1998 · Album
Condor, Autumn Wind
Recorded 1998 · Tzadik · Personnel: Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet), Harumi Makino Smith (voice/instrumentation)
Two Voices Rising Over the City
A live meeting between two master improvisers, spare and searching, dedicated to Dizzy Gillespie's memory.
By 1998, Wadada Leo Smith had spent decades building a language of angular, probing trumpet lines and composed silences. Condor, Autumn Wind is a late-career live recording with Harumi Makino Smith, and it shows an artist still restless, still willing to sit in a room with one other voice and follow wherever the conversation leads. This is not Smith at his most accessible — there are no steady grooves, no obvious entry points. Instead you get long stretches of near-silence punctuated by short, deliberate phrases from both players, each listening hard before speaking.
The album is dedicated to Sarhanna, Kashala, and Lamar, in special memory of Dizzy Gillespie. That context matters. This is not a celebration of Gillespie's speed or showmanship, but a quiet act of reflection — two musicians honoring the tradition by going somewhere entirely their own. Smith's trumpet is thin and sometimes fragile here, but never weak. Makino Smith's contributions layer in without stepping on anything; the music has room to breathe. Tracks drift and settle; you sense real time passing, real choices being made in the moment.
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings gave it three stars out of four, which feels about right — it's accomplished and moving without reaching for grandeur. This is not an album for casual listening. It's for people who already know Smith's work and want to hear what he sounds like when the stakes are personal rather than public. Even then, it demands patience. But if you give it that, the payoff is genuine.
