If you are not familiar with Wadada Leo Smith as an artist or as a thinker, you could start with The Chicago Symphonies and know that you are engaging with some of his finest work.
Henry Threadgill
Jazz Survey: Chordless Drills – A Listener’s Guide to the Saxophone Trio
Here is a personal selection of recordings in the saxophone trio format. These linear collaborations have been part of the jazz scene for at least seventy years now. The results are almost always illuminating and exhilarating, and a review of them offers a miniature history of saxophone styles.
Fuse Appreciation: Henry Threadgill — A Pulitzer Prize for “In For a Penny, In For a Pound”
Over the decades, avant-garde jazz musical Henry Threadgill has not only enriched but remade the musical landscape.
Book Review: “Outside Music, Inside Voices” — Illuminating Conversations about Creating Jazz
Jazz fans with open ears should rush to this book: so should anyone interested in the creative process, its rewards as well as its challenges.
Album Review: Wadada Leo Smith’s “The Great Lakes Suites” — A Miraculous Freedom
Wadada Leo Smith’s latest album features a series of miraculous performances that give a new meaning to freedom: the sometimes lengthy and airily open improvisations take us on journeys but never seem to wander.