Wadada Leo Smith

“I always felt of myself as a composer, performer, improviser. I've never called myself a jazz man. I make art.”

“Jazz infers a style, but creative music has a wider field and wider specification about it. We know it from people like Scott Joplin and on through Bessie Smith.”

“I've got that Beethoven energy, that Stravinsky energy. And it's all a gift from the Creator.”

“My solo playing utilizes the deployment of suggestive psychic rhythms. I'll state these throughout a given piece and play thematic improvisations on top of that. I like to suggest that rhyth...”