Smith & Burrouws

The Flaming Lips have announced Where The Viaduct Looms, an album of Nick Cave covers sung by the 14-year-old musician Nell Smith. A fan who first met Wayne Coyne while attending a Flaming Lips show with her family in 2018, Smith stayed in contact as she started learning guitar and writing her own songs. When a planned trip to record with the band in Oklahoma had to be cancelled due to COVID, Coyne suggested that they collaborate remotely.

Stuart Saunders Smith - A River Rose: Music for Violin - Airi Yoshioka (2014) {New World Records 80754-2}
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© 2014 New World Records | 80754-2
Classical / Modern Classical / Experimental / Avant-Garde

Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) describes himself as "a confessional composer who focuses on revealing in his music the most personal aspects of his life, in the belief that the revelations of the particular speak to the universal." These six works feature the violin, unaccompanied and in a chamber context, and span four decades of compositional activity.

Long-time collaborators, guitarists Henry Kaiser and Eugene Chadbourne perform the compositions of trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, starting with their recording from 1977 of his "Wind Crystals", then improvising over 5 other Smith compositions, ending the album with an updated, 2017 version of "Wind Crystals"; an excellent refresh and retrospective from two incredible improvisers.

Guitarist John Scofield has never had a problem interacting with saxophonists in a piano-less environment; anyone who admires the strong rapport that him and saxman Joe Lovano have enjoyed when there is no pianist on board can attest to that. So it isn't surprising that Scofield and Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith prove to be a strong combination on 1999's Blue Smith, which finds the two forming a piano-less quartet with upright bassist James Genus and drummer Clarence Penn. The only familiar song on this post-bop is "Amazing Grace"; all of the other selections were written by Smith, who keep things unpredictable and provides a variety of blues-influenced material for the quartet to work with. Scofield excels on everything that Smith throws his way, and that includes the funky "Rain Dance" and the angular "Dr. Sco," as well as the Native American-influenced "Rain Dance" and the John Coltrane-minded "Touch Your Toes"…

Ronald Smith is best remembered as the pianist who reintroduced the complex, but fantastic compositions of Charles-Valentin Alkan to the world in the 1960s, some 90-120 years after they were first written and 40 years after Alkan's previous great champion, Ferruccio Busoni, had died. Smith received his first piano lessons from his mother and when he entered school, others recognized his talent as well.