Wadada Leo Smith and Eli Keszler, an Intimate Concert: In Dialogue with "Ficre Ghebreyesus: Color is Supreme"

Wadada Leo Smith was born in Leland, MS, and began his musical life in high school concert and marching bands. At the age of thirteen, Smith became involved with Delta blues and other music traditions, receiving his formal musical education from his stepfather, composer and guitarist Alex “Little Bill” Wallace, a pioneer of electric guitar in Delta blues. He furthered his education with the US military band program at Fort Leonard Wood, MO (1963), at the Sherwood School of Music in Chicago (1967–69), and at Wesleyan University (1975–76). He has researched a variety of music cultures—African, Japanese, Indonesian, European, and American—and has been a member of the legendary AACM collective for five decades.

A trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser, he is one of the most acclaimed creative artists of his time, recognized for both his music and his writing. His diverse discography reveals a recorded history centered around important issues that have impacted his world. He distinctly defines his music as “Creative Music.”

He began research and design toward discovery of the abstract musical language Ankhrasmation in 1965. His first realization of this musical language was in 1967, as illustrated in the recording of “The Bell” for Anthony Braxton’s album 3 Compositions of New Jazz. Ankhrasmation has since played a significant role in his development as an artist, ensemble leader, and educator.

He has been a member of faculty at the University of New Haven (1975–76), the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY (1975–78), and Bard College (1987–93). From 1994 until his retirement in 2013, Smith was at the Herb Alpert School of Music at California Institute of the Arts, where he was director of the African American Improvisational Music program.

Eli Keszler is a Grammy-nominated artist, composer, and percussionist based in New York, acclaimed for his innovative solo recordings released through labels such as LuckyMe, Shelter Press, Empty Editions, ESP-DISK’, PAN, and REL Records. In film, Keszler has composed over ten original scores, including Olmo Schnabel’s Pet Shop Days (2023), starring Willem Dafoe and Emmanuelle Seigner, which premiered at the Venice Biennale and Paul Schrader’s forthcoming The Basics of Philosophy; and his contribution to Daniel Lopatin’s score for Uncut Gems (2019). His recent work includes Bad Shabbos, featuring Kyra Sedgwick and Method Man, and Bunnylovr, starring Rachel Sennott. As a composer, Keszler has been commissioned by institutions and ensembles including the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, ICE Ensemble, Brooklyn String Orchestra, and So Percussion, and has collaborated with artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never, Skrillex, Laurel Halo, Jordan Wolfson, Kevin Beasley, Rashad Becker, Laure Prouvost, David Grubbs, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. He has exhibited and performed internationally at institutions including the Whitney Museum, Cologne Philharmonie, Lincoln Center, MIT List Center, Victoria & Albert Museum, Museum of Modern Art, SculptureCenter, The Kitchen, Hessel Museum, Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Barbican–St. Luke’s, Walker Art Center, LAXART, and MoMA PS1. As a visual artist, he has had recent solo exhibitions of drawings and paintings at Galerie Pepe and Galerie Falk Losziniza.