Leo Smith with Marion Brown

Leo Smith emerged in Chicago in the mid-sixties as a fresh new trumpet player within the creative milieu of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a cultural-economicpolitical collective of black avant-garde musicians and composers which includes Muhal Richard Abrams and the Experimental Band; Joseph A. Jarman, Rosecoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie and the Art Ensemble of Chicago; Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, Maurice MyIntyre, Steve McCall and a wealth of other creative artists.

Leo has recorded with Richard Abrams (“Levels and Degrees of Light”) and with Maurice McIntyre (“Humility

in the Light of the Creator”) on the Delmark label, with Anthony Braxton and others on European sessions, and has just released his own first record as a leader, “Creative Music — 1,” which he had pressed and is distributing himself.

Leo’s ensemble for the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival 1972 will feature master musician MARION BROWN on alto saxophone, reeds and a variety of hand-made instruments created by Marion himself; and trombonist-bassist LESTER LASHLEY of Chicago, long a leading figure in the AACM.

Marion Brown is well-known to contemporary music lovers for his work with Archie Shepp (“Fire Music,” “Attica Blues”) John Coltrane (“Ascension”), and other, paramount figures in the creative music community, and for a series of extraordinary albums under his own leadership, including “Marion Brown Quartet” and “Why Not?” (ESP-Disk), “Three for Archie, Three for Me” (Impulse), and a number of records (including “Juba Lee” “le temps fou” and “Afternoon of a Georgia Faun”) on various European labels, where Marion enjoys a high level of popularity. He has just returned from his latest European tour in order to perform here at the Festival with Leo Smith.

The Statement which follows was composed by Leo Smith for the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival program:

CREATIVE MUSIC in the art of music (rhythm-sound), there are but two types of disciplines: improvisation (improvisors) and composition (interpreters) — improvisation means that the music is created at the moment it is performed, whether it is developing a given theme or is improvisation on a given rhythm or sound (structures), or, in the purest form, when the improvisor creates without any of these conditions, but creates at that

moment, through his or her wit and imagination, an arrangement of silence and sound and rhythm that has never before been heard and will never again be heard; composition means that the music must first be composed and then interpreted later, with the emphasis during performance being that it should sound the same (the mechanics of it) each time it is performed, as in euro-american music.

creative music is dedicated to developing a heightened awareness of improvisation as an art form — ifeel that the creative music of afroamerica, india, bali, and pan-islam has done much along these lines, and is also creating a balance in the arena of world music (africa, asia, europe, afro-america) and that this music will eventually eliminate the political dominance of euro-american music in this world — when this is achieved, i feel that only then will we make meaningful political reforms in the world: culture being the way of our lives; politics, the way our lives are handled.

Leo Smith

(Leo Smith’s solo record, “CREATIVE MUSIC—1,” will be available throughout the Festival.)