Yessie Smith

Lonnie Liston Smith was 32 when, in 1973, he finally got around to recording his first album as a leader, Astral Traveling. By that time, the pianist/keyboardist had a great deal of sideman experience under his belt, and this superb debut made it clear that former employers like Pharoah Sanders, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Gato Barbieri, and Betty Carter had taught him well. One hears a lot of Sanders, John Coltrane, and McCoy Tyner influence on Astral Traveling; Smith obviously shares their passion for all things spiritual. Nonetheless, this LP leaves no doubt that the improviser is very much his own man and has a wealth of brilliant ideas of his own; thankfully, he has a cohesive band to help him carry them out.

This recording, devoted to Dowland, seems to open a door onto a secret garden, one tended and cultivated by two artists already well known for opera and song recitals that distil the chamber music principle into its most intimate essence of expressive sound: soprano Mariana Flores and lutenist Hopkinson Smith. Here they give us a Dowland programme straight from the heart, drawing on five of the composer’s volumes of ‘Songs or Ayres’ printed in London between 1597 and 1612, laying bare Dowland’s ecstatic and tortured soul as it oscillates between all the different states of melancholy love.

The ECM folks do much better by Wadada Leo Smith than ever before with this solo recording, a true masterwork of its kind and one of the purest, most enlightening demonstrations of the connected natures of folk, blues, jazz, and creative music. That Smith is the man to do this is certainly no surprise; he laid it all down in print years before this release in his self-published books and liner notes. But the way he does it, with so much grace and style (and with the excellent production by Steve Lake), really results in a totally polished statement. It is a deep and rich recording, with Smith playing in a manner that incorporates both versatility and the genius of simplicity, sometimes all in one note. Not just for fans of "out" music, this is one to pull out when you are trying to get friends to go beyond their Phish records.

The legendary Hammond B-3 organist Dr. Lonnie Smith has recorded over thirty albums as a leader, but his favorite setting to document his creativity is live. “It’s so hard to capture what I’m feeling at the moment in the studio,” he says. “Hearing me live is catching me playing in the moment. It’s a good vibe. It’s a loving situation.”