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REDCAT Presents Wadada Leo Smith and His Music in a Three-Day Festival

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October, Los Angeles--REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, presents the renowned trumpeter, composer and improviser Wadada Leo Smith for a three-day celebration of his influential work, November 17-19, 2005. Smith is joined by some of Los Angeles' most unconventional composers and improvisers, including Vinny Golia, Oguri, David Rosenboom, Adam Rudolph, Barry Schrader and Dorothy Stone; and out-of-town guests Thomas Buckner, Vijay Iyer, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and John Lindberg, among others. A recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Journalists Association, Smith has performed around the world to great acclaim since first joining the Association for Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the 1960s.

Thursday, November 17 at 8:30 p.m.
Solo, Duets and Collaborations
Featured performers: Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet and flugelhorn; Vinny Golia, wind instruments; Hardedge, turntables and live electronics; David Rosenboom, piano; Adam Rudolph, percussion; Dorothy Stone, flute.

Three types of collaborations will occur this evening. The duet with David Rosenboom is the interaction of two parallel compositions presented simultaneously as a collaborative work. The duets with Vinny Golia and Adam Rudolph are works composed by each performer, later integrated by Smith into a new work. Finally, the duets with Dorothy Stone and Hardedge consist of previous compositions of Smith's into which improvisation will be incorporated in a collaborative design. All the works presented on this evening, except for the collaborations with Dorothy Stone and Hardedge, will be world premieres composed especially for this occasion.

Friday, November 18 at 8:30 p.m.
Vocals and String Ensembles, Electronic Music and Butoh Dance
Featured performers: Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet, live electronics; Gustavo Aguilar, percussion; Diane Barkauskas, accordion; Jacqueline Bobak, voice; Thomas Buckner, voice; Philip Curtis, guitar, live electronics; Nina Eidsheim, voice; David Johnson, percussion; Oguri, choreography and dance; Vicki Ray, piano, celesta; Barry Schrader, electronic tape; Mark Trayle, live electronics; and string quartet.

This evening's performances highlight the relationships between voice and ensemble, string quartet, live electronics and dance/drama. Luminous Axis, heard here in a trio version, was originally composed using Smith's Ankhrasmation, a symbolic, systemic notation language that employs rhythm-units, sonic-units, improvisational-units, and symbolic-units, for an ensemble of four laptops, trumpet and percussion. The Three Sufi Songs come from the work Discourses by Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi, who addresses the nature of spirituality in Sufism and the path toward enlightenment. The duet with Barry Schrader is also the interaction of two parallel compositions presented simultaneously as a collaborative work; Pacifica, Light and Water which was also composed using Ankhrasmation notation. It investigates two natural phenomena: light waves penetrating the ocean's depths and the cyclical development of wave activity.

Wu Xing: Cycle of Destruction refers to the five traditional Chinese elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. These elements are important in Chinese astrology, medicine and Bagua (a system of trigrams used in feng shui). The string quartet In the Diaspora is Smith's second installment about the African and African American experience in the twentieth century.

Amazing is a song/dance drama that contemplates the profound love between man and woman enacted symbolically through music and movement. The story symbolizes the world of the lovers. The music constructs the symbolic stage on which this action takes place, while the activities and gestures in the dance express the emotions of both characters simultaneously. Commissioned by Thomas Buckner, the composition's text is based on a poem written by Jeanne Lee and is choreographed by Oguri within the Butoh tradition.

Saturday, November 19 at 8:30 p.m.
Quartet Music: Wadada Leo Smith and the Golden Quartet
Featuring: Wadada Leo Smith, trumpet, flugelhorn; Ronald Shannon Jackson, drums; John Lindberg, bass; Vijay Iyer, piano, electric piano, synthesizer.

In 1967, Smith's musical research for the creative music ensemble was focused on developing a language for creative improvisers, exploring systems of compositions and improvisations. The Bell (recorded in 1967 for Delmark Records) was the first composition/improvisation to use the Ankhrasmation symbolic language. The Golden Quartet is an acoustic-electric ensemble experimenting with this new language for creative music. "The quartet form," says Smith, "is the purest foundation of musical expression in the western, jazz and creative music traditions. Furthermore, it has a capacity to articulate the artistic, psychological and emotional spectrum unmatched by any other ensemble, possibly even greater and more complete than the orchestra."

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts, is located at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Creative Music Festival tickets range from $18-14. Student discounts are available. Seating is general admission. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office-located at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, by calling 213.237.2800, or at by clicking here.

Creative Music Festival is funded in part by the Phaedrus Foundation.

REDCAT benefits from an endowment created through the generosity of The Walt Disney Company; The Sharon D. Lund Foundation; Robert B. Egelston; Lee and Lawrence J. Ramer; and Dorothy R. Sherwood.

REDCAT's 2005-06 season programming is generously supported by The Herb Alpert Foundation; American Composers Forum of Los Angeles; The Annenberg Foundation; Anonymous; Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund; California Community Foundation; The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation (Corporate matching gift); CEMAT (Centri Musicali Attrezzati, Rome); City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department; CONACULTA; Margit Sperling Cotsen and Lloyd Cotsen; Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Delphi Capital Management, Inc.; e-flux; Étant Donnés, The French-American Fund for the Visual Arts, a program of the French American Cultural Exchange; The French-American Fund for Contemporary Music, a program of FACE; French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Harriett and Richard Gold; Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg; Elyse and Stanley Grinstein; Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater; IIC (Instituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles); The Japan Foundation Performing Arts JAPAN; La Colección Jumex; kurimanzutto; L.A. Louver Gallery, Inc.; The Sharon D. Lund Foundation; Steve Martin; National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; E. Nakamichi Foundation; Phaedrus Foundation; Vicki Reynolds Pepper and Murray Pepper; The Puffin Foundation, Inc.; V. Joy Simmons; The Skirball Foundation; SONORA, in collaboration with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Italy; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and White Cube Gallery, London.

As CalArts' downtown center for innovative visual, media and performing arts, REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in the Los Angeles region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT is a center for experimentation, discovery and charged civic discourse.

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