Trumpeter, composer
and musical visionary Wadada Leo Smith has received the Hammer Museum 2016 Mohn
Award for Career Achievement “honoring brilliance and resilience.” The $25,000 Award was announced August 16 by
the museum and presented in conjunction with the exhibition Made in L.A. 2016:
a, the, through, only, organized by Hammer curator Adam Moshayedi and Hamza
Walker, director of education and associate curator, Renaissance Society. Dancer and choreographer Adam Linder also
received a Mohn Award for artistic excellence and Kenzi Shiokava received the
Public Recognition Award.
“The jury
wants to acknowledge Wadada Leo Smith’s outstanding achievements as a musician,
his influential work as a teacher and a mentor for younger artists in Los
Angeles, and the decades-long expansion of an inventive, completx and layered
system of notation simultaneously interrogating the picotral and the
performative,” stated Juse Luis Blondet, curator, Special Initiatives, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art.
“I’m so
honored to have won this award,” said Smith.
“I’m so happy that my scores are being viewed as works of art. That means the world to me.”
Smith, who
turns 75 in December 2016, recently received a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award and
received an honorary doctorate from CalArts, where he was honored as Faculty
Emeritus. He maintains an active touring and recording schedule. His latest
epic recording America’s National Parks will be released October 14, 2016 on
Cuneiform Records. A six-movement suite
inspired by the scenic splendor, historic legacy, and political controversies
of the country’s public landscapes the recording features Smith with pianist
Anthony Davis, bassist John Lindberg, drummer Pheeroan akLaff and cellist
Ashley Walters. Later this year TUM
Records will release Wadada Leo Smith: Nagwa featuring Smith with guitarists
Michael Gregory Jackson, Henry Kaiser, Brandon Ross and Lamar Smith, plus Bill
Laswell on electric bass, Pheeroan akLaff on drums and Adam Rudolph on
percussion. Coming on TUM in early 2017 will be Alone: Reflections and
Meditations on Monk, a solo recording.
Smith’s 2016
schedule includes performances at the Montreal International Jazz Festival,
Berlin Jazz Festival, Molde Jazz Festival, Pittsburgh International LiveJazz
Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Vision Festival, Festival Suoni Per il
Pipolo, Summer Stage, NYC and the premiere of his opera /cantata Rosa Parks at
the FONT Festival, among others (see full schedule at end of this release.)
Totaling
$150,000, the Mohn Awards are among the largest art prizes dedicated to
recognizing the work of emerging and under-recognized artists from the greater
Los Angeles region. A jury of professional curators selected the Mohn Award and
the Career Achievement Award while the Public Recognition Award was determined
by on-site voting from June 11 through August 14, 2016. The jury included
Ingrid Schaffner, curator, 57th Carnegie International, 2018, Carnegie Museum
of Art, Pittsburgh, Mika Yoshitake, associate curator, Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden, and Jose Luis Blondet, curator, Special Initiatives, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art. All three awards were once again funded through
the generosity of Los Angeles philanthropists and art collectors Jarl and
Pamela Mohn and the Mohn Family Foundation as part of Made in L.A., the
Hammer's biennial exhibition series highlighting emerging and under-recognized
artists from the Los Angeles region.
“Curators
Aram Moshayedi and Hamza Walker selected a tight group of artists and offered
them room to stretch. This exhibition is stunning in terms of the range of
practices and performers, the depth of exploration, and the array of programs
it presents. It's as it if everyone won and gave a prize through their participation
in Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only,” said Ingrid Schaffner.
Wadada Leo
Smith, whose roots are in the Delta blues, is one of the most boldly original
figures in American jazz and creative contemporary music and one of the great
trumpet players of our time. As a
composer, improviser, performer, music theorist/writer and educator, Smith has
devoted a lifetime to navigating the emotional heart, spiritual soul, social
significance and physical structure of jazz to create new music of infinite
possibility and nuance.
A 2016 Doris
Duke Artist and 2013 Pulitzer finalist, Smith was DownBeat Magazine’s 2013
“Composer of the Year” and the Jazz Journalist Association’s 2013 Musician of
the Year and Trumpeter of the Year. In 2014 DownBeat magazine named him “One of
the 80 Coolest Things in Jazz Today,” citing his “magisterial instrumental
voice, his inspirational leadership, and his command of classical, jazz and
blues forms to remind us of what’s gone down and what’s still happening.” The
Jazz Journalists Association named Smith Composer of the Year in 2015. Early in
his career, Smith developed Ankhrasmation, a radically original musical
language that uses visual directions and remains the philosophical foundation
of his oeuvre. In October 2015, The Renaissance Society at the University of
Chicago presented the first comprehensive exhibition of his Ankhrasmation
scores.
Smith has
released more than 50 albums as a leader. His landmark 2012 civil rights opus
Ten Freedom Summers was called “A staggering achievement… It merits comparison
to Coltrane’s A Love Supreme in sobriety and reach,” (Francis Davis, Rhapsody
Jazz Critics Poll). Recent recordings include The Great Lakes Suites, which
earned second place in NPR Music’s 2014 Jazz Critics Poll and Celestial
Weather, which garnered extensive praise as “a perfectly suited twosome…4.5
stars” (DownBeat). In March 2016 ECM
released a cosmic rhythm with each stroke featuring pianist Vijay Iyer and
Smith, whom Iyer calls his “hero, friend and mentor.” The recording has earned
wide critical acclaim and the duo is touring internationally in 2016 and 2017.
Born
December 18, 1941 in Leland, Mississippi, Smith began performing at age
thirteen with his stepfather, bluesman Alex Wallace and went on to play in his
high school bands. He received his formal musical education from the U.S.
Military band program (1963), the Sherwood School of Music (1967-69), and
Wesleyan University (1975-76). Part of the first generation of musicians to
come out of Chicago’s AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Music),
Smith collaborated with a dazzling cast of fellow visionaries. He has received
commissions to write music for numerous groups including the Wroclaw Philharmonic
Orchestra, and was invited to perform and speak on human rights at the Onassis
Cultural Centre in Athens.
Smith has
been awarded grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, Chamber Music
America with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Meet the
Composer/Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, the MAP Fund and
the National Endowment for the Arts, among many others.
Wadada Leo
Smith Upcoming Events
• Saturday,
Sept. 24 – Premiere of Smith’s opera /cantata Rosa Parks – FONT Festival, NYC
• Tuesday,
Sept. 27 – Smith and Iyer – Amherst, MA
• Friday,
Oct. 14 – AACM concert featuring Wadada Leo Smith with Bobby Naughton and
Dwight Andrews – The Community Church of New York, NYC
• Sunday,
Oct. 23 – Smith & John Lindberg duo Celestial Weather – LaFontsie
Galleries, Grand Rapids, MI
• Wednesday,
Oct. 26 – Smith & John Lindberg duo Celestial Weather – Edgefest (20th
Anniv. Edition), Ann Arbor, MI
• October 28
& 29 – Smith & John Lindberg duo Celestial Weather w. drummer Mike Reed
– Constellation, Chicago, IL
• Sunday,
Oct. 30 – Smith & John Lindberg duo Celestial Weather – Woodland Pattern,
Milwaukee, WI
• Thursday,
Nov. 3 – Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet performing The Great Lakes Suites – Berlin
Jazz Festival
• Sunday,
Nov. 6 – Wadada duet with pianist Alexander Hawkins – Berlin Jazz Festival
• Wednesday,
Nov. 9 – Wadada Leo Smith & Vijay Iyer duo – Benaroya Hall’s Nordstrom
Recital Hall – Earshot Jazz Festival
• Saturday,
Nov. 19 – Wadada & Iyer – Bielsko-Biala – Poland
• December
14-17 – Wadada Leo Smith’s Four Symphonies – Kadist, Wattis, & The Lab –
San Francisco, CA
• Friday,
Jan. 6 – Wadada-Vijay duo – Wigmore Hall, London, England
• Saturday,
Jan. 7 – Wadada-Vijay duo – Klub Zak, Gdansk, Poland
• Sunday,
Jan. 8 – Wadada-Vijay duo – Lantaren Venster, Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Monday, Jan. 9 – Wadada-Vijay duo – Harpa,
Reykjavik
• Wednesday,
Jan. 11 – Wadada-Vijay duo – Philharmonie Chamber Hall, Luxembourg
• Thursday,
Jan. 12 – Wadada-Vijay duo – Kölner Philharmonie, Köln, Germany
• Friday,
Jan. 13 – Wadada-Vijay duo – Brussels Jazz Festival – Flagey, Brussels, Belgium
• Sunday,
Jan. 15 – Wadada-Vijay duo – Teatro Manzoni , Milan, Italy
• Tuesday,
Jan. 17 – Wadada-Vijay duo – Sons D'Hiver Festival – Espace Jean Vilar,
Arcueil, France
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