framework of thought and reflection that their music speaks without hesitation. From darkness, the "Prelude: Survival" comes creeping into existence, drawing the listener in to its gloomy presence. In what feels like pitch black, Wadada and Vijay sparsely add colour, filling the canvas with associative sounds rather than explicit images. Then, bristling with an iridescent glow that's emphasised by high-pitched organ-like electronic sweeps and swells (belonging to Vijay's instrumental set-up alongside piano and Fender Rhodes), "Sumud" presents the striking idiosyncrasy with which the trumpeter and pianist interact as they untangle a deep aural landscape. A "cosmic" quality comes to mind when confronted with the pulsations and sound tapestries that unfold in this music, recalling their last duo effort in title. "We work from our individual languages and materials, " notes Vijay in his extensive liner note, as well as "our methods of aural attunement, and what I would call a shared aesthetic of necessity". A necessity both urgent and peaceful but sometimes also violent, ominously stated in "Sumud", then endowed with a celebratory aura throughout the "Floating River Requiem", still doubtful but with silver linings on "Elegy: The Pilgrimage" and devastatingly beautiful in the concluding "Procession: Defiant Life". Prompted on his rapport to Vijay and their shared ability to simply make music 'appear', Wadada remarks that "one of the things that's so unique is our inability to allow ourselves to fix stuff [i.e., fully predetermine the music]. I think that to fix stuff we'd need a different kind of cap on our heads. And when we move into our performances, there's a good level of focus that's already there just because we've been thinking about it, but not fixing it, over a span of time. When we come into the area to actually build the pieces, we're still open to those vast moments of inspiration. I think it's pretty extraordinary to step into allowing it to move into us and out of us, allowing that present moment to have its appearance." Writing about the duo in the context of their last effort, The Washington Post noted how "Smith's and Iyer's playing interlaces beautifully. They share a sense of pacing, suspense and thoughtful choices of notes and phrases." Iyer and Wadada's shared love for detail and patience in constructing careful sentences and exchanges turn each developed structure into a sound-sphere of its own, and on Vijay's "Kite" this manifests in a deeply lyrical and soothing reciprocity between Fender Rhodes and trumpet. If Defiant Life is a contemplation on life as such, then it is its sense of wonder that comes to full expression here. The album, recorded in Lugano, was produced by Manfred Eicher. * Both Vijay and Wadada share extensive history with ECM, Wadada having appeared on the label early on with his 1979 leader-date Divine Love – an album which Vijay himself has called "one of the greatest recorded works of all time". Further Wadada appearances include the previous collaboration with Vijay, Andrew Cyrille's Lebroba (2016) alongside Bill Frisell and his 1993 solo recording Kulture Jazz, an album in which "Smith pays homage to past heroes but doesn't mess around with retro mimicry. It's all free-floating rangy stuff, brilliantly rapid-moving at times and nicely rounded out by the sparing use of overdubs." (The Wire, 1993) Vijay's rapidly expanding ECM credentials include his current trio with Linda May Han Oh and Tyshawn Sorey (2021's Uneasy and 2024's Compassion), the previous trio with Stephan Crump and Marcus Gilmore (Break Stuff, 2015) as well as his well-received sextet project Far From Over (2017) – "A bold new platform for the future of jazz" (The Times). The pianist released his acclaimed recording Mutations, with music for string quartet, piano and electronics, in 2014 and appeared on Roscoe Mitchell's 2010 album Far Side, i.a. alongside Craig Taborn with whom he further collaborated in duo on Transitory Poems (2019). Not forgetting Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi, the vivid multimedia collaboration of Vijay and filmmaker Prashant Bhargava released on DVD and BluRay in 2014. * Composer, trumpeter and author Wadada Leo Smith is one of the creative music world’s most heralded artists. He grew up steeped in the musical traditions of the South, performing in Delta Blues and other traditional bands before moving to Chicago, where he joined the legendary AACM collective. Smith defines his work as “Creative Music, ” and his diverse discography reveals a recorded history of music centered in the idea of spiritual harmony and the unification of social and cultural issues of his world. Among his major recordings are Ten Freedom Summers, America’s National Parks and String Quartets Nos. 1-12. A finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Smith has received numerous other awards and honors including a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hammer Museum's 2016 Mohn Award for Career Achievement "honoring brilliance and resilience, ” the UCLA Medal, and the 2022 Vision Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award, among many others. In 2023 he was selected for induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. An esteemed educator, from 1994–2013 Smith was on the faculty at California Institute of the Arts, where he served as director of the African-American Improvisational Music program. He most recently served as the Spring 2024 Fromm Foundation Visiting Lecturer on Music at Harvard University. Vijay Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. A composer and pianist active and revered across multiple musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last three decades, earning him a place as one of the leading music-makers of his generation. His honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, three Grammy nominations, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. His newest albums are Defiant Life (ECM, 2025), his second suite of duets with visionary composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; Compassion (ECM, 2024), featuring his celebrated trio with drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Linda May Han Oh; Trouble (BMOP/sound, 2024), a composer portrait album comprising three of his orchestral works, including the titular violin concerto performed by Jennifer Koh; and Love in Exile (Verve, 2023), his Grammy-nominated collaboration with Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily. The New York Times observed, “Iyer’s music has always been both intelligent and unpretentious, complex without being opaque; [he] ponders a phrase with obsessive rumination, unveiling layers of shifting, subtle emotion, before letting it fly with joyous abandon.” He is a professor at Harvard University. Pre-order Defiant Life: https://ecm.lnk.to/DefiantLife Upcoming Performances: Vijay Iyer + Wadada Leo Smith March 21 - NYC, NY - MOMA March 29 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival June 9 - Moers, Germany - Moers Festival June 27 - Chicago, IL – Constellation June 28 - Montreal – Montreal International Jazz Festival October 29 - Esslingen, Germany - Esslingen Jazz Festival October 31 - London, UK - Wigmore Vijay Iyer Feb 28 - Portland, OR - Portland Jazz Fest; Trio with Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey Mar 1 - Houston, TX - DACAMERA; Trio with Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey Mar 6 - Winston Salem, NC - Secrest Artist Series at Wake Forest University; Trio with Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey Mar 8 - Boston, MA - ICA; Henry Threadgill / Vijay Iyer / Dafnis Prieto Mar 13-14 - Washington, DC - Blues Alley; Vijay Iyer Trio with Devon Gates & Jeremy Dutton Mar 15 - Philadelphia, PA - Clef Club; Trio with Devon Gates & Jeremy Dutton Mar 29 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival; Vijay collaborates with Wadada Leo Smith & others in Wadada's program, Revolutionary Fire-Love: Gardens of Peace in 5 Parts Mar 30 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival; Fieldwork with Vijay, Tyshawn Sorey & Steve Lehman Apr 13 - Prague, CZ - Rudolfinum; Vijay Solo Apr 27 - Turin, IT - Torino Jazz Festival; Vijay Solo May 3 - Bray, IR - Bray Jazz Festival; Solo May 30-31 - New York, NY - Jazz Gallery; Henry Threadgill / Vijay Iyer / Dafnis Prieto Jun 3 - Charleston, SC - Spoleto Festival USA; Vijay Iyer Trio with Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey Jul 3 - Braga, PT; Vijay Iyer Trio with Harish Raghavan & Jeremy Dutton Jul 4 - Essen, DE; Vijay Iyer Trio with Harish Raghavan & Jeremy Dutton Jul 9-10 - Gran Canaria, ES; Vijay Iyer Trio with Harish Raghavan & Jeremy Dutton Wadada Leo Smith March 27 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival March 28 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival March 30 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival September 13 - Minneapolis, MN – Walker Art Center with Amina Claudine Myers October 9 - Macedonia - Scorpio - with Sylvie Courvoisier November 8 - Berlin, Germany - Pierre Boulez Saal with Jakob Bro November 9 - Antwerpen, Belgium - De Singel with Jakob Bro November 10 - 12 - Copenhagen - Hotel Cecil & Bremen Theater with Jakob Bro November 16 - Wroclaw, Poland - Jazztopad Festival with Jakob Bro write your comments about the article :: © 2025 Jazz News :: home page |