Hear Wadada Leo Smith’s Interpretation of Thelonious Monk’s “Crepuscule with Nellie”

Last year, Wadada Leo Smith—the titanic trumpet play, improviser, composer, and inventor of his own Ankhrasmation notation system—released Solo: Reflections and Meditations on Monk, an audacious one-horn consideration of Monk’s influence on Smith’s own playing. You can hear it in the timing and the texture, in the ways that Smith leaves space hanging in his pieces where others might get busy. Listen to his gorgeous, mercurial rendition of the great “Crepuscule with Nellie.” Smith brings the project to Big Ears 2019.