Screenshot of Wadada Leo Smith and Amina Claudine Myers at their Roulette performance (from the YouTube video of the event)
Yesterday evening I had my dinner while watching a livestream broadcast, now available for viewing on YouTube, from the Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, New York. The performance was by the duo of trumpeter/composer Wadada Leo Smith with Amina Claudine Myers on piano. The program consisted of five pieces they had selected from their duo album, which was released this past May: Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Garden.
The prevailing rhetoric was one of quietude. Those familiar with the venue know that Central Park, situated in the middle of Manhattan, is a very large space, which tends to allow for a generous diversity of activities, some of which (as we know from the music of Charles Ives) can be quite raucous. On the other hand, the Mosaics movements all amounted to “reflections in quietude” on the space itself. Both of the performers seemed to be playing from sheet music, suggesting that each movement was through-composed with little, if any, opportunities for improvisation. In that respect, each movement was conceived as a journey through composed details that would evoke the variety of aspects of the physical space.
From a personal point of view, I have to say that, at a time when media seem to be attacking me with “noises of folly” from all sides, I could appreciate how Smith and Myers could deliver a calming account of the different aspects of quietude that Central Park can afford when we are disposed to recognize them.
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