Wadada Leo Smith & John Lindberg - Celestial Weather

2015 CD release.

With Celestial Weather, the focus of trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith´s longstanding collaborations with bassist and composer John Lindberg shifts to open duo improvisation, something they have often done in live performances over the last three decades but never before on a recording.

Celestial Weather opens with Smith´s composition dedicated to the great, late AACM bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut and closes with Lindberg´s "Feathers and Earth". The five-part suite that gives the collection its name, "Celestial Weather Suite," was spontaneously created in the studio.

Although the duo traces its origins to the late 1970s, when the two first played together in Anthony Braxton´s Creative Orchestra, John Lindberg has become a key collaborator of Wadada Leo Smith particularly in the new millennium and is currently a member of a number of Wadada Leo Smith´s ensembles. He has also been featured on Smith´s recent large orchestral projects, Ten Freedom Summers and Occupy the World. Throughout this duo recording, Smith and Lindberg demonstrate their closeness and deep understanding of each other´s music by their instant reactions and constant dialogue that elevate Celestial Weather to the very top tier of improvised duo recordings.

"John Lindberg is a master musician - a composer and performer who is always developing new projects and leading his own ensembles," says Wadada Leo Smith. "He never shows up for a rehearsal or a performance without being completely in touch with the music and his musical intelligence always helps to keep the performance intact."

After reflecting on a duo performance in 1990, John Lindberg observes: "With our previously established substantive artistic and personal connection becoming fully forged at this juncture, we moved forward - as astutely conscious interconnected creative beings - into the future of so much more great music and friendship. This recording forms a perfect documentation of that."