Really New Music Orchestra keep it real with Wadada Leo Smith 

Occupy the World, Wadada Leo Smith’s upcoming double album set for release in late-June follows last autumn’s Ancestors when the great Mississippi-born avant-garde trumpeter, now 71, paired with South African free-jazz drum icon Louis Moholo-Moholo for their first recording together. For anyone who caught Smith at Cafe Oto last year or heard the Radio 3 broadcast of the Dalston show then Occupy the World is understandably a significant release. Reviewing the civil rights inspired-set John Fordham in The Guardian observed Smith’s presence was “vivid in every sound and space”, and for neophytes the new work could well be a case of at last waking up and smelling the coffee as memories of the Occupy movement’s protests at St Paul’s and Finsbury Square in 2011 and 2012 fade. The scale of Occupy the World is a towering construction with the new presence in Smith’s music of TUMO (the Really New Music Orchestra) a large 21-piece ensemble that unites heroes of free-jazz past and present chiefly trumpeter Verneri Pohjola, from the new generation, and the veteran 77-year-old Juhani Aaltonen here on flute and piccolo with the widow of the great Edward Vesala, ECM solo artist Iro Haarla on harp, and a range of leading Finnish talent alongside. TUMO is just over a year old and performed for the first time in early-2012 led by the trumpeter at a festival in Helsinki. Smith was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music for Ten Freedom Summers, and was named musician of the year for 2013 by the New York-based Jazz Journalists Association. Stephen Graham
Wadada Leo Smith above

UPDATED 28 MAY