Wadada Leo Smith and Amina Claudine Myers – Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lakes, Parks and Gardens (Red Hooks, 2024)

Despite the recent good albums I had the opportunity to listen to featuring trumpet player and composer Wadada Leo Smith, like Andrew Cyrille’s Lebroba (ECM, 2018), I have read contrasting opinions about his last efforts. As far as it seems he was not so brilliant in a series of concerts the musician held in the U.S.: according to the reviewer, he was too fond on personal clichés, and he was even juxtaposed to James Brandon Lewis, the young guy to take a look at since he was showing, at the contrary, an interesting evolution. 

Anyway, the cynic in me concluded that the reviewer was possibly tired of listening to Smith’s music and was enthusiastic about a younger musician. After all, many people got bored after a period if they don’t find the right stimulus. Anyway, finally Wadada Leo Smith, one of the most important composers to sort out of the A.A.C.M., the Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, has released and album in duo with pianist, organist and newly minted NEA Jazz Master – NJM Fellowship is an honour given in the United States to particularly innovative musicians since 1982 – Amina Claudine Myers. 

The album is inspired by New York Central Park’s environment, as the title of the album suggests, but there are also compositions dedicated to Albert Ayler and John Lennon. The First composition, Conservatory Garden, opens with Myers’ melancholic meditation. Every note resonates aptly thanks to the great work by former ECM producer Sung Chung, thanks to whom even Smith’s trumpet gain echoes and specific colors as it happens to the piano. 

Conservatory Garden is possibly one of the best compositions in jazz I have heard since many years, and it’s worth the price of the album per se. You will listen to a composition of contemporary jazz but with that quality that is sometimes difficult to obtain, since it’s a matter of accents. While listening to it, I can really understand what Smith was telling me ten years ago about connecting the head and the heart. 

The trumpeter is more keen on incorporating Miles Davis influence into his own language – in the past Smith claimed to have dreamed of Davis also, to stress the strong connection with him and his language of pauses, silences, and with his almost muezzin-like calls – but it’s the quality of the music itself and the interplay, where each musician is able to dive deep into the emotional motivation of the other, to make the difference. 

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir sees Myers at a Hammond Organ, and since music is a matter of accents, we have a strong emotional shift from the first to this second composition, with melancholy leaving space to an almost subtle spooky feeling. Central Park at Sunset is even a more spacey and meditative, while the harmonic idea is verticalized becoming almost dolphian, even if Smith’s call maintains his spiritual qualities. 

When Was is another step into an emotional journey, this time led by the piano only, that laps the territories of New Age – at least, of that part of contemporary music that laps New Age – without falling into it – thanks to some dissonances here and there, mostly in the second part of the composition - but this time I feel I can understand people who dislike this path into classicism. Luckily enough, the second part of the composition – almost a disharmonious fugue – is able to redeem the intentions of Myers. 

The Harlem Meer is the most static of the compositions here involved: thanks to a trumpet that is soloing almost unaccompanied, we have the feeling of not being able to sort out of a strange dream. Albert Ayler, a Meditation in Light lives on the contrast between Smith and Myers music and the original evoked, so much thicker and denser. No one expects in the middle of an album like this a changing of the guards, anyway I will limit myself to observe that even Lacy and Waldron in some Black Saint/Soul Note albums were paying homage to Monk underestimating his angularity. 

I don’t think Myers and Smith are asking for more attention from a wider audience, I suspect instead that the opportunities given to them by the recording process and output influenced their creativity bringing them to obscure part of the music they could give life to, making it all more monochromatic. 

Finally, Imagine, a Mosaic for John Lennon is an even more rarefied, subtle composition. You can feel at a certain point how much Lennon’s efforts to contribute to a more just society are losing their breath, or maybe it’s just me, but up to a certain point I have the feeling the musicians are losing the point, closing at the right time before their music becomes too obvious. 

Concluding, I would say that this album features some notable compositions, some of the most interesting in Smith’s and Myers’ careers, mixed with less well realised food for musical reflection. And while I’m meditating whether to look for a physical copy of the album, I’m happy I had the opportunity to introduce this album to my readers. After all, this is possibly not the right time for the perfect album or the complete masterpiece, but if you’re able to find a record with just some gems as in this case, I really believe you’re lucky enough.