*Including a 44 p. booklet.* Trumpet is a unique extended collection of solo trumpet music. Fourteen new compositions by Wadada Leo Smith are included on this recording and spread over three CDs. The Album was recorded during a beautiful summer week in July 2016 at St. Mary's Church in the town of Pohja on the southern coast of Finland. it is a culmination of Smith's solo trumpet work to date, which totaled six albums prior to Trumpet. That legacy begins with his very first album as a leader, 1971's Creative Music 1: Six Solo Improvisations, and most recently includes his 2015 dedication to Thelonious Monk, Solo: Reflections and Meditations on Monk. "I recorded Trumpet in a small town an hour west of Helsinki, Finland, creating the music in a fifteenth-century stone church," recalls Wadada Leo Smith. "The acoustics were perfect for the trumpet sound. The recording took place over four days in the summer. It was a beautiful moment to create art." "The trumpet is a metallic vehicle, and because of its architecture, it has the potential to allow the musician to create music that is pure and sometimes unimaginably beautiful," Smith says of his chosen instrument. "This music of the trumpeter is heard in this world and in space. It is an instrument made for the dreamer of dreams, the one who can turn the dream into reality." As a whole, Trumpet represents a completely unique journey into the possibilities of the trumpet as a solo instrument and the haunting, almost meditative power of Smith's extended solo playing.
Disc 1: 01 Albert Ayler / 02-06 Rashomon: Parts 1-5 / 07 Howard and Miles - A Photographic Image / 08 Metallic Rainbow (For Steve McCall) / 09 Sauna - A Healthy Journey (For Petri)
Disc 2: 01 Malik al-Shabazz and the People of the Shahada / 02-06 The Great Litany - A Reflective Memory of al-Shadhili: Parts 1-5 / 07 Leroy Jenkins Violin Expressions / 08 James Baldwin - No Name in the Street; War / 09 Amina Claudine Myers
Disc 3: 01 Sonic Night - Night Colors (For Reggie Workman) / 02-05 Discourses on the Sufi Path - A Remembrance of Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh: Parts 1-4 / 06-09 Family - A Contemplation of Love: Parts 1- 4 / 10 Trumpet