Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet (WLS, trumpet, compositions; Anthony Davis, piano; John Lindberg, bass; Pheeroan akLaff, drums), “Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 381 Days,” live, Spain (San Sebastian), 2014
Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet (WLS, trumpet; Anthony Davis, piano; John Lindberg, bass; Pheeroan akLaff, drums; with Jesse Gilbert, video artist), “Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 381 Days” (W. L. Smith), live, Spain (San Sebastian), 2014
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), A Red Plum Branch against the Summer Moon c. mid-1840s
Trying to capture jazz in standard notation can be like trying to translate poetry into another language—what you wind up with is everything but the poetry. So composer/trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith (who, like many of his peers, eschews “jazz” as a label for his music) invented his own system of graphic notation.
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Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet) with his Golden Quartet (Vijay Iyer [piano], John Lindberg [bass], Ronald Shannon Jackson [drums]); Eclipse, 2005
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 8
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lagniappe
art beat
Earlier this month, when I mentioned the exhibit of William Eggleston’s photographs that’s currently at the Art Institute—posting an album cover that you’ll find in a display case there—I didn’t expect that Big Star would appear here again before the month’s end. But then I didn’t expect that Alex Chilton would pass away, either.Alex had more than simply an artistic interest in Eggleston and his work. He’d known the photographer, who was a good friend of his parents, since he was a little boy. Here, again, is the image Alex chose for that album cover, followed by a couple more from this exhibit.