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Rating: Is there a worthy heir to Miles...? I won't waste too much time answering that pointless question: NO.
But there's Wadada Leo Smith. And forgive me if that's not enough. Many play the trumpet today, but few manage to make it speak; and howl; and sob: He's among those few.
Leland, Mississippi is his hometown; the Blues of the fathers in his veins, Jazz and improvisation in his spirit. Idiot that I am: I should write "improvisation" with a capital I, when I talk about him. Because improvising is something sacred for Leo, it’s a rite, it’s an exorcism filled with ancestral indefinable moods. It's a space-time in which everything stops and everything is silent: everything, except the (vibrant, convulsive) breath of his instrument; everything, except harmonic lines capable of intersecting and overlapping, spreading in the air like endless spirals of smoke. Visions. Hallucinations. Pure and unmixed psychedelia. Finally: ecstasy. Supreme calm.
1996: with Tao-Njia, the Taoist meditative experience is described - in sound notes. Miles is very close, yes, but he avoids the most mundane and banal imitation. Sharp reverberations follow one another, recalling the intensity of the first electric Davisian experiences, daring polyphonies are described by the magic of post-synchronized recording; a cut and paste of "Macerian" memory, suspended light years above the coldness of the merely intended "technical" act. Tongues of pure enchantment gush in progression, as if emerging from the thousand mouths of a fountain. Sweet disorientation. Immateriality.
And again: bamboo flutes, cornets, tubular bells, vibraphones, clarinets, violins and cellos. To challenge, in the final 21-minute "suite", the historically established dictates of orchestral arrangement. It is the challenge of the impressionistic fragmentariness of improvisation to the harmonic fullness of the symphony. Immensity in which to lose oneself, never to find the way again (is there a way...?).
Tzadik the label, John Zorn the producer. Don't make me say more.
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