Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith // Guitar Ensembles

Event information

Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith is one of the most adventurous and engaged figures in creative music today and his recent 4CD boxset - 'Ten Freedom Summers' showed that he is currently operating at the height of his creative powers. This will be his third visit to Cafe OTO and his residencies here always offer a new insight to his approach to music. This time he will be working with four groups across the two nights. On Sunday, an acoustic trio with guitarists John Coxon and John Russell followed by an electrified quintet with Coxon, Russell, John Edwards and Mark Sanders. On the monday he'll open with a brass quartet with Gail Brand (trombone) and trumpeters Ian Smith and Byron Wallen and then finish things off with a driving percussion ensemble featuring Charles Hayward and more percussionists TBC.

ISHMAEL WADADA LEO SMITH / trumpet

Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith has been active in the creative contemporary music world for over 30 years. A trumpet player, multi-instrumentalist, composer and improviser, his original theory of jazz and world music has been significant in his musical development as an artist and educator. Born in Leland, Miss., Smith's early musical life began in high school concert and marching bands. At the age of 13, he became immersed in the Delta Blues and improvisational music traditions. As an improvisor-composer, Smith has studied a variety of music cultures (African, Japanese, Indonesian, European and American) and to fully express this music, he has developed an original theory and notation system for jazz and world music which he calls Ankhrasmation.

JOHN COXON / guitars

John Coxon, perhaps uniquely for an improvising guitarist, is inspired as much by the plangencies of Reggie Young as by the astringencies of Derek Bailey. As irascible and as spiky as it gets, his playing is always haunted by the ghosts of popular song and fragments of the blues.

JOHN RUSSELL / guitars

“for Russell the fingerboard is apparently multiple. He finds new tones in the same place, new relationships in the same gesture. A second trip across the fingerboard is always a different excursion. The harmonic is a transparent sound: silence and ambient sound pass through it. It accounts for Russell’s unhurried pace and his sense of order, even when he’s playing fast: there’s simply so much going on.” - Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure

JOHN EDWARDS / double bass

John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke and many others.

MARK SANDERS / drums

Mark Sanders has been acclaimed as “the most exciting, original and overwhelmingly powerful drummer alive” (Steve Reynolds, Jazz Corner) and his precise and propulsive drumming has graced projects with, to name but a few, Evan Parker, Jah Wobble, Broadcast, Agusti Fernandez, John Butcher, Roswell Rudd, and Otomo Yoshihde.

"ubiquitous, diverse and constantly creative, drummer Mark Sanders always outdoes himself, whether playing with restraint or erupting like a dynamo." Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery. NY

"a gifted player capable of seamless movement between free-rhythms and propulsive swing" John Fordham. The Guardian