Label: TUM Records, 2021

Personnel - Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet; Vijay Iyer: piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3, electronics; Jack DeJohnette: drums.

Wadada Leo Smith is a heavyweight of the trumpet, one of the most emblematic figures in the 21st century avant-garde jazz. Beautiful things happened when, in 2016, he gathered with two other jazz giants and reliable partners, the pianist Vijay Iyer and the drummer Jack DeJohnette. The result is Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday, a five-track album with compositions of each plus one collective improvisation. DeJohnette and Iyer played with Smith in two different versions of his Golden Quartet, but never together.

Masterfully introduced by the drummer, whose tom-tom work balances wet and dry sounds in perfection, “Billie Holiday: a Love Sonnet” is one of Smith’s many dedications to the iconic American jazz singer referred in the title. The trumpeter begins his emotional phrases with pensive deliberation, but the colors drawn from Iyer’s opulent harmonies encourage him to hurl us into a vertiginous sequence. Whether subdued or zestful, DeJohnette’s drumming is unceasingly fantastic.

Smith makes another dedication with “The A.D. Opera: A Long Vision with Imagination, Creativity and Fire, a dance opera”, which was written for the pianist Anthony Davis, a long-time collaborator and also a member of his above mentioned quartet. The piano comes dressed in folk and avant-garde outfits, the trumpet is beautiful in tone and pinpoint in the attacks, while the reassuring drum work completes the poetic scenario. At some point, Iyer switches to organ, probing more mysterious tones, and then reverts to piano again for the hyper section that precedes an unruffled finale.

Iyer’s “Deep Time No. 1” features an excerpt of Malcolm X’s 1964 speech “By Any Means Necessary” over a pastoral-like texture spangled with electronics and organ, while DeJohnette’s “Song for World Forgiveness” is a poignant, selfless hymn of peace. This latter piece is taken to a broad spiritual sense, with the pianist and the drummer entangled in textures over which Smith towers his horn with certainty. It all ends in a liberating vamped sequence.

The trio wraps up with “Rocket”, a four-and-a-half-minute collective improvisation which, suggesting a blues progression, contains psychedelic Hammond, a sparkling rhythmic routine made of hi-hat, snare and bass drum, and explorative trumpet.

Smith, Iyer and DeJohnette bring their signature warmth and authenticity to music whose structure is not in disagreement with open-ended strategies.