Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Wadada Leo Smith’s delicately muted tones and extreme brass dynamics have been an uplifting trumpet presence in left-field jazz for over half a century. His recent projects range from epic soundscapes inspired by the civil rights movement to intimate meditations on New York’s Central Park. The trumpeter continues this sustained burst of late-life creativity with a duet meditation on the current human condition with pianist/keyboardist Vijay Iyer. Overall, the music is sober in mood and sombre in tone, though the interplay of Smith’s brassy confidence and Iyer’s nuanced pianistics and electronica adds a sense of resilience. Iyer has been working with Smith on and off for two decades — their previous collaboration, A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke, was released in 2016 — and though two pieces are preconceived and four are spontaneously co-composed, the freedom and focus of the musicianship makes the distinction impossible to hear. “I’m always struck by how our music simply appears,” writes Iyer on the sleeve.The set begins with scatters and flutters of grainy trumpet supported by low rumbles of full-pedal concert grand that mutually grow in intensity, fragment and slowly subside. The session, according to Iyer, was conditioned by sorrow and outrage at last year’s cruel world events, and the sonic terrain of “Prelude: Survival” captures that. The broad sweep of “Sumud”, Arabic for steadfastness, comes next, an aural confirmation of the musicians’ continuing faith in human possibilities; Iong-sustained electronic drone supported by wisps of trumpet, tinkles of piano and rasps of Fender Rhodes. Later that faith is further underlined by the subtle rhythmic pulse that imbues “Elegy: The Pilgrimage” with warmth.Elsewhere, Smith’s composition “Floating River Requiem (for Patrice Lumumba)” combines trumpet with acoustic piano and hints at gospel and the blues, and Iyer’s composition “Kite (for Refaat Alareer)” finds Smith ruminating over Fender Rhodes. The final track, “Procession: Defiant Life” returns to the album’s core emotional concerns, the tension between sorrow and hope. Here tentative beginnings gain in confidence and an undertow of rhythm gathers strength.★★★★☆‘Defiant Life’ is released by ECM
